Karen M:

The meme: He's determined to support these incompetent losers for whom he has no respect, no matter the cost.

No matter what he does/says could be labeled as his way of helping BushCo and the GOP. Even (especially) his racist and misogynistic remarks. He says them because they can't, and so they won't have to.

Or is that being too much like the other side? I'm inclined to say no, because in his case, I'm not sure that it isn't the truth.

No, I agree with you. It's not too much like the other side. For not just evidence, but in-depth analysis that it's true, see "Rush, Newspeak and Facism," the Koufax-winning series by David Neiwert, revised and compiled here:

http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php

A crucial core of the analysis presented is the role of transmitters--Limbaugh key among them--in transmitting hard-right memes into the mainstream political discourse.

First, shooter:

Hey Rosenberg....

Maybe we can't get Rush booted just now. But what exactly is the downside in putting him and his GOP enablers on the defensive for his racism???

....

Your desire to deprive people of their first amendment rights is noted.

Good old Shooter, doing the O'Reilly thing to make it seem like I'm calling for censorship.

Reality [emphasis added]:

[Digby]:

I don't think Rush should be censored by the government and there is no movement to do such a thing. But if corporate radio can destroy the careers of the Dixie Chicks because one of them once said onstage that she was ashamed that Bush was from Texas, they can fire this noxious SOB for being a stone cold racist, misogynist ass on their airwaves for the past 20 years. That seems more than fair to me.

Maybe we can't get Rush booted just now. But what exactly is the downside in putting him and his GOP enablers on the defensive for his racism???

Then nabalzbbfr:

Bush Derangement Syndrome

This is all Bush derangement syndrome. Like Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, George W. Bush is mocked and reviled by the mobs and the demagogues during the latter part of his term in office.

But, of course, "Bush Derangement Syndrome" is 200 Proof projection from the folks who brought us Clinton Derangement Syndrome. And since I've just mentioned "Rush, Newspeak and Facism," why not give you a taste:

"Hitler was more moral than Clinton," intoned the nice-looking, dark-haired man in the three-piece suit. "He had fewer girlfriends."

The audience laughed and applauded, loudly.

A remark like that might hardly have raised an eyebrow in post-Monica America, particularly in the meeting-halls of mainstream conservatism, where it often seemed, by the end of Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House, that no hyperbole is too overblown in the campaign to depose him -- mostly, it seems, by convincing the rest of us that he was too grossly immoral to continue to hold the presidency.

As the scandal wore on, the volume, intensity and downright nastiness of his critics reached impressive levels. It wasn't unusual to hear of congressmen calling him a "scumbag" and a "cancer on the presidency," or for mainstream conservative commentary to refer to him, as Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese did at one point, as "a sociopath, a liar, a sexual predator, a man with recklessly bad judgment and a scofflaw." Even right-wing scribe Andrew Sullivan played the armchair psychologist on national television, describing Clinton as "sociopathic."

But the scene above took place four years before Monica, in 1994, long before Clinton handed his enemies a scandal on a platter that seemingly made such references acceptable. It was not at a Republican caucus or Christian Coalition meeting, but at a gathering of right-wing "Patriots" who had come to hear about forming militias and common-law courts and defending their gun rights -- indeed, their families -- from the New World Order. They numbered only a hundred or so and only half-filled the little convention hall in Bellevue, Washington, but their fervor saturated the room with its own paranoid energy.

And the speaker, who could have passed even then for a local Republican public official -- actually, he was nominally a Democrat -- in fact was one of the nation's leading Patriot figures: Richard Mack, then sheriff of Arizona's mostly rural Graham County. As a leader in the fight against gun control (his lawsuit eventually led to the Supreme Court overturning a section of the so-called Brady Law), Mack was in high demand on the right-wing lecture circuit as he promoted the militia concept to his eager acolytes. He usually sprinkles his "constitutional" gun-rights thesis with his theories on church-state separation -- it's a "myth," he claims -- and "the New World Order conspiracy."

The similarities between Mack's 1994 sentiments and the hyperbole directed at Clinton in 1998 are not accidental. Rather, they offer a stark example of the way the far right's ideas, rhetoric and issues feed into the mainstream -- and in the process, exert a gravitational pull that draws the nation's agenda increasingly rightward. For that matter, much of the conservative anti-Clinton paroxysm could be traced directly to some of the smears that circulated first in militia and white-supremacist circles.

There is a grain of truth in comparing the two sides, however: Just as the lies and slanders of the extreme right slowly percolated into the mainstream during the Clinton era, so, too, the truths of the "extreme left" have slowly percolated into the mainstream today.

"Extreme left" meaning too extreme for Versailles, and so left out of the political dialogue. Except, of course, for the Bush Deranged blogs!

There is no doubt at all a sea change is going on, and my ideological cohort, the Reason-magazine type, Hayekian libertarians is something of a canary in the political coalmine. For decades, since the 60s or so, we tended to overwhelmingly vote GOP. That began a decline in 2000...

Translation: Ooops! My bad!