Yesterday, while out running errands, I caught a segment of the Rush Limbaugh program that featured the following insightful — believe it or not, I am not being ironic or sarcastic when I say “insightful” — monologue:
[I] believe that most liberals actually look at Republicans and conservatives as full-fledged, real — not just political, but real — enemies.
Enemies of what they want. Enemies of what they think is right. Real enemies. Not opponents. Not people that are to be defeated in debate. We’re not supposed to be defeated and have people persuaded that we’re wrong. We are to be eliminated as a legitimate opposition. That’s Obama’s modus operandi. Obama doesn’t want to debate anybody. Obama doesn’t want to triumph in a contest of ideas.
He just doesn’t want there to be any opposing ideas.
If there are opposing ideas, he wants the people who hold them to be totally discredited and impugned to the point they’re all thought of as kooks and crazies and hayseeds that nobody’s gonna believe, anyway. That’s how the left operates. You know it and I know it. That’s why we’re so frustrated with a Republican Party trying to make peace, trying to be bipartisan, trying to go along with Democrats, trying to make them understand and like us, trying to make them understand that we’re not what they say we are.
There is no area of commonality. There’s no overlap of anything in common here. So the idea bipartisanship I don’t even think it’s possible because we don’t have anything in common or very little on things that matter. The radical extremists of American liberalism are running the show and are defining what is the mainstream of the American left. The radical extremists have become the mainstream, and they run the Democrat Party and everything else.
They’re not interested in winning a debate.
They’re not interested in persuading other people that they’re right.
Their whole modus operandi is to one of two things: Get rid of all opposition, or so impugn and mischaracterize people who oppose them that they’re all thought of as racists, sexists, bigots, kooks, freaks (you name it) that nobody would take seriously anyway. They want to ban programs they don’t like. They lead boycotts, all kinds of things. They’re not interested bipartisanship; they’re not interested in cooperation, not interested in coming to a common agreement on issue after issue after issue.
And since Obama was elected, the pretense of that is gone. There used to be a pretense that they were of that stripe, that they were interested in having civil debates and persuading people who disagreed with them that they’re right and winning mandates in that regard. Ever since Obama’s victory, that’s all out the window. That doesn’t matter. Now it’s just eliminate — and I don’t mean kill. I’m just talking about eliminate, as a viable opposition, anything to do or anyone that threatens them. They are threatened — I mean, really threatened — by people that disagree with ’em.
That constitutes a major threat to them, not a problem.
I think this analysis is partially correct. There are without a doubt elements of a “radical left” that think these terms.
What I find stunningly ironic is that every tactic Mr Limbaugh associates with radical left are ALSO tactics that he himself has helps cultivate among the conservative base on a daily basis.
In particular, I think that the phrase that particularly resonates about the radical right/conservative media complex is his penultimate paragraph:
And since Obama was elected, the pretense of [civility] is gone. There used to be a pretense that they were of that stripe, that they were interested in having civil debates and persuading people who disagreed with them that they’re right and winning mandates in that regard. Ever since Obama’s victory, that’s all out the window. That doesn’t matter. Now it’s just eliminate — and I don’t mean kill. I’m just talking about eliminate, as a viable opposition, anything to do or anyone that threatens them. They are threatened — I mean, really threatened — by people that disagree with ’em.
Kind proves that entire thing about going so far in one direction that you end up on the other side, huh? We have met the enemy, and they is us.
