On Saturday night’s D.L. Hughley Breaks the News on CNN, Chairman of the GOP Michael Steel responds to Hughley’s statement that Rush Limbaugh is the defacto head of the Republican party: “No he’s not. I’m the defacto head of the Republican party.”
Then, Monday morning, Rush responds, asking Michael Steele why he’s bothering to run the party at all if he’s “obsessed with seeing to it that President Obama succeeds” (fuller transcript from The Plumb Line here). Rush goes on to say “I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be.”
Then Michael Steele apologizes, telling Politico, “There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership”. And then today, the old new-voice-of-the-Republican-party Bobby Jindal on Larry King says, “Rush is a leader for many conservatives.”
So is he the defacto head of the GOP or not? Clearly they’ve got a leadership crisis. I can find this amusing, but it does remind me of the Democrats in 1994 when they lost the Congress, then again in 2002 when they lost the Senate and everything went red. There was a lot of “death of Democratic party” talk then, but that pendulum has swung, and will swing again. The only thing I can really hope for is that Rush does take control and continues to push the GOP to the rabid right. It really hurts their party to have the Chairman and they guy who spoke for them after Obama’s quasi-State-of-the-Union speech falling over themselves to apologize to this giant jackass Rush Limbaugh.
Meanwhile, centrist Republicans like Olympia Snowe are talking, saying things like, “Now that we’re [Republicans] in the minority, there are less of us [moderate Republicans].” She adds, “If that’s what they want to be, well that’s their choice.” Note the use of the word “they.” Like she’s no longer one of them.
My guess is that it’s going to take some time for the Republicans to rebuild themselves on the basis of their platform. They’re not saying things the people want to hear. That part is pretty obvious. But don’t expect them to just lay back. The fire in their party is at the fringes with the Rushes and the Coulters. And I fully expect them to try to take back control the only way they really can: by mouthing off louder than any one else and making wreckless and baseless accusations. They’ll do their best to “save” the country by burning it to the ground.
It’s terrifying to see a major U.S. political party in the hands of madmen.
Late update
Granted, his remarks came first, but it looks like Tim Kaine agrees with me…
