Rush Limbaugh as a Silencing Trigger

Instead of talking about Kirsten Powers’s new book, NPR goes down a rabbit hole.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez — May 28, 2015

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Screen shot: May 6, 2015

Kirsten Powers has done a public service with her new book The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech, a bit of a thankless task if Twitter is any indication.

Still, Mary Eberstadt has noted the treasure that it is. Peggy Noonan has as well. So has Kathleen Parker. I wrote about it here the other day.

And Rush Limbaugh has recommended it. Which, in many ways, changes everything. His word of recommendation and praise can be a great gift to authors.

On his show the other day, Rush said:

Now, she’s still a lib, proudly says so, but as I say, she’s not rock-ribbed with this. And many times, in fact, on a Fox show here or there — you know, occasionally, ladies and gentlemen, I find myself involved in a controversial affair. Doesn’t happen a whole lot, but sometimes I do, and on many of those occasions, Kirsten, using her instincts, has refused to join the chorus in whatever the criticism of me is. And she’s been right on those occasions.  

I thought writing this book was a gutsy thing for her to do because it’s not like somebody like me writing a book describing how the Left tries to silence people. I mean, she goes after ’em, folks. This is not a soft-pedaled little commentary or analysis on theory. She goes after these people with explicit, undeniable examples of how people on the left are literally trying to deny average, ordinary Americans access to the First Amendment.  

They are literally trying to destroy people. And as a liberal, it bothers her. She is the old classical liberal, I think is the term. An old classical liberal is not what a liberal is today. Liberal today means extreme, fascist, statist, intolerant, full-fledged, almost Stalinist type person. And it bothers her. She has written about it complete with examples, and because she comes from the left doing this, she has become this immense target of these people. I don’t know that she was prepared for it. She said she was, but I don’t know that anybody is.

And then he made a prediction:

So here comes Kirsten Powers, an appreciated and endowed, accepted ranking member of the Left calling them out. And so now they’ve gotta destroy her. She’s no different than if she were me, as far as they are concerned. They used to like her, they used to appreciate her, and some still do, but she’s got to be shut up. 

And then, while on National Public Radio, Powers found herself in what became a debate about Rush Limbaugh and his purported racism, for criticizing President Obama.

This came just after she talked about how some topic — like marriage — is made “radioactive” and becomes a “conversation stopper” instead of a “starter.”

RELATED: Kirsten Powers: A Profile in Courage

Rush Limbaugh as a topic himself is frequently used as a bludgeon for intimidation and silencing, in the fashion that she chronicles in her book.

After this experience, Powers may just wind up with a new chapter for the paperback, dedicated to Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh is, in myriad ways, a gift — and not just to authors with books to sell. He is a man of intense gratitude and generosity and one of the great communicators of our day. If you’ve listened to him for any extensive amount of time, as many of us have, you know he communicates principles with clarity and wit and a depth of understanding. Everyone knows he talks but he is also a voracious reader and listener — which takes some humility, which, yes, even the man who for almost 30 years has declared on his show that he has half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair, has — who frequently holds up more good to more people in one hour of his three-hour show than many of us can do in our entire lives. Rarely in news and commentary about him does the man in full appear.

Rush Limbaugh as a topic himself is frequently used as a bludgeon for intimidation and silencing.

And still on the air he is. And still being used by many — including quite well-intentioned people who believe what is said about him — to distract from the preponderance of Davids who are being crushed by a Goliath masquerading as supreme benevolence.

I love something a wounded veteran at National Review’s 50th-anniversary party (our beloved WFB was still with us) told him — Mark Levin points to it in his book, Rescuing Sprite: “We all have our roles.” Rush was embarrassed that this self-sacrificing American without an arm was grateful to him. But the Marine spoke a truth we could all afford to hear and appreciate, not to fill us with pride, but to make us more humble: to trust that if we pray, if we labor, if we encourage the better angels, we can do some good in the world, as maddening and confusing and heartbreaking as it can be.

I do hope that both people who do and people who do not watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh buy The Silencing. In gratitude. In openness. In a desire for something better in our politics and in our conversations — on NPR and in daily life.

And I’d hope that anyone with a media platform — especially on the Left — might take her book under consideration and cover the suppression of free speech, instead of giving into your temptation to be distracted. We all have our roles — and styles, temperaments, platforms — and may we all use them to do some good. Just like Rush Limbaugh. Just like Kirsten Powers.

– Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large at National Review Online.

Rush Limbaugh is - gasp! - hooking kids on U.S. history

By John Carlson

http://www.desmoinesregister.com

November 16, 2013

A horrified political commentator was yelling on the radio the other day about the horror of talk radio’s horrifying Rush Limbaugh writing a horrifying book — aimed, horrifyingly, at kids.

I turned to Google and discovered that Limbaugh, who sometimes talks loudly but rarely yells, has written a book entitled “Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims.” And the warning is correct. Kids are the audience.

The first report on the book I located stated, “Rush Limbaugh is Coming for Your Kids.” The headline said the vicious, right-wing, intolerant Limbaugh has no business writing anything related to history. A cable news anchor wrote that it made her sick.

Neither had read the book, but what difference does that make? The general analysis is that Limbaugh is a hateful gasbag and the book almost certainly is a distortion and any kids who are forced by their abusive parents to read it will have their little brains damaged to the point they might end up starting a business or voting Republican.

The warnings come with everything but an air-raid siren, yet “Rush Revere” is the best-selling book in America now and was at the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list several weeks before its late October release.

This I had to see, so I stopped by my local Barnes and Noble for a look. A clerk, after two computer searches and much wandering, located the publication in the deepest corner of the store. He had never heard of the book, which is Barnes and Noble’s second-biggest seller. I told him they should offer GPS coordinates to find the thing. The clerk was a nice young man, but has no sense of humor.

He agreed to sell it to me and I read it in an afternoon. I write about it a few days before Thanksgiving because it is a fine book for kids that uses a fun gimmick to describe the earliest days of our nation.

The central character is a present-day middle school history teacher who comes to class with a talking horse. The horse, “Liberty,” has the ability to propel them back in time. In this book, the teacher takes Tommy, the class smart aleck and a thoughtful Native American girl named Freedom on a journey to the earliest days of what would become America.

Does the book have a political message? Yes — from the journal of Plymouth Plantation Gov. William Bradford. Limbaugh uses Bradford’s writings as his source of information on the Mayflower’s 65-day trip across the Atlantic, the signing of the Mayflower Compact, the establishment of the colony, the Pilgrims’ interaction with Indians and the awful conditions faced by them all.

The book’s political message is clear, but not overwhelming. The Pilgrims originally shared everything in their first months. They built a village, cleared and worked fields, and the benefits were equally distributed. Bradford and the plantation council discovered some among them worked hard while others, who had little incentive to work, did nothing. There was resentment and a collapse of the new society seemed inevitable. Eventually, each family was issued a parcel of land, which they worked on their own. Goods were bought and sold by individuals, who kept the profits and the community prospered.

There are references to clashes between Indians and Pilgrims. Starvation, disease and the deaths of half the original colonists, including Bradford’s wife, are described, as is the decimation by disease of the Wampanoag Indians.

The Wampanoag shared furs, food and their knowledge of planting and fertilizing crops. The book concludes with a description of the “Plimoth Plantation Harvest Festival,” a feast and celebration for settlers and Indians. It is generally considered the birth of what became known as Thanksgiving.

Rush Revere, the teacher who has a striking resemblance to the author, uses a smart phone with a video app to transmit events from 1620 and 1621 back to the classroom at Manchester Middle School. The students, for the first time, discover history can be exciting. Ridiculous? Not sophisticated enough? Kids are deciding otherwise.

Critics are offended the Pilgrims are portrayed as heroic and courageous, not as murdering, evil invaders. Limbaugh believes kids are getting such a distorted and negative view of the nation’s founders and that’s why he wrote the book.

Turns out it is a darned good story, remarkably popular, and more Rush Revere adventures from American history seem sure to come. Horrifying, eh?

Carlson is a retired Register columnist and writes twice a month for the Sunday Register.

