Sorry, Alex, but the astute here read that quote back on Monday.

So who is to blame now that the lunatics are running the asylum?

The William F. Buckley conservatives aren't in charge. The Barry Goldwater conservatives certainly aren't in power. The current crop of GOP leaders doesn't even try to make logical arguments anymore.

Today's GOP binds it's base by telling them what they want to hear. Limbaugh is the leader in convincing right wingers that they aren't in-fact selfish bigots and that hating Democrats and poor people is simply patriotic; the responsible thing to do.

"Democrat" socialists want to take your money and give it to the "other people"! Liberals will destroy America!

A political base who actually believes these things can't be expected to change when those beliefs become a liability.

Right? ;)

but David Frum will have to apologize to Rush as soon as the latter's mean-spirited, deranged, undereducated, racist followers start bombarding Frum with abuse, called in on the party line phones in their crumbling rural areas.

Who are we to stand in his way? Heh! Heh! Heh! >:)

And this columnist hasn't yet stumbled, torn and bleeding, into the limelight to weep an apology to Rush? To wail, "I didn't meeeeeen it!"

Hm. I guess two days is for elected officials; it's gonna take a little longer to separate David Frum his cojones.

First, the 2008 election eliminated all the Republican moderates, and now Rush is weeding out all the Republicans with backbones. David Frum may end up being the smartest and bravest conservative in the USA.

How dare David Frumm attempt to appeal to reason?

the dittoheads have no idea that their Great Leader doesn't give a crap about them, and would cheerfully sell them down river for a dose of Oxycontin or a Cuban cigar. (An also ironically, these same dittoheads rail against the man who is actually trying to save their jobs, homes, and health).

Now that the idea of Rush as head of the GOP is firmly planted in everybodys head can we expect him to get bad press everytime he screws up? Will CNN and other stations replay over and over the (expected) faux pas like it does for every other political personality.

I sure hope so.

this all somehow rings familiar. Hmmm, let me think.

Loud-mouth blow-hards, expanding waste lines, loud chanting, recitation of punch-lines, almost as vaudeville gags...

Okay, now I remember. Weimar beer-hall politics—a touching episode in the development of our “Western” civilization. Can't say I sympathize with any of that, and Mr. Frumm needs to get a life--that fella seems to have waaaayy to much free time. Not to worry though, I'm sure Rush will now label him "butt boy" or sumptin.

Strange, but I seem to remember Mr. Frumm doing some Rush imitations himself on a Rachel Maddow show in the not-so-distant past, say October 2008. The pot calling the kettle black? You don't say!

...kiss some Pilonidal Cyst for that type of apostacy.

So are the rest of the "conservative movement". They have spent years preaching tax cuts, gun ownership, control of other peoples vices and personal responsibility for everyone but themselves. Of course Rush will be the last Icon standing he's the epitome of who they are. I hope sometime soon his autiance is every remaining republican in the country. All 11 of them.

Well David Frum, when you're right, you're right. Enjoy!

Reading the comments over at where Frum posted that, as well as articles today by Kathleen Parker and David Plouffe at the WAPO, one assertion that keeps being made is that Limbaugh is being "portrayed" as the intellectual core of the Republican Party, with all of these people insisting that the Obama White House is at least half-responsible for "elevating" him to this position, and some like Parker claiming that it's pretty much entirely the White House's doing.

What's being spun out of existence is the fact that this all started because Limbaugh IS pretty much the intellectual force behind the current Republican Party. In addition to whatever that means about Limbaugh's stature, no pun intended, it means that the GOP has become more like him, they've changed, not him. It's not very hard to see that the current GOP, shrunken to its remainder of hard core extreme right wing members, holds views on the whole more like Rush Limbaugh than say like David Gergen or even David Brooks.

Anyone who thinks that the Limbaugh-worshipping CPAC is just some fringe group should remember who the actual GOP nominee for Vice President was last year: Sarah Palin.

That's not fringe, that's the party picking a potential President. That's also a party gone to the extreme right.

The White House loves this and will make political hay from it, to be sure. However the idea that they've just invented it as political spin is nonsense.

Mr. Frumm pretends Mr. Limbaugh has had nothing to do with the Republican party and its electoral success for the past several decades. He writes like all "reasonable" people -read white Republicans- have realized the radio host is simply an "entertainer", and not the intellectual core of the Republican philosophy. Like Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney didn't court him and his listeners.

No, Mr. Frumm is trying to pretend the Republicans are better than Mr. Limbaugh. He is trying to pretend their basest core doesn't harbor a huge sense of entitlement, latent racism and a bitter hatred of the lower classes. No, Mr. Frumm is being another delusional Republican.

the Republicans want to put a big ol' closet case Pharisee at the head of their show, then that is just fine with me.

I’ve been reading a lot of Rush-effect analysis today. But IMHO, I think you got it right.

As long as Rush is even perceived to be in charge, the Republicans will remain fractured, out-of-touch, and obsolete. Sure Rush has huge numbers of loyal listeners -- plenty of those bitter white men still floating around, but not enough to organize and effectively wield the power they once did. And for one reason only: they have lost the center resoundingly. It will be a very long time before they can even hope to win them back. Much longer than the current economic crisis in fact, because this crisis will be forever branded on their asses by all people with at least minimal functioning intelligence. They own this.

The GOP approval rating is now at less than 30%. These numbers are unlikely to go anywhere for quite some time. In fact, they won’t change until the party does, which is the one thing they seem most allergic to and are most determined not to let happen. (Steele = black; Jindal = immigrant; Palin = woman. And all set up to fail in today’s GOP. Coincidence? I kinda think not.) Rush being the head of the GOP (or conservatism as Rush himself likes to discern), is a good thing for Democrats. Rahm Emanuel is a fucking genius.