limbaugh.jpgPills Limbaugh just keeps diggin’ and diggin’. I’ve been delighted to see that it’s been all over cable news today, and Wes Clark has been promoting the move to get Limbaugh off Armed Forces Radio Network. Since that letter from Harry Reid et. al. condemning Rush doesn’t really seem to have had much of an effect, Digby spells out why they should join Clark and go after him:

General Wes Clark (who Limbaugh has repeatedly slandered) has started a drive to force congress to remove Limbaugh from Armed Forces Radio, a move I’ve been in favor of for years. I urge you to sign up for this one. Limbaugh is a cancer on the body politic and we have to stop being afraid of him — or being above these “petty squabbles.” One of the main sources of Republican power is their ability to gin up controversies like this latest MoveOn thing and it behooves us to go after them with the same amount of fervor when the opportunity presents itself. They will keep doing it until the price becomes too high.

Bennett said today that the Democrats had erred because if they were going to try to kill the king, they’d better succeed, and Rush is the king of talk radio. He’s right. And the Democrats should have been working to take him down long ago. It’s my belief that the conservative movement of the past decade or so was a three headed hydra: Newt, Delay and Rush. Sure, there are others, including Bush’s brain, and Grover Norquist (whom I have sometimes included as the fourth head of the hydra) but those three stood for different things that were hugely important to the success of the movement. Newt was the visionary. Delay was the congressional enforcer. And Rush was the voice, screaming out violent hatred for liberals and Democrats day after day, decade after decade. It took its toll, to the point where we can hardly even stand ourselves.

Newtie’s now irrelevant. Delay is gone. Only Rush remains and he is probably the biggest prize. On a purely practical, hardball political basis, the Democrats should have been working to take him out for years. Now is their chance to turn the Republicans’ patented hissy kabuki back on them and hoist an avowed political enemy with his own poisonous petard at the same time. There are many others who will happily take his place, no doubt about it. But his voice is uniquely associated with the radical wingnuts, and it is an important symbolic message to the country if they can finally make an example of him.

The fact that the Democrats aren’t going after Rush hammer and tongs is largely due to their failure to see themselves as an opposition party involved in an ideological war. The view from inside the Beltway Bubble seems to obscure this plain and simple truth that appears quite obvious to those of us outside of it. The Republicans understand it, and that’s why they’ve been so successful at controlling the agenda as a minority party.

Rush is a huge part of why they’re always on the ropes, losing these battles of phony outrage and spin. It’s time to take him out.

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