Gag Order

By Kyle Smith
http://www.nypost.com
May 12, 2013

“Decent folks who believe in tolerance and equality are no longer powerless against Limbaugh’s efforts to spread intolerance on the radio. StopRush is making a major impact by convincing advertisers on this show to withdraw their ads — and with your help we can do even more. Just a few e-mails, tweets or Facebook messages a week to Limbaugh’s advertisers can go a long way toward making hatred less profitable. It is our collective voice that makes us strong.” — DailyKos.com, promoting the “StopRush” campaign.

Absolutely right! If you believe in tolerance and equality, the thing you really need to do is . . . shut other people up.

It’s only decent. If you believe in diversity, eliminate anyone who doesn’t fit the mold, and if you think hate speech is bad, build a campaign of organized loathing.

Perfectly logical.

The Daily Kos website displays an American flag (sort of — it’s orangey, like the red and yellow flag of some international workers’ collective after it’s been put through the washing machine too many times). It’s a wonder that the flag doesn’t get up and slink off the screen in embarrassment.

Because this country has a long, proud history of freedom to piss people off.

The StopRush movement, started by an employee of the liberal group Media Matters, brags that it has been successful in driving advertisers away from “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” which for 25 years has delighted, infuriated, tickled and provoked its radio listeners by the millions.

But it’s conservative, and liberals want to shut it down by convincing the sponsors that it’s too hot to handle.

Limbaugh has conceded on the air that the movement has had some success. Because advertisers are giant wussies.

Advertisers want audiences but abhor “controversy.” They don’t want to see protesters lining up outside their offices, don’t want to get petitions on anything but new flavor ideas for Pringles, don’t want to be mentioned in the political blogs.

Colgate doesn’t care if you’re red state or blue, all they see is nice white teeth.

In the kind of world that advertisers like, there would be no discussion of politics at all. The whole media world would be like “Entertainment Tonight” or a football game.

What would be the fun of that? Hell, even I sometimes watch MSNBC, when I want to exercise my snorting muscles.

The boycott sword has two edges. Progressive voices could easily be pressured off the air too, not because advertisers are conservative but because they could just as easily send their money to “Big Bang Theory” reruns rather than Al Sharpton’s show.

Scaring advertisers isn’t hard. The question is why the Kossacks even bother. What are they afraid of?

They claim they’re winning the argument. Maybe they’re correct. Limbaugh hasn’t stopped President Obama from being elected and re-elected. Democrats carried the popular vote three out of the four elections before Obama, too.

The Democrats claim they have demographic destiny on their side. They note that if a progressive president commands a huge proportion of the votes of blacks, Latinos and single women, they hardly need anybody else. Maybe they’re right on that too. Obama got just 39% of the white vote in November.

So if Limbaugh is guilty of (as another Kossack post claimed) “constant attacks on minority groups” and if no single woman wants to be on the same side as the tormentor of Sandra Fluke, maybe DailyKos should start a petition to demand CNN give Limbaugh three hours in prime time every night.

Maybe Fluke herself, who has made a career out of being mentioned by Limbaugh, should be first to sign. (Ironically, in the DNC speech she would not have been invited to deliver before Limbaugh made her a celebrity, she accused him of trying to “silence” her when what he did was mock her. Silencing Limbaugh is what Fluke’s friends at StopRush are trying to do.)

No one at StopRush is being chained to the wall and forced to listen to Limbaugh in a dungeon (though their thinking would probably be clarified if they were). So why do they want others to stop listening to him? Are they under the impression that Rush’s listeners would suddenly turn liberal if not for his influence?

Perhaps for all their talk of tolerance and diversity, they can’t stand that someone out there doesn’t agree with everything they say.

Limbaugh spokesman Brian Glicklich says, “Every organization that has tried to debate liberalism vs. conservatism with Rush Limbaugh for 25 years has lost. They have come and gone, and he has not. He has broken their arguments down into their essential absurdities, hypocrisies, and flat out fictions.”

Sick of losing, this “well funded political strong-arming propaganda ministry” resorts to trying to gag him, Glicklich says.

Kossacks, I know you’re some pretty tough hombres. Are you going to win the argument? Or are you going to wuss out and get the ref to disqualify the other guy on account of he’s so mean?

Miss Fluke goes to Washington

When even casual sex requires a state welfare program, you're pretty much done for.

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
March 9, 2012

I'm writing this from Australia, so, if I'm not quite up to speed on recent events in the United States, bear with me – the telegraph updates are a bit slow here in the bush. As I understand it, Sandra Fluke is a young coed who attends Georgetown Law and recently testified before Congress.

Oh, wait, no. Update: It wasn't a congressional hearing; the Democrats just got it up to look like one, like summer stock, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid doing the show right here in the barn and providing a cardboard set for the world premiere of "Miss Fluke Goes To Washington," with full supporting cast led by Chuck Schumer strolling in through the French windows in tennis whites and drawling, "Anyone for bull****?"
Oh, and the "young coed" turns out to be 30, which is what less-evolved cultures refer to as early middle age. She's a couple of years younger than Mozart was at the time he croaked but, if the Dems are to be believed, the plucky little Grade 24 schoolgirl has already made an even greater contribution to humanity.

She's had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else (and this is where one is obliged to tiptoe cautiously, lest offense is given to gallant defenders of the good name of American maidenhood such as the many prestigious soon-to-be-former sponsors of this column who've booked Bill Maher for their corporate retreat with his amusing "Sarah Palin is a c***" routine ...)

Where was I? Oh, yes. The brave middle-age schoolgirl had the courage to stand up in public and demand that someone else pay for her sex life.

Well, as noted above, she's attending Georgetown, a nominally Catholic seat of learning, so how expensive can that be? Alas, Georgetown is so nominally Catholic that the cost of her sex life runs to three grand – and, according to the star witness, 40 percent of female students "struggle financially" because of the heavy burden of maintaining a respectable level of pre-marital sex at a Jesuit institution.

As I said, I'm on the other side of the planet, so maybe I'm not getting this. But I'd say the core issue here is not religious liberty, which in these godless times the careless swing voter now understands as a code phrase meaning that uptight Republicans who can't get any action want to stop you getting any, too.

Nor is the core issue liberty in its more basic sense – although it would certainly surprise America's founders that their republic of limited government is now the first nation in the developed world to compel private employers to fully fund the sex lives of their employees.

Nor is it even the distinctively American wrinkle the Republic of Paperwork has given to governmentalized health care, under which the "right to privacy" the Supreme Court claimed to have discovered in Griswold vs. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade will now lead to thousands and thousands of self-insuring employers keeping computer records of the morning-after pills and herpes medication racked up by Miss Jones on reception.

Nor is the issue that America has 30-year-old schoolkids – or even 30-year-old schoolkids who expect someone else to pick up the tab for their extracurricular activities, rather than doing a paper route and a bit of yard work to save up for their first IUD, as we did back in my day. After all, the human right to government-mandated free contraception is as American as apple pie and far healthier for you. In my most recent book, I quote one of Sandra Fluke's fellow geriatrics gamboling in the groves of academe and complaining to the Washington Post about the quality of free condoms therein:

"'If people get what they don't want, they are just going to trash them,' said T Squalls, 30, who attends the University of the District of Columbia. 'So why not spend a few extra dollars and get what people want?'"

All of us are born with the unalienable right to life, liberty and a lifetime supply of premium ribbed silky-smooth, ultrasensitive, spermicidal, lubricant condoms. No taxation without rubberization, as the Minutemen said. The shot heard round the world and all that.

Nor is the core issue that, whatever the merits of government contraception, America is the brokest nation in history – although the Fluke story is a useful reminder that the distinction between fiscal and social conservatism is generally false.

As almost all those fashionable split-the-difference fiscally conservative/socially liberal governors from George Pataki to California's pathetically terminated Terminator eventually discover, their social liberalism comes with a hell of a price tag. Ask the Greeks how easy it is for insolvent nations to wean the populace off unaffordable nanny-state lollipops: When even casual sex requires a state welfare program, you're pretty much done for.

No, the most basic issue here is not religious morality, individual liberty or fiscal responsibility. It's that a society in which middle-age children of privilege testify before the most powerful figures in the land to demand state-enforced funding for their sex lives at a time when their government owes more money than anyone has ever owed in the history of the planet is quite simply nuts.

