Academic

EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON: President Obama and the Democrats should wave the white flag in their stra?

By Glenn Reynolds

EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON:

President Obama and the Democrats should wave the white flag in their strawman war on Rush Limbaugh. The Media Research Center delivered the grim casualty figures for the Democrats. Since January, the top talk show gabber’s ratings have soared off the charts. Radio affiliates that carry Limbaugh’s syndicated show call the ratings boost he’s gotten from the Democrat’s orchestrated attack on him a “dramatic surge.” This writer predicted as much when President Obama cracked to Congressional Republicans in late January that they should knock off listening to Limbaugh if they expected to get anything done in Congress and with his administration.

The gabber instantly snatched at the quip and turned it into a multi show bonanza. No matter what topic Limbaugh gassed on, he managed to slide in a reference to Obama’s prop up of him as the Democrat’s prize punching bag. This did three things. It gave him an even bigger pile of fodder to puff himself up as the emperor of talk radio, claim to be the real kingmaker in the GOP, and in a perverse way paint himself as a credible and thoughtful political critic. It snapped many shell shocked Congressional Republicans out of their post election funk. Now suddenly feisty and combative, they draw a deep line in the sand against any and everything that Obama proposed.

As I said, if you strike him down he shall only become more powerful than you can imagine . . . .

Plus, Andrew Klavan in the L.A. Times: Take the Limbaugh Challenge! “If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; here’s the certainty: You’ve never listened to Rush Limbaugh.” Excerpts peddled by Media Matters and the JournoList crowd don’t count . . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on March 29, 2009 (boomark / email).