Obama vs. Rush

Obama (via Daily Telegraph):

The president responded with a clear signal that he is prepared to ram the bill through without the bipartisan consensus he promised to construct, telling Republican leaders from the House of Representatives: "I won. I'm the president."

He then told them to break free of the confrontational mindset epitomised by Mr Limbaugh, the highest paid talk show host in America. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," Mr Obama said.

His comments followed a blunt attack on him by Mr Limbaugh, who declared on air that he hoped Mr Obama would fail as president because otherwise it will usher in socialism.

Wow. Obama really does seem to be repeating all the Clinton mistakes, including this one of battling with Rush Limbaugh, who loves this kind of stuff. And of course is quite capable of making extremely lucid, coherent conservative arguments of his own. Which is unfortunately more than we can say about most Republican politicians!

And Obama just anointed Rush as the chief of the opposition. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Selected excerpts from Limbaugh's response to Byron York at The Corner: (please read the whole thing)

There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters and supporters by making the argument about me and not about his plan. He is hoping that these Republicans will also publicly denounce me and thus marginalize me. And who knows? Are ideological and philosophical ties enough to keep the GOP loyal to their voters?...

...Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing "eternal" power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.

...

One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Rush is obviously quite capable of handling this, and his radio show should be ah, quite interesting, today. But will the GOP find the backbone to stick with him?

Probably.