Useful idiots
After seeing a bit of the Conservative Political Action Conference on CSPAN, I've concluded that the only thing Democrats have to fear is Democrats themselves. Admittedly a big fear, that, but CPAC was almost a parody of how out of touch, out of ideas and full of hate "conservatives" have become (the one exception being, perhaps, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman). It would be a parody if these activists didn't still have the power to make mischief.
Watching Rush Limbaugh's keynote address was particularly arresting. A man who once marketed his own line of neckties, stood at the podium in an outfit that looked like a bathrobe, rambling on like an over-the-hill Third World dictator to the cheers of the true believers still down in the bunker. Of course, he wants Obama to fail — nevermind the damage to the country. How else can reactionary politics rise again? It will require Obama's failure — or decades of faded memory as to what the Republicans did to bring on the worst calamity in decades.
I was actually vaguely sad. I listened to Rush in the early years. He was funny. His blowhard personality held a wink of self-parody. The songs made me laugh. He often took listeners to an intellectual plane — albeit a right-wing one — that has remained missing from all the Rush copycats down through the years. When I've tuned-in in recent years, most of those redeeming characteristics are gone, especially the humor.
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