I believe Limbaugh is being ironic here but it’s always hard to tell:
HuffPo (“Rush Limbaugh: ‘Thank God For President Obama’ (VIDEO)“):
“We need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama,” he said. “President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out.”
The effectiveness, he said, came from President Obama’s decision to send a Special Forces team to kill bin Laden–something he said, citing news reports, that none of the president’s military advisers had thought of doing.
“Our military wanted to go in there and just scorch the earth…but President Obama single-handedly understood what was at stake here. He alone understood the need to get DNA to prove the death…it was President Obama single-handedly and alone who came up with the strategy that brought about the effective assassination of Osama bin Laden,” he said, adding, “thank God for President Obama.”
Limbaugh also said that it was Obama’s continuation of President Bush’s military and detention policies that provided the intelligence which led to bin Laden’s killing. (He also made the by-now-common gaffe of swtiching Obama’s and bin Laden’s names around in his sentences.)
Via Lachlan Markay, who says, “Look who’s NOT trying to score political points today.” But Limbaugh’s constant reference to Obama doing this “alone” strikes me as ironic. If you watch the video, however, Limbaugh quickly goes on to praising the military and the policies of the Bush administration.
His frequent gaffes confusing Obama and Osama strike me as genuine, rather than intentional. It’s an easy mistake to make; I’ve done it myself even in writing.
