David Bromwich goes after the "rebs."
Superficial observers for two decades have treated Limbaugh as a cutup, a frat boy, a brawler with a barroom gift for getting people to listen. The facts are otherwise and have never been hidden. Rush Limbaugh III is a member of a highly respected family of Cape Girardeau, a small town in the border state of Missouri. He comes from a line of distinguished lawyers, including his brother David and two judges in the last two generations: Stephen Limbaugh Sr., a federal judge in St. Louis, and Stephen Limbaugh Jr. (the cousin of Rush), who in 2008 was sworn in as his father retired from the same US district court. A military link on the Limbaugh family website goes further back. It names at least six ancestors who served in the Civil War, all of them on the Confederate side. These data are a reminder that the supposed division between the “chattering class” and ordinary Americans may be a mask for a phenomenon both larger and more specific: the southernization of American politics. It shows more plainly now than at any moment since Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign. ...
And this condemnation of Obama's lack of understanding -- or negligence.
Looking back, one feels it was an astonishing negligence for the Obama White House to embark on a campaign for national health care without a solid strategy for fighting the tenacious opposition it could expect at the hands of Fox radio and TV. Month by month the jeering hosts ate away Obama’s popularity and cast doubt on his plans. His response was to go on TV talk shows himself, and out to multiple town meeting Q-and-As, but the format there was inferior, the effect diffuse, the audience always uncertain of the connection between the President’s words and his final policy. Also, by appearing to compete as a talker against the very people he scorned to recognize, Obama may have squandered some part of the luster of his office. You can get in the ring with your opponent or you can dismiss him from a dignified height. You can’t do both.
