Sunday, March 15, 2009

Look who wants to be all nuanced all of a sudden

While this is old news, there's still a bit of back and forth on the Internet and in the news regarding Rush Limbaugh's comments about how he wants President Obama to fail. Of course, conservatives are lightning-quick to defend their ditto-purveyor, explaining that what Limbaugh meant was that Obama's plans were socialist, and they didn't want socialism to succeed in this country. 'Cause, ya know, socialism is bad. Why is it bad? Because of Stalin or something, I guess.

I find this hilarious that the conservatives are crying foul on this one, as nobody can quote mine like a conservative. I remember listening to Hannity's radio show one time where he kept repeating that Obama had stated that he would "bomb our allies and negotiate with our enemies". (That might not be the exact quote, but trust me, I'm not far off.) Of course, this was a stupid over-simplification of what Obama had actually said. Regarding the "bomb our allies" part, he said that he would be willing to act on intelligence regarding Bin Laden's whereabouts even if that meant that Bin Laden was in Pakistan. (I, for one, wonder why conservatives, of all people, should have such a problem with that.) As for our enemies, this was covered in the debates, as Obama expressed willingness to talk to Iran. Of course, conservatives would practically have you believe that this means that he was willing to allow Iran to set up a military base in our country or something like that.

The thing is with Limbaugh's statement is that even in context, it's still a screwed up thing to say. Imagine if somebody said that they wished that we'd lose in Iraq because they thought that it was an unjust war. (Of course, I heard a lot of conservatives accuse people of saying this, but I had never actually heard anybody say it. That's not to say that I can't imagine anybody at all saying it, but that certainly wasn't the argument being put forward by the majority of war critics.) Basically, Limbaugh would prefer the country to face an economic disaster than have himself be proved wrong.

I don't know why he worries though, it's not like conservative pundits to acknowledge facts. Even if things do turn around and the country emerges better than ever, he'll still say that he was right about everything. And there will be plenty of "ditto-heads" to back him up.

No comments: