David Frum has it right (on this at least). (Emphasis mine)
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.
Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.
But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise – and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.
That might be an easier task if GOP leaders didn’t keep backing off any criticism they make of Rush in a flurry of denials, retractions, apologies, and ass-kissing.
(It’s also not promising — for Republicans — that the majority of the comments on the page seem to be in defense of Rush and criticizing Blum for defending style over substance.)
I think Limbaugh is worse for the Republicans than Jackson was for the Democrats. I think Limbaugh is more dogmatic and extremist than Jackson was, and I think Limbaugh is more closely identified with his party than Jackson was.
I think Jackson was closely identified with the Dems — by the GOP — for some time, and while not quite kow-towed to the same way Limbaugh has been in the past month, criticism of him was always muted both because of interest politics and fears of being accused of racism.
As a result, the GOP got endless mileage (esp. from its more racist quarters, but not exclusively) by portraying Jackson as a self-serving, rabble-rousing socialist and hammering that image as what the Dems were really all about (that there’s an element of truth in the portrayal didn’t hurt).
FWIW, though both men are, I think, self-interested, I think Jackson was *more* ideological than Limbaugh. I think Rush is more for the image than the politics (which he believes in, but as a secondary consideration). That, in fact, does make him worse.
While I was admittedly not following politics as closely as I do now, I don’t recall Jackson being characterized as a socialist. My impression of him is (and, if my memory serves me well, was) primarily as someone championing equal rights rather than someone who was championing arguably socialist policies. If I’m wrong on this, then Jackson was more extreme than I remember him being, and he might have been as bad for Dems as Limbaugh is for Reps.
Another difference that I didn’t mention before is that Limbaugh is buffoonish and in many cases not even deserving of serious refutation, while I have always thought that Jackson was serious and always deserved consideration.
Limbaugh is intentionally buffoonish and is taken utterly seriously by a lot of people. Jackson tried to present himself seriously and was derided as a buffoon (by folks like Rush).
Jackson’s policies were civil rights, social rights, and Big Government Spending — which were all roughly congruent with what’s now given the “socialist” label.
Darth Limbaugh!
Darth L gestures as if squeezing a pair of testicles: “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” he pontificates.
The offending GOP big wheel stammers apologies in a high pitched squeal.
The great era of GOP comedy rolls on!