As stark staring nuts as the court of Ranavalona, the deranged nymphomaniac queen of Madagascar at whose funeral the powder keg literally went up, killing dozens and burning down three royal palaces. Indeed, one is tempted to arrange an introduction between "T Squalls, 30," now 32 going on 33, and Sandra Fluke, 30 going on 31, like a skillfully negotiated betrothal between two royal houses in medieval Europe. The student prince would bring to the marriage his impressive fortune of a decade's worth of Trojan Magnums, while the Princess Leia would have a dowry of index-linked RU 486s settled upon her by HHS the Margravine of Sebelius. They would not be required to produce an heir.

Insane as this scenario is, the Democrat-media complex insists that everyone take it seriously. When it emerged the other day that Amanda Clayton, a 24-year-old Michigan million-dollar lottery winner, still receives $200 of food stamps every month, even the press and the bureaucrats were obliged to acknowledge the ridiculousness. Yet, the same people are determined that Sandra Fluke be treated with respect as a pioneering spokesperson for the rights of the horizontally challenged.

Sorry, I pass.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom," wrote Benjamin Franklin in 1784. In the absence of religious virtue, sexual virtue and fiscal virtue, one might trust to the people's sense of sheer preposterousness to reject the official narrative of the Fluke charade. Yet even that is not to be permitted.

Full disclosure: I will be guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh this Monday, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment here on Rush's intervention. But let me say this. Almost every matter of the moment boils down to the same story: the Left's urge to narrow the bounds of public discourse and insist that "conventional wisdom" unknown to the world the day before yesterday is now as unquestionable as the Laws of Physics. Nothing that Rush said is as weird or as degrading as what Sandra Fluke and the Obama administration are demanding. And any freeborn citizen should reserve the right to point that out as loudly and as often as possible.

©MARK STEYN

Sandra Fluke’s choices

By Ekulf Ardnas

Freelance Writer

http://dailycaller.com/

March 3, 2012

Sandra Fluke has more choices with regard to her sex life and reproduction than any woman in history.

For those unfamiliar with Ms. Fluke, she is the 30-year-old third-year Georgetown University law student and left-wing activist who sat before an unofficial congressional committee on February 16. She testified that women like her need access to birth control, a point that almost no one disputes.

More controversially, however, she argued that Georgetown, a 223-year-old Jesuit institution, should be forced by federal law to pay for her contraception of choice without regard to Georgetown’s religious beliefs — and that somehow Georgetown’s current policy is a medieval infringement on her rights as a human being.

Perhaps it is worth outlining a few of the choices Ms. Fluke already enjoys in America in 2012.
She has an incredible array of birth control devices and techniques to choose from — including birth control pills, patches, caps, rings, shots, diaphragms, implants, spermicides (foam, jelly, cream, film), male condoms, female condoms, morning-after pills, Depo-Provera, IUDs, pulling out, tubal ligation and, yes, abortion. Do they still make chastity belts?

She has the choice to have her boyfriend or husband pay for her preferred method of contraception. This seems like a reasonable accommodation assuming only he, and not all of society, is enjoying the pleasure of her company.

She has the choice to shop around for less expensive birth control. As John McCormack pointed out in The Weekly Standard, generic Ortho Tri-Cyclen costs $9 at the Washington, D.C. Target store, or $297 for the 33 months of law school. This is 90 percent less than the $3,000 three-year cost that Ms. Fluke cited in her testimony.

She has the choice of buying health insurance from somewhere other than Georgetown University. A quick search of options for a single 30-year-old woman in the District of Columbia or northern Virginia reveals dozens of plans that cost around $150 a month. (In almost all cases, though, her co-payment for any kind of birth control would be higher than just buying it directly from Target, giving the lie to the perception that health insurance necessarily makes low-end health care services less expensive for the consumer at the point of purchase.)

She has the choice to economize on her routine expenses and not have cable TV, that evening out with friends or that new pair of shoes — and thereby free up money for contraception. Surely she would not testify that her neighbors should subsidize those things.

She has the choice to not have sex at all, thereby completely eliminating the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. This is crazy talk, of course.

She had the choice of sitting in front of Congress and therefore the American people and talking about her lifestyle. By taking that public course of action, she invited public scrutiny, even if some of it has been harsh and hurtful.

She had the choice of suggesting to Congress that someone else should pay for her lifestyle choice.
Again, few question her freedom to live her life as she sees fit. Asking for federal legislation that would compel people of faith to subsidize her sex life is the issue. Those who pay deserve some say.
As a woman who is obviously bright and accomplished enough to get into Georgetown’s law school, she had the choice of attending virtually all 200 accredited law schools in the United States, most of which are secular. But according to one report, she deliberately selected Georgetown so that she could fight this particular policy.

She had the choice of selecting a law school that costs $23,432.50 per semester in tuition alone. This begs the obvious question: How is $297 in birth control costs over three years overly burdensome in relation to $200,000 in overall law school debt? This is not to mention the fact that a Georgetown JD is a first-class, one-way ticket to the one percent.

And finally, she has the choice to call Rush Limbaugh an asshole or take the high road. To her credit, she has seemingly chosen to stay above petty name-calling, which is the bastion of those lacking coherent, logical arguments.

Sandra, your rights do not extend to anything that someone else has to pay for. The vast majority of us will gladly keep our hands out of your uterus if you keep your hands out of our wallets.

Ekulf Ardnas is the pseudonym of a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C. area.

Rally for Rush

Carbonite CEO tied to MoveOn.org: time for conservatives to fight blacklisting?

By Jeffrey Lord
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
March 5, 2012

So. Did you hear about Carbonite and Rush Limbaugh?

No, you didn't. Not the way you will in a minute. But first?

It's time to turn the tables.

It's time to stand up to the bullies.

It's time to Rally for Rush.

Rush Limbaugh has discussed at length -- at length -- what Sandra Fluke and her statist cronies are up to. Yes, he used the words "slut" and "prostitute" -- using the ludicrous to make his point. Ms. Fluke, in one of the most pathetic, shamelessly whining stories in recent memory, demands to be paid for her sex life because it costs $3,000 for three years of birth control while she's at law school. She demands that a Catholic university violate its fundamental right to religious liberty so she can have others pay for her sex life. So Rush asked the farcical obvious about somebody who demands that someone else pay her for her apparent, self-admitted prolific sex life. He spent two solid days relating her greed for other people's money and a lack of personal responsibility to the oldest of principles.

Right on cue, the blacklisting crowd came out of their Stalinist caves. Having driven Lou Dobbs from CNN, cut off Beck's windpipe at Fox, severed Pat Buchanan from MSNBC, thus emboldened they have now set their sights on Rush.

And Rush, threatened with his livelihood, has issued this statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit? In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.
My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

This, but of course, was not enough to satisfy. Sandra Fluke herself raced to the Ed Schultz show on MSNBC todenounce Rush. Yes, the same Ed Schulz who not long ago called conservative radio and TV commentator Laura Ingraham a "slut." And he wasn't joking either. But suddenly, Ms. Fluke simply didn't care. Why? Because this entire controversy over Rush's words was never about the actual subject. It was really about yet another drive to blacklist yet another conservative in the media.

Big mistake. Really big mistake.

Did I mention Carbonite yet? Hold on.

IN THE DAYS AFTER the death of Andrew Breitbart, perhaps the question can be phrased this way: "What would Andrew do?" Well, first, he would suggest you go to one of his sites to learn the facts -- and in this case a very interesting fact about Sandra Fluke's view of free speech. Here's the link at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government where you will find this opening in a story by Charles Johnson:

As a student at Cornell and treasurer of a pro-choice organization at the school, Sandra Fluke, helped shut down a pro-life speech on Cornell's campus by counter protesting. She argued that a pro-life organization at Cornell was about "manipulating [students'] emotions" with misleading statistics about abortion. But when it is her turn to speak on Capitol Hill, the third-year Georgetown Law Student demands she gets her say in a hearing that has nothing to do with birth control.

