Rush Limbaugh wants President Obama to fail

January 26, 1:44 PMProgressive Politics ExaminerKaren Harper

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Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh has said on his radio show and in interviews on Fox television news that he hopes President Obama fails.  Limbaugh is referring to the stimulus package.  Limbaugh calls the stimulus package socialism.

Socialism is a word that the conservatives like to bandy about in their rhetorical speeches but fail to define what socialism is.  McCain and Palin used it during their failed campaign.  

Americans are smarter than McCain, Palin and Limbaugh give them credit for being and voters saw through the flimsy device the Republican candidates used to try to taint the opponent by calling him a socialist.  

There is no purely socialistic government in existence in the world today.  There is no purely capitalistic government existing in the world today. When candidates are asked to name a socialist country, they can't because there isn't one. 

If Limbaugh and other conservatives had their way, there would be no social security of medicaid.  Medicare is socialism.  Social Security is socialism.   Remember former President Bush's push to privatize social security?  If Bush had been successful, there would be no social security today because the same banks that mishandled mortgage lending and had to be bailed out by Bush's government, would have swallowed up social security accounts too.  

It was President Bush who pushed the last stimulus package through and bailed out Wall Street.  Yet we didn't hear Limbaugh, McCain or Palin call Bush a socialist.  There's a reason for that.  In McCain and Palin's case, calling candidate Obama a socialist was a purely political ploy designed to frighten Americans into voting for them instead of Obama.  It didn't work.

In Rush Limbaugh's case, the ploy is designed for ratings and attention.  Perhaps he was worried that with a new Democratic President in office with a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, he wouldn't get enough attention and his ratings might go down.  So he has taken to saying on the air that he hopes President Obama fails.  And his ploy has worked.

President Obama made a mistake in mentioning Limbaugh in passing. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," Obama said.  LImbaugh doesn't need any more attention than the attention he already adeptly draws to himself and Obama's comment delighted Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh likes to use the inelegant term, "bending over and grabbing ankles" to refer to Democrats and anyone else who doesn't happen to agree with him.  He seems to have a fixation on the image and what the image implies (anal sex).  

If Limbaugh was serious about being against socialism he would tell his followers that he wants to abolish medicare and social security.  Since most of his listeners are recipients of one or both of those 'socialistic' programs, it doesn't make sense for him to tell them the truth.  Instead, he will stick to his blanket statements decrying socialism and conjuring his favorite imagery of "ankle grabbing" and hope that his loyal followers won't realize that he is talking about abolishing medicare and social security.

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