Via Mark Blumental (via Ben Smith), Democracy Corps has a favorability poll on Rush Limbaugh and other conservative luminaries:
What that means is that even among the troglodytes who like Fox News, only about half like Rush Limabugh. Ouch.
Blumenthal speculates about the new “Rush or Obama” ads:
My guess is that some Democratic sponsored focus group conducted this week confirmed that voters in the middle perceive Rush Limbaugh as the antithesis to the Obama “bipartisanship brand,” and as such, are not unhappy to see Limbaugh’s profile in this fight rise.
“[B]ipartisanship” is as much a brand as any conceivable Washington reality. These House Republicans, as is traditional when a caucus shrinks, are more conservative, and in safer seats, than their predecessors. The notion that they’d wind up anything other than extremely rare allies of the Democratic President was always unlikely. Obama doesn’t need their votes. But his visible, cable-television-grabbing bipartisan gestures are aimed at cementing his hold on that brand, and ensuring when Republicans and Democrats go their separate ways, Republicans are seen as the partisan ones.
It’s not a particularly novel tactic, but it places the House Republicans in an uncomfortable spot. As Chris Cillizza wrote in a very smart piece today, their party is in danger of being defined as pure, intransigent, Rush-Limbaugh-style opposition, and Obama’s visit to the Hill may give their image a further shove down that road.
I think this is all right on the money.
Mega dittos.