Well, well, well. So Sandra Fluke has a record of denying free speech to others? In addition to giving a pass to Mr. Ed on the slut business? Free speech for Sandra Fluke but not Rush Limbaugh or those pro-lifers at Cornell? Interesting, yes? Hypocritical and thuggish, definitely. She also walked out in protest of the congressional hearing where supporters of religious liberty were allowed to speak. It turns out, as reported here, that Fluke is no struggling law student -- she's already a professional far-left genderist, long deeply into the leftist scam of judging others by skin color or gender.

We all know the answer as to what Andrew Breitbart would do in this situation. He would stand up to the bullies.

So buckle in. And when you are finished reading -- don't sit there pondering. Stand up. Do something.
And yes…. I will have suggestions as to exactly what you can do to Rally for Rush.

As a matter of fact, let's start right there. Let's start with what you can do right now.

First, read this story from the Friday Huffington Post. It provides a snapshot of what's going on in the effort to intimidate Rush Limbaugh -- and in so doing intimidate the rest of us.

Now take a look at this story from Politico from January 12 of this year. That's right, the one that begins this way:

Conservatives continue to make up the largest segment of political views in the country, outnumbering liberals nearly two-to-one, according to a new poll Thursday.

The Gallup survey found that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative; 35 percent consider themselves moderate; and 21 percent see themselves as liberal. The figures did not change from 2010.

You with me? Conservatives outnumber the left in this country by two-to-one. If you add in moderates, that means 75 percent of the American people do not identify with the kind of people these sponsors are so publicly trying to appease.

So let's start with that recognition as we go through the list of sponsors who are buckling to left-wing bullies. Caving in to thugs who claim to represent a mere 20 percent of the American public. Caving in to fanatics who, unable to sell their ideas by beating Rush Limbaugh in the ratings, seek to drive him from the air, wreck his career -- and most importantly, attempt to intimidate the 40 percent of the American people who self-identify as conservatives. Not to mention the other 35 percent who, as self-defined "moderates," surely don't support left-wing extremists who wish to shut down free speech. To shut us -- their various customers -- up.

These sponsors are:

Sleep Train
Sleep Number
Legal Zoom
Citrix
Quicken Loans
Carbonite

So also in The Huffington Post story is a tweet from Pro Flowers saying they will "reevaluate their marketing plan." They have now done so, and, as seen here, become the seventh sponsor to withdraw from Rush's show.

So what we have are seven intimidated ex-sponsors.

Perhaps it's time to confront every last one of them with a taste of their own medicine. Here's their information.

• Sleep Train:This gutless company says it has been advertising with Rush for 25 years. They should be ashamed of themselves. Absolutely ashamed. The founder of Sleep Mattress is Dale Carlsen.

Mr. Carlsen may be the salt of the earth, but he is about to give his employee-owned company and his employees an enormous, self-inflicted black-eye. Here's the information you need to reach Dale Carlsen.

This is the e-mail for Sleep Train's customer service:customerservice@sleeptrain.com.
This is the 800 phone number for Sleep Train: 1-800-919-2337
This is the 800 fax number for Sleep Train: 1-866-293-5719
This is the snail mail address for Sleep Train:

Sleep Train Mattress Centers
2204 Plaza Drive
Rocklin, CA 95765

• Sleep Number: The President and CEO of Sleep Number is Bill McLaughlin. This company has contact through an e-mail form they provide here.

More about McLaughlin in a minute.

• Legal Zoom: The Co-founders of this company are Brian Liu, Brian Lee, Eddie Hartman & Robert Shapiro. Again, more on these guys below. The contact info for Legal Zoom is as follows:
The address for e-mails is here.

The Corporate Headquarters phone number is: 1-323-962-8600. The fax number is: 323-962-8300
The Corporate Headquarters snail mail address is:

Legal Zoom.com101 N. Brand Blvd., 11th Floor
Glendale, CA 91203

• Citrix: Mark B. Templeton is the President and CEO, his bio here.
The contact info for the Citrix Corporate Headquarters is :
Toll Free Phone: 1-800-424-8749
Phone: 954-267-3000
Fax: 954-267-9319

Snail mail:

Citrix Systems Fort Lauderdale
851 West Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309

• Quicken Loans: Quicken, under the leadership of its Founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert (his info here) has gone the extra mile to antagonize the 40 percent. It has this statement on its website:

Due to Rush Limbaugh's continued inflammatory comments -- along with the valued feedback we have received from our clients and team members -- Quicken Loans has suspended all advertising on the Rush Limbaugh radio program."

Note: Quicken is so skittish the above message appears for mere seconds before vanishing. It took repeated tries to copy verbatim the simple, highly provocative message above.

The Quicken contact info is found on this page of their website. Note: The company has an online chat function on this page. Also:
Phone, Client Relations: 1-800- 863-4332
Snail Mail Address:

Quicken Loans - Main Office –Compuware
1050 Woodward AvenueDetroit, MI 48226

• Second last on the list is Pro-Flowers. Their contact info is here.

•Carbonite: OK. Now we'll talk Carbonite. And about Mr. McLaughlin of Sleep Number. And two of the co-founders of Legal Zoom.

Carbonite's statement was especially and curiously unctuous, its withdrawal of sponsorship coming as it did after Rush's apology. Here is Carbonite's CEO David Friend:

No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show.

Friend added:

We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

Now. Carbonite really deserves some special attention.

David Friend is making his attack on Rush sound like he's one upset Dad with a couple of nice young daughters. And oh, yes, he wants a "more civilized public discourse."

Is that all there is to Mr. Friend? Quite aside that he gives a pass to Sandra Fluke for her obnoxiously intolerant behavior when it comes to the free speech of others, is there anything else going on here?

Yes. Of course.

Take a look here at this link to Bloomberg/Business Week which profiles Mr. Friend and affirms him as "General Partner" of an investment group called "Orchid Partners" in Boston, Massachusetts. And Orchid Partners? Yes indeed, they are the venture capital firm behind… Carbonite.

Where Mr. Friend is listed as "Co-Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President."

So?

So when you cross check Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston with the Federal Election Commission, one finds-- ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh shocker!……… that a Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston has been a contributor to… ready? Here's the list of just where David Friend spends his political money:

MoveOn.org, America Coming Together and Democracy for America, all three listed here as George Soros funded groups, the latter set up by Howard Dean. Texans for Truth also drew Mr. Friend's support. This group, according toWikipedia, was set up by MoveOn.org spin-off Drive Democracy.org in 2004. Why? To… wait for it… challenge then-President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. The precise same stunt for which CBS fired Dan Rather after documents were discovered to have been forged. The Bush-Cheney campaign said of Texans for Truth that it was "a smear group launching baseless attacks on behalf of John Kerry's campaign that will be rejected by the American people." They were. But that didn't quench Mr. Friend's affection for either the smear campaign or supporting leftist candidates such as Howard Dean, and John Kerry.

And get a load of this. Take a look right here at Ed "Laura Ingraham is a slut" Schultz's site for his radio show. Who is listed as a Schultz sponsor? That's right: Carbonite. Like Rush Limbaugh, Ed Schultz apologized. The difference? If Rush uses the word "slut" to illustrate the absurdity of the left-wing Sandra Fluke's views --David Friend is outraged. But when Ed Schultz refers in hostile fashion out of the blue to conservative and Catholic Laura Ingraham as a "slut" -- hey, no big deal for Carbonite.

In other words, to put it politely, Mr. Friend's woe-is-me I'm-withdrawing-my-company's sponsorship-from-Rush Limbaugh-because of-my-lovely-daughters is as close to certifiable BS as one can imagine. Mr. Friend, one can only suspect, placed Carbonite's ads with Rush Limbaugh because he knew it would make him money -- which he obviously then funneled to MoveOn and the rest. Meanwhile, he keeps advertising on the Ed Slut Show… sorry… Ed Schultz Show. His daughters? His daughters? What a deeply cynical man.

Not to mention Friend's chutzpah calling for a "more civilized public discourse" when he is busy contributing to MoveOn.org, the self-same group that put together this charmingvideo comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. Not to mention MoveOn's "Bush Lied" routine. This is pathetic.

And oh yes, Mr. Friend isn't the only Rush-drop out whose leftist connections are suspect in this episode. Sleep Number's CEO Bill McLaughlin, Sleep Number being a product of a company called Select Comforter? That appears to be the same "William McLaughlin" who identified himself to the FEC as being with Select Comforter of Minneapolis -- when he contributed to the same Soros-funded "America Coming Together" as Mr. Friend.

And how about two of the four guys running Legal Zoom? Mr. Brian Liu is recorded as giving tens of thousands of dollars to two Obama campaign outlets, including the Obama Victory Fund 2012. Brian Lee gives his bucks to the Democratic National Committee Services Corporation. Did I mention Mark Templeton of Citrix gave Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign $2,300?

Here is Carbonite's contact info, not that it will do you any good.

• Last on the list is the newly addedPro-Flowers. Their contact info is here. And yes, you got it. Founded by a now Democratic congressman, Jared Polis, the company is currently owned by Provide Commerce, itself owned by Liberty Media. Provide Commerce's CEO William Strauss is a contributor to the Pro-Flowers founder, the Democrat Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado.

NOW, LET'S UNDERSTAND a few things here. Let's pull back the curtain and see what's really going on.

Remember the recent spate of stories on Media Matters from Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller?

The first one found here.

To summarize, the Daily Caller discovered the leftist Media Matters, along with other leftist groups, had engaged in an intense behind the scenes campaign to fire Don Imus, at one point employing some fifty people in the effort, while Media Matters head David Brock "personally called the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message. By the end of the week, Imus was fired."
Writes the DC:

Media Matters soon became more sophisticated in its campaigns against non-liberal cable news anchors. Lou Dobbs, then of CNN, was a frequent target.

"As part of the Drop Dobbs campaign," explains one internal memo prepared for fundraising, "Media Matters produced and was prepared to run an advertisement against Ford Motor Company on Spanish Language stations in Houston, San Antonio, and other cities targeting its top selling product, pick-up trucks, in its top truck buying markets."

Ford pulled its advertising from Dobbs's program before the television ad aired, but Media Matters kept up its efforts, working primarily with Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and with the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other self-described civil rights groups.

In November of 2009, Dobbs left CNN. "We got him fired," says one staffer flatly.
Certainly Media Matters deserves a lot of credit for the work they did," Nogales said in an interview. "They're very effective."

Glenn Beck, the former Fox News Channel host, drew the ire of a wide spectrum of liberal groups while his program aired nationally. But according to several people who watched the process from the inside, it was Media Matters that orchestrated much of the opposition to Beck.

"We called it 'fingerprint coverage,'" explains one former staffer, "where you know it was the result of your work." As an example, he cites the left-wing group Color of Change, co-founded by the controversial former White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones, which received much of the credit for pressuring advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Beck's show. But in fact, he says, Media Matters developed the campaign that cowed Beck's sponsors.

DO YOU GET the picture? The American Left -- whether it pops up in the form of Media Matters, Color of Change, MoveOn.org, Texans for Truth or other groups -- is determined to shut off conservative dissent from their agenda by whatever means necessary. Fueled in part by money like that they received from David Friend of Carbonite. To do this they are quite specifically going after conservative talk radio hosts and television commentators one by one by one. The fact that David Friend of MoveOn.org/Carbonite is there to stick it to Rush is all the better. The fact that Ed Schulz called Laura Ingraham a slut is one big no-big-deal to Sandra Fluke herself when she wants air time on with Mr. Ed. Why should David Friend care if Ms. Fluke doesn't? So, Carbonite continues as Mr. Ed's sponsor, sluts be damned.

As noted earlier, what began with Don Imus, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck has just hit Pat Buchanan.
Now, they want Rush's scalp. So all these companies are bleating about angry customers demanding they stop sponsoring Rush? Mr. Friend of Carbonite has the gall to lay off his decision on his daughters when he's a card carrying leftist who gives the slut business the brush-off when it's Ed Schultz?? Are these people (other than Carbonite, whose CEO manifestly appears to have an agenda) really that professionally incompetent as a company that they don't understand what the Daily Caller story was saying?

Are they really, seriously that clueless when there is a very detailed story out there X-raying in graphic detail just how this anti-free speech game is played? Fifty people assigned just to get Don Imus alone?
The head of Media Matters personally calling "the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message" to fire Imus -- having the job done within a week? What don't these sponsors understand when a left-wing radical activist crows that "we" got Lou Dobbs fired? What don't they understand about "fingerprint coverage" designed to fire prominent conservatives?

Are these sponsors really that stupid that they aren't aware they are being played for suckers by leftist radicals? Or, in fact, like David Friend and Carbonite, are they shadowy, behind-the-scenes participants?

Once upon a time -- in 1962 when Ronald Reagan was the host of General Electric Theater on CBS -- there was a call for Reagan's scalp for the same reason. The Left didn't like what he was saying. In fact, Michael Reagan once wrote about the day GE fired his Dad for speaking what we now call truth to power. Wrote son Michael Reagan of his Dad's encounter with saying the politically incorrect:

General Electric wants us to feel warm and fuzzy every time we screw in a GE made-in-China twisty light. But I haven't felt warm and fuzzy toward GE since that day in 1962 when Dad came home and told us he had just been fired by GE and his show, "General Electric Theater," was canceled.

Dad explained that CBS hadn't canceled the highly rated show. Instead, GE had pulled the plug. As the company was negotiating some government contracts, Bobby Kennedy, the attorney general of the United States, bluntly informed GE that if the company wished to do business with the U.S. government, it would get rid of "General Electric Theater" and fire the host.

Dad had criticized the Kennedy administration in some of his speeches, and the administration fought back through the president's brother. Within 48 hours of Bobby Kennedy's call, Ronald Reagan was out of a job.

Ronald Reagan in 1962. Rush Limbaugh fifty years later in 2012. The left never changes.

But conservatives have changed in those last fifty years. In his last speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) just weeks ago, Andrew Breitbart stood at the podium and said: "Conservatives used to take it and we're not taking it anymore."

There isn't going to be any of this intimidation anymore.

Conservatives are the majority in this country politically. No longer are they required to sit meekly, just take it and shut up. Rush Limbaugh's audience doesn't have to put up with this garbage as conservatives of an earlier era once did.

Make no mistake. The question is now on the table: should the sponsors who allow themselves to be intimidated by these bullies into attacking Rush Limbaugh deserve commercial support from conservatives? Some are doubtless sponsors of other conservative shows. Carbonite is now instantly revealed by its own CEO as being a cynical player of a double game -- funding left wing groups who participate in blacklisting campaigns, giving a pass to lefty Ed Schultz for using the exact word as Rush, then helping from the inside and laying the blame for withdrawing Carbonite's ads from Rush on his daughters. But clearly, if they are abandoning Rush Limbaugh, this serves as an implied threat to every talk radio host in the land who has these companies as sponsors. By doing what they have now done, these one-time sponsors of Rush Limbaugh's show have now startlingly indicated that they are signing on with anti-First Amendment thugs.

How does the far left play this blacklisting game? They exploit race and gender to try and destroy First Amendment protections. People who support a philosophy long on record as supporting every racial gambit from slavery, segregation, lynching and the Ku Klux Klan right on through to the violation of voting rights by the Black Panthers, racial quotas and illegal immigration have no scruples. Genderism, as Sandra Fluke demonstrates anew, is not about individuals, it's about the left's concept of one gender. And, as Ed Schultz's slut comment about Ingraham demonstrated, if you don't fit that profile well -- you're a slut.

No one disputes the right of any would-be sponsor to choose where they place their advertising dollars. That simply isn't the question.

The question is: do these sponsors listed above, all willing participants in this thuggish behavior, understand that they are going out of their way to self-identify with those who have quite effectively demonstrated themselves to be anti-free speech thugs?

Do they understand that they are, with enormous effectiveness, voluntarily identifying themselves as peddlers not of mattresses, legal services, high tech gizmos, mortgages, computer back-ups or flowers -- but radical left wing politics designed to deliberately blacklist, insult, target and shut down the free speech of 40 percent of the American people? Their own customers? And that in some cases the people engaged in these efforts use their addiction to skin colorism or judging by gender to do these things? Clearly David Friend does believe this or he wouldn't be supporting MoveOn.org and Ed "The Slut" Schultz -- but the rest? (Note: Another Mr. Ed sponsor? That would be ESPN -- which forced Rush out after he suggested Donovan McNabb wasn't that great of a quarterback but the press covered for him because of his skin color. Apparently ESPN doesn't care about Schultz's slut problem either. Yet another double-standard.)

Do these companies understand that the message they are sending to every single Rush Limbaugh listener is that they are going to play hard ball with their own conservative customers?

If so, why in the world should any conservative -- part of that two-to-one 40 percent identified by the Gallup Poll -- ever in a million years want to buy a product from these people?

AND LAST BUT not least: Rush Limbaugh, now a very familiar figure on the American political scene, is one of the most decent human beings on the planet. He is well known to his listeners. There is zero need here to say a word about this man's character, his endless devotion to charitable causes, his staunch support for the American men and women in the military, and much more. The mindless treatment these sponsors are engaged in with this man is shameful. Disgraceful.

So. Let's note carefully. This is exactly the moment where a talk radio host -- this one the most prominent in the land -- needs help from his longtime listeners, fans and friends. For the record, it's safe to say I have not contacted Mr. Limbaugh or sought him out for contact on this story. He will be reading this for the first time.

As this Rush-drama unfolded over the weekend I had an over-the-Internet-transom e-mail from a woman identifying herself as a "Rush Fan -- Ellie from Akron." Said Ellie: "We all need to stick by Rush in this latest assault by the attack dog media…. how many of these cowardly, so-called 'indignant' sponsors deserting him now, came to Rush's defense 3 years ago when the NFL, CNN, ESPN were calling him a racist simply because he wanted to be part owner of a pro-football team."
Excellent question, Ellie from Akron.

It's time to fight back.

To take on Sleep Mattress, Sleep Number, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Quicken Loans, Carbonite and, now that they've caved, Pro-Flowers. And anybody else who wants to play this disgraceful blacklisting game with their customers.

To expose the hypocrisy and double standards. To make it crystal clear that that those who sell out our First Amendment rights to far left radicals are in fact going to be actively perceived as collaborating in a deliberate attack on their customers, real and potential.

It's time to stand up for free speech. To draw a line in the sand. And let these companies know that the blacklisting line stops with Rush.

It's time -- way past time -- to stand up to the blacklisting free speech bullies. By phone. By e-mail. Twitter, snail mail or whatever.


But however you do it?

It's time to Rally for Rush.

And yes, by all means: Pass it on!

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

And the Winner in Iowa Is… Rush Limbaugh!

Rick Santorum's smartest move.

By Jay D. Homnick
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
January 4, 2012

[Note: Mitt Romney won yesterday's Iowa Caucus by eight votes (30,015 to 30,007). Romney and Santorum each collected 25% of the vote while Ron Paul came in at 21% and New Gingrich at 13%. - jtf]

At the time of this writing, one Eastern hour into January 4th of 2012, Rick Santorum is barely ahead in the Iowa caucuses with 29,968 votes to 29,964 for Mitt Romney. Iowa is not known for its consonance, but this kind of multiple avowal is unprecedented.

My home state of Florida has decided to freeze tonight in solidarity with Iowa, so this is somewhat akin to an on-the-scene report. Manning my media control center, I observe that Santorum is enjoying a honeymoon with the press that is certain to be limited to a one-night stand.

In the moment, all the correspondents are buzzing affirmatively, with the merest hint of a caveat: "Santorum peaked just at the right time… he was the last man standing… he won the game of musical chairs… he visited all 99 counties… he did 367 Town Halls… door to door… retail politics… for now he gets to be the anti-Romney… social conservatives… evangelical vote coalescing… probably not sustainable… not enough cash on hand… doesn't have the national network."

By morning, they will shake off their hangovers and try to change the channel, adjusting the narrative. The Tea Party was not much of a direct force in Iowa, but its aura will be invoked in trying to portray Santorum as the new incarnation of Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. Once again, the forces of narrow-mindedness, mean-spiritedness and wrong-headedness had won a Pyrrhic victory. Richard-the-Lionhearted of tonight's proclamation will give way to Poor Richard in tomorrow's almanac.

For now, there is much talk of the hard work, the doggedness and the good timing. His virtues are being paraded even though their ticker will quickly run out of tape. But there is one piece of the saga that even these erstwhile enthusiasts will not verbalize, the fact that the biggest winner of all this night is Rush Limbaugh. That is because Santorum breached the First Commandment of Republican political consultants: Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of Limbaugh in Advertisement.

This has been one of the great anomalies of Republican politics the past two decades. The revolution in talk radio initiated by Limbaugh in 1990 is what gave conservative politics new life after Ronald Reagan's tenure in office elapsed. Reagan himself acknowledged as much, writing a letter to Limbaugh in 1992 essentially passing the baton of leadership.

Despite the fact that Republican candidates have always vied to get some air time on the show, the political consultants they hire have steered them away from quoting Limbaugh by name in other venues or using his name in advertising. The fact that he generally refrains from openly endorsing particular candidates has enabled them to get away with this brand of disloyalty. They can't very well be expected to cite him in an ad if he has not specifically expressed his backing, can they?

Thus the paradox. Five minutes on Limbaugh is worth more than all the campaign ads put together, yet mentioning him in a commercial is seen by campaign managers as taboo. It will anger the independents, they say, and the moderates… and the women… and the minorities… and on and on.

The consequence of this strategy is that we wind up with colorless compromisers like Bob Dole and John McCain as Presidential candidates, and elections are written off as losses before the first lever is pulled in the voting booth for a Republican or in the mortuary for a Democrat.

This time Santorum broke the mold. He ran a bold ad quoting accolades tossed in his direction by Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Rush Limbaugh. That willingness to name names sent a powerful signal, electrifying the fence that most Iowa Republicans had been sitting on. There are an awful lot of conservative voters who have been waiting a long time to hear their heroes acknowledged. In my estimation, that single advertising spot put Santorum over the top in Iowa.

Can Santorum actually win the primaries pursuing this strategy? Well, the first bit of good news came along right away. The word is out that John McCain is about to announce his backing for Romney. This is a contest I will relish watching: Romney ads citing McCain versus Santorum ads citing Limbaugh. Stay tuned.


- Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he performs his original composition, "Buy You (Bayou) a Drink".

The Winner: Rush Limbaugh

By Jeffrey Lord on 11.3.10 @ 6:10AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

"I hope he fails."

With those famous four words, uttered January 16, 2009 -- only days before Barack Obama was to be inaugurated -- Rush Limbaugh drew a line in the sand.

And as a result, this morning it is Rush Limbaugh who is the undisputed winner of the 2010 election. The White House is repudiated. The Pelosi-run House of Representatives, supported by the Democrats' Congressional Campaign Committee, also deliberately targeted Limbaugh. Speaker Pelosi is, abruptly, now history. The Senate is richer by a still-undetermined number of conservatives as this goes to Internet press.

You might even call last night's landslide results a "Rushslide."

Unlike a number of conservatives and Republican leaders, Limbaugh understood from the moment of Obama's election what the new president and his allies represented: a radical, far-left agenda designed to, in the president-elect's own words, "transform America." Obama and his administration -- with the Pelosi-run House assisting -- were about nothing less than an attempt to re-make America as a collectivist, socialist state.

Characteristically, Limbaugh was fearless in saying so -- plainly. Asked to submit a 400-word essay for the Wall Street Journal on his hopes for the new administration, he responded on the air:

Look, what he's talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things… See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it?

So I can answer it, four words, "I hope he fails." And that would be the most outrageous thing anybody in this climate could say. Shows you just how far gone we are. Well, I know, I know. I am the last man standing.

The outrage was instantaneous.

Five days later, a bare 24 hours after Obama had been sworn-in, Fox News host and fellow talk radio star Sean Hannity sat down with Limbaugh in Florida. As the Fox cameras rolled, Rush elaborated in answering Hannity's questions, making himself crystal clear: in spite of the uproar created by his "I hope he fails" remark, Rush Limbaugh would not be backing down. The Obama agenda, he was certain, was doomed to inevitable failure, and if others were afraid to say so, Rush Limbaugh was not.[1]

LIMBAUGH:…When I see the media and the entire establishment on the left lay down and become cult-like and not examine who he is, what he's done, and not really examine what he says, but just praise him because of how he says it, my antenna go up.

