I recently had a feud with the Florida Whig Party (thankfully no longer a part of the MWP) where their candidate Paul McKain thought Rush wasn’t a bad guy. You can read his comments here.

So Paul, my question is, do you still support this bigot?

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As I have mentioned in previous posts, the GOP is facing an identity crisis. It has two factions, both of which are fiscally conservative, but split by their social views. There are many high-profile Republicans who are calling for the purge of “moderate” Republicans from the party to create a “pure” conservative party. The Conservative Party represents this faction of the GOP. So when Dough Hoffman entered the race, several “purists” endorsed him including Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Paul McKain, and the imposters at the Florida MWP. This resulted in “purist”  to support Hoffman and essentially divide the GOP. When Scozzafava realized she could not win, abandoned by her own party, she decided to endorse the moderate candidate for the seat. That just happened to be the Democrat Bill Owens. While many who endorsed Scozzafava did vote for Hoffman after she dropped out of the race, enough people decided to vote for Owens leading to a Democratic victory in a heavily GOