Given that John McCain is universally considered to be the most electable of all Republican candidates this year, a lot of us pinko lefties have been wondering why rightwing radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh hates him so much.
I mean, sure, McCain is "soft" on torture, and believes we are changing the climate with greenhouse gases, and has cosponsored a few bills with Democrats, but it seemed to be a clear case of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and Limbaugh usually isn’t that stupid.
But now — thanks to a terrific column from Frank Rich, another pinko lefty who, like me, actually kind of likes certain aspects of John McCain — the truth is out.
Back in 2002, when Limbaugh was throwing slime at anyone sensible enough to doubt the wisdom of charging into war in Iraq, he got into it a little with McCain, who went on to compare Limbaugh to "a circus clown."
When Limbaugh called him out, McCain "apologized":
"I regret that statement," he told an
interviewer on Fox News the other night, "because my office has been
flooded with angry phone calls from circus clowns all over America.
They resent that comparison, and so I would like to extend my apologies
to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty."
Ouch. No wonder Limbaugh now says that if McCain is nominated, it will destroy the GOP. Appears that comment of the Senator’s has left a mark!
Kit Stolz 
Why do otherwise intelligent journalists give so much weight to Rush Limbaugh? Have they ever listened to his show for its full three hours?–the staged phone calls, tortured statistics, non-sequiturs, twisted logic, half-baked ideas, gasped change of direction in mid thought, wrong predictions, baseless information, false piety, relentless blustering, mockery and sniggering?
Have they ever considered his qualifications? –a first-semester drop-out out from a third-tier college, a stadium beer vendor, a draft dodger (claimed he had an incapacitating boil on his anus), a pill addict, a boor, an ignoramus, a buffoon of the first order.
John McCain was right in calling Limbaugh a clown, and then apologizing to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty for the comparison.
Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk- Bill Cunningham, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, et al.–.are not the true voice of conservative Americans. Admittedly, they are pretty good entertainers and their show ratings may be high. But as political and social commentators, they are a joke, not to be taken seriously. Note how little sway their ranting had on the 2006 congressional elections.
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Carlos Navarro
Davidson, North Carolina
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I like your no-holds-barred description of the show. It’s really an embarrassment that major figures in the GOP feel they must kowtow to Limbaugh, I think. To me he’s the latest edition of the Know-Nothing movement — a once-powerful, now-forgotten anti-immigrant political force of l9th-century America.
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And what exactly is the difference between Limbaugh and Andrew Sullivan? They are both incredibly harmful pricks as far as I’m concerned, yet you seem to make a distinction between them.
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It’s true I distinguish between Limbaugh and Sullivan, for a simple reason. Sullivan I think is capable of change — for instance, as of just a few years ago, he doubted global warming, but since Katrina he has opened his mind to the facts, and accepts the reality of global warming, the causation by greenhouse gases, and the need to change. Limbaugh, on the other hand, has only hardened his stance, now calling global warming “a hoax.”
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