Now I look at the things that he has said, and I'm very much concerned that our greatness is going to be redefined in such a way that it won't be great, that we're just going to become average. You cannot have this large of government role in the private sector with so many people thinking that just because they're Americans they're entitled to things, that this guy is going to pass them out and keep this country great and innovative, full of entrepreneurs, and -- these things concern me.

Now my critics, and yours, when they hear me say things like this, they -- have knee-jerk reactions. They're not listening or parsing my words, either. They're just, Limbaugh is not with the program.

…. So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far-left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?… I don't know where what he wants to try has worked…. It hasn't worked…. It doesn't work… it never has, and I don't think this is going to be the record breaker."

Hearing this, watching this, the Obama White House made a fateful decision.

As Obama and his aides began relentlessly pushing exactly the far-left agenda that Limbaugh so publicly predicted would fail, they decided to bring the hardball of Chicago politics into play: they would intimidate their opponents by making an example of America's number one conservative talk radio star. .

Which is exactly the point where the path to the conservative victory of 2010 began.

A MERE THREE DAYS after Obama took office, Republican congressional leaders were ushered into the White House for their first formal meeting with the new president. Wary of Obama proposals for a massive stimulus bill, with a huge health care bill looming beyond that, they sat quietly as Obama's Limbaugh strategy began to unfold. Borrowing a tactic from Rules for Radicals, the handbook written by Obama's hero the late Chicago radical community activist Saul Alinsky, Obama the one-time community activist become president lectured the astonished GOP leadership, saying pointedly "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." The Republicans were barely out the door before the story leaked, causing a media feeding frenzy as the White House knew it would.

With that, the stage for the entire next two-years was set. The looming battle over the direction of America would be deliberately, willfully cast -- by the White House itself -- as a battle royal between the President of the United States and Rush Limbaugh. The specific tactic to be employed was Rule Number 12 of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Which reads this way:

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

The Rule 12 signal was flashed by the White House to every Democrat on Capitol Hill along with every Obama ally in the media: the President personally is going to lead the charge against Rush Limbaugh and he was inviting them to join the fray.

Whatever issue was being debated -- the stimulus, health care, immigration, the topic didn't matter -- Rush Limbaugh was to be the highly personalized target of the Obama White House and all of the American Left. They would freeze his image in the public mind in as unfavorable and polarizing a fashion as they could manage. Then Limbaugh would be assaulted repeatedly in the style of Rule 12 as the next two years unfolded.

An attempt was made to intimidate Rush by going after what Alinskyites called a target's "support network" -- which is to say the Rush Limbaugh radio show was targeted when several liberal activist groups filed a "Petition for Inquiry into Hate Speech in the Media and Request to update report on The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes" with the Federal Communications Commission -- the Obama-run government agency that regulates radio airwaves. Limbaugh was specifically cited by name. The unsubtle message: we are coming after your radio show.

To "isolate the target from sympathy" in Alinsky style, Rush was portrayed in as unflattering personal terms as the Obama allies could conjure up. The attacks were designed to be, as Alinsky stipulated, "cruel… direct… personalized" because "ridicule works."

And so the anti-Rush deluge began.

Having earlier said that it "is my job" to make Obama's presidency work, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who famously said of an Obama speech that "I felt this thrill going up my leg," went to work. He memorably described Rush as "Mr. Big," the villain played by actor Yaphet Kotto in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, taunting: "In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we'll be there to watch. I think he's Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush?"

"What about this bonehead Rush Limbaugh?" sneered David Letterman on his Late Night show. Newsweek, in the middle of a death spiral that eventually had it being sold by the Washington Post for one dollar plus millions in debt, produced Jonathan Alter sniggering that Rush was a "black-shirted joke" while his colleague Richard Wolffe sagely assured that Rush was an "extreme voice." On and on and on this Alinsky tactic played, with Rush depicted as everything from a "howler" to a man "transformed into [a] car-wrecking quality spectacle" -- both of these from the New York Times. Nor was the Limbaugh audience to escape this treatment, with Jack Cafferty of CNN dismissing some 20 million Americans as "right-wing nuts."

The Obama White House was eating this stuff up, convinced they had a winning strategy.

Politico reported it this way:

Top Democrats believe they have struck political gold by depicting Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party, a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.[2]

The story went on to say that liberals were lining up to bash Limbaugh as the leader of the conservative opposition.

MOST SPECTACULARLY in terms of last night's results, Pelosi loyalist Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the head of the Democrat's Congressional Campaign Committee, boasted that House Democrats were key players in the anti-Rush strategy. "We helped get the ball rolling on this," bragged Van Hollen. As of last night, Van Hollen had succeeded in losing about 60 House seats to the GOP, a historic loss making Pelosi an ex-Speaker if not an ex-House member period if she decides to resign her San Francisco seat.

All of which is to say, Pelosi and Van Hollen, along with the Obama White House, bet the ranch on a strategy that featured as its centerpiece an attack on Rush Limbaugh. They didn't just lose, they were humiliated.

Also involved in setting this course for Democrats was the George Soros-funded left-wing Center for American Progress, led by ex-Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. The group jumped aboard, launching an attack against "hate radio host Rush Limbaugh." The liberal group Americans United for Change quickly put up an ad and calling the GOP "The Rush Limbaugh Party." It accused GOP Senators and House members of repeatedly saying "no" to the Obama agenda -- because they were listening to Rush Limbaugh.[3]

Politico also named the names behind this brainchild. Specifically, in addition to the President himself, those who thought this a fabulous strategy were then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod and ex-Clinton aides James Carville and Paul Begala.

It was Begala who would provide some of the high-level reasoning behind the selection of Rush as Obama's Number One opponent.:

But here's the secret: I don't like Rush Limbaugh. Here's the other secret: He is the most powerful person in the Republican Party today, bar none.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, meticulously crafted an op-ed for the Washington Post that was titled "Minority Leader Limbaugh." [4] Plouffe threw down the gauntlet, portraying the battle over Obama's agenda as a one-on-one, mano-a-mano fight to the political death with Rush Limbaugh. The GOP leadership on Capitol Hill was taunted because "Rush Limbaugh has become their leader." Displaying a cocky security that can only come from drinking one's own Kool-Aid, Plouffe depicted Obama as triumphant in the polls of the moment, specifically boasting that "voters trust President Obama on the economy." Listening to Rush Limbaugh, the Obama campaign manager warned Republicans, "hardly seems like the best way out of the political wilderness."

In words that this morning look stunningly stupid, Plouffe said if the GOP kept listening to Limbaugh, the GOP was in danger of permanently losing "independent voters, who give the president high marks on his handling of the economy and his job overall." Said Plouffe of Limbaugh's challenge: "For many Americans, hungry for leadership and cooperation, this sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard…." Seemingly oblivious to the fact that leadership was exactly what Limbaugh was providing to "many Americans hungry for leadership," Plouffe vowed Republican House and Senate members would rue the day they listened to Limbaugh, all voting unanimously -- with the exception of three liberal GOP Senators -- to oppose the Obama stimulus. A stimulus which, insisted Plouffe as he dug himself even deeper, would "create or save at least 3 million jobs." Concluded Obama's campaign manager: if the GOP kept listening to Rush Limbaugh it would force the GOP to "find out what it means for a political party to hit rock bottom."

The gain, said former Speaker Newt Gingrich, would be "the largest one-party gain since 1932." The GOP needed 39-seats to win control. They were headed for at least 60 as this is written.

No word this morning whether Plouffe will be writing a piece entitled "Speaker Limbaugh."

UNDAUNTED EVEN AS THINGS looked bleak, Rush picked up the challenge. He had spent over twenty years discussing conservative principles on his show. A book just released by New York Times Book Editor Sam Tanenhaus was getting liberal media attention. The title: The Death of Conservatism. The author told NPR: "When Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Barack Obama to fail, he was not just spitting out a provocative line, he was actually handing out a kind of marching orders to the right, which they now seem to be following." And listening to what Rush Limbaugh had to say was the death knell for conservatism because Limbaugh, Tanenhaus insisted, was far out in a "fringe orbit".

