Hard to believe that just a week or so ago, seeing the name “Rush Limbaugh” would fill me with the nameless dread you get when you gaze upon soulless evil.  But lately, I feel like he’s a gift from the Disco Ball that finally got fed up and decided to interfere with politics.  Ideally, Limbaugh and his massive ego will consume every other member of the Republican Party like some hokey B movie vampire, only to burn into a crisp once the sunlight of public opinion hits him.  From Ezra, I see that David Frum has decided that he wants to be the next victim of the non-official head of the Republican Party. 

Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

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.

I have to take a break to point out that Obama is popular with men, too, as Ezra notes.  But what Frum’s doing here is using “women” as the standard issue shorthand for “weak-minded, inferior people totally unlike we smarty smart penis havers”.  If women like Obama, that shows that there’s something terribly wrong with Obama, because women are too fucking stupid to do anything right.  You can’t even let them wash a dish without close supervision anymore.  Getting the vote really did ruin a passel of otherwise acceptable American bitches. 

You know who women don’t like?  Rush Limbaugh. You’d think that would be enough for David Frum to declare Limbaugh a hero beyond reproach, but no, he’s got to be a pussy and dislike Limbaugh along with the ladies.  Does this mean that David Frum is a woman?  Of course it does.  And his pussy hurts.*

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.

Frum thinks Limbaugh will do better with a broken conservative movement, because then he’ll emerge the victor.  This, I suspect, assumes that Rush Limbaugh is an intelligent man instead of just a bone-stupid bully with a savant-like ability to maintain a presence on the radio.  I suppose you can guess where I stand on this question.  Which isn’t to say that Limbaugh’s not going to be effective at this project, just that I don’t think it’s a plot on his part.  It’s more that he’s a born bully and he smells blood on the water, and he’s ready to pounce.  Every time a Republican snivels up and kisses his ass, Limbaugh’s ego grows and grows, and it just gives Obama’s people all the more reason to keep this story alive. 

I for one am eager to start a betting pool on how long, for instance, Michael Steele makes it under these unmanageable circumstances.  I’ve seen reason to believe his resignation could come by next week, but perhaps they won’t be able to guilt him out until mid-summer.

*I’m mildly disturbed by how well I generate misogynist insults, even if I’m putting them in the mouths of imaginary conservatives to mock sexism.