Limbaugh knew in his bones not only that conservatism was not dead, but that it was neither in need of some sort of political cosmetic surgery as some sunshine conservatives were insisting. And the real people out on a fringe orbit were liberals like Tanenhaus -- not to mention Obama, Pelosi and their media allies. In a January, 2008 monologue about Ronald Reagan and Reagan conservatism, a subject that had arisen in the presidential primaries, Rush had already touched on the subject before Obama was even nominated:

Well, conservatism isn't dead because it cannot be dead. Conservatism is not manmade. Conservatism is a philosophy. It's not a scheme. It's not a plan to figure out what the American people need and want, and then give it to them. That's populism! Conservatism is a philosophy based on God-given natural rights. The Declaration of Independence, is that dead? Of course not! What's dead is leadership on the Republican side, and because there is a lack of leadership of someone who [has] the substantive understanding of liberty and the political skills to advance it, we get all this cockamamie nonsense about the death of our principles. Our principles are not dead! Our principles cannot die.[5]

Now, under direct attack by the President and his House allies, previously scheduled to address the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) Limbaugh showed up to be greeted as the hero of the Obama Resistance. And promptly lit into the Obama agenda. By turns serious, funny, and self-mocking -- he made the case for conservatism with his typical optimistic gusto.[6] "If we're going to convince the American people what's about to happen to them is as disastrous as anything in their lives in peacetime, we're going to have to discuss philosophy with them. We are going to have to talk about principles…" The crowd roared its approval, cheering wildly as he demanded of sunshine conservatives who insisted that conservatism needed to be somehow redefined from Ronald Reagan's principles: "How do you get rid of Reagan from conservatism?"

The very next day White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on CBS's Face the Nation to proclaim Limbaugh as "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party." It was not meant as a compliment. Once in gear, Obama's notoriously blunt top aide couldn't stop himself, going on to say:

He has laid out his vision, in my view. And he said it clearly. I compliment him for that. He's been very up front and I compliment him for that. He's not hiding. He's asked for President Obama and called for President Obama to fail. That's his view. And that's what he has enunciated. And whenever a Republican criticizes him, they have to run back and apologize to him and say they were misunderstood. He is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party. He has been up front about what he views and hasn't stepped back from that, which is he hopes for failure. He said it and I compliment him for his honesty. But that's their philosophy that is enunciated by Rush Limbaugh and I think that's the wrong philosophy for America.

More tellingly -- particularly in light of the battles to come -- there was a shuffling of some conservative feet. When it came to defending Limbaugh and the timeless conservative principles he (and Reagan before him) had not only championed in both good times and bad for over twenty years, some flinched. To update the famous Thomas Paine reference ("These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.") there were sunshine conservatives who took one look at the rise of Obama and headed for the philosophical hills.

Even as Rush Limbaugh, the leading conservative in the country, was under attack by every conceivable gun in the arsenal of the American Left from the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House on down, there were those who wimped, whistled, or ran.

GOP consultant Mike Murphy went on NBC's Meet the Press the very same day Emanuel was attacking Limbaugh over on CBS to insist:

The country is changing…. And if we don't modernize conservatism, we are going to have a party of 25 percent of the vote going to Limbaugh rallies, joining every applause line, ripping the furniture up, we're going to be in permanent minority status.

None of this was new, of course. Days before Obama's 2008 election, sunshine conservative Ross Douthat, a member in good standing of a species American Spectator founder R. Emmett Tyrrell calls in his book After the Hangover "Reformed Conservatives" (or, more pithily, "the Benedict Arnolds, Backstabbers, Bruti, and Bums" of the conservative movement), took to the liberal pages of the Atlantic to mock Rush's insistence on adhering to principle.[7]

Over at the New York Times, David Brooks stated flatly a few days after Obama's election that it was not a good idea to be listening to conservative "traditionalists" like "Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity" but lamented that's what would happen. And in doing this, said Brooks, "….the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats."[8]

BUT MURPHY, DOUTHAT, AND BROOKS were pikers when it came to former Bush speechwriter David Frum. Handed the cover of Newsweek for a lengthy article titled "Why Rush is Wrong," in a remarkable piece of writing Frum seemed to be an eager participant in a trash-for-cash article that is standard-operating-procedure for sunshine conservatives seeking approval from the liberal media.[9] Frum chose for his venue a failing national news magazine that had traded its own reputation to the far-left in return for a soon-to-be sale by the Washington Post for -- literally - one dollar and millions in debt. The story was not only a Frum version of the personal insult-laden Alinsky strategy, also scolding Reaganites, it repeatedly insisted Rush was a distinct liability to any conservative or Republican victory -- in 2010 or any other election year.

According to Frum, who larded his three-alarm Rush-warnings throughout a piece filled with personal insults that appeared designed to appease the Washington social crowd, Rush Limbaugh was "kryptonite, weakening the GOP nationally." If the GOP listened to Limbaugh it would never win women voters who "trust and admire" Obama. Rush's CPAC speech was a terrible liability that was certain to lose votes: "Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word --we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time." It was idiocy to be listening to Limbaugh, as so many conservatives seemed to be doing: "But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership?" And finally, the GOP could not possibly win in 2010 because "Rush Limbaugh is a seriously unpopular figure among the voters that conservatives and Republicans need to reach."

This morning, Rush Limbaugh stands vindicated.

His critics -- whether on the far-left or of the sunshine conservative variety -- have been not simply defeated but routed, humiliated. Independents fled Obama, women fled Obama, the people of Illinois fled Obama. And so on. And so on.

Yesterday wasn't just an ordinary election.

It was a "Rushslide." The latest chapter in the story not just of a conservative ascendancy, but the story of the ongoing conservative majority.

But there is one very important point here.

What Rush Limbaugh's critics have miscalculated is this. As his friend Sean Hannity says, Rush is the Babe Ruth of talk radio. It should never be forgotten that when Babe Ruth stepped onto a baseball diamond -- he was never alone. He had teammates. And the stands at Yankee Stadium and every place else he played were filled with cheering fans.

In the drive to target Rush Limbaugh, millions of Americans -- from fellow talk radio stars to Fox News to the vast audience of average Americans -- listened and watched these White House-directed anti-Limbaugh screeds first with amazement, then a growing incredulity which finally gave way to outrage.

Why?

Because all knew at the end of the day that as sure as God made little green apples what began with Rush would end with everyday Americans. You. Your friends. Your neighbors. The barber, the housewife, the independent, the Catholic, Protestant, or Jew and, yes, the law-abiding everyday Muslim. The college student, the entrepreneur, the doctor, the plumber. Americans all -- every one dreaming dreams that somebody in Washington from the President on down was scheming to control, to limit, to regulate, to tax -- and ultimately control to the point of ruin. And sure enough, like clockwork, as the Tea Party burst into existence these average Americans were targeted just as was Rush. Now it wasn't just Rush who was being smeared, the Obama/Pelosi/Reid/liberal media attack machine had turned against these everyday Americans, savaging them as nothing more than a collection of racists, Nazis, and "teabaggers," for resisting their obsession with controlling Americans' every last movement in life while spending the country into trillions of debt as far as the next several generations could see. Americans who had heard Rush predict that the Obama-era would bring an all-out assault on American values realized just short of the nick-of-time not only that he was right, but that it was up to them to stop this assault in its tracks.

And so they did.

Obama, as Rush Limbaugh predicted, has in fact now failed. Nancy Pelosi is out of a job. And thanks to Rush Limbaugh, a new generation of Americans is learning that conservatism is not simply cool -- more importantly they are learning collectivism isn't smart.

But lest there be any doubt, this fight will continue. Not all races were won last night -- not all races will ever be won. Harry Reid is still there. No one in all of American history has won a unanimous election -- with the solitary exception of George Washington. 2012 lies ahead. Fortunately for conservatives, for the Republican Party -- and America -- there is one certainty as this battle continues:

Rush Limbaugh will be on the air.


Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

Links:

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481484,00.html

[2] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19596.html

[3] http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/page/share/no

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303210.html?sid=ST2009030501540

[5] http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_011408/content/01125111.guest.html

[6] http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_030209/content/01125106.guest.html

[7] http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/rush_limbaugh_explains_it_all.php

[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[9] http://www.newsweek.com/2009/03/06/why-rush-is-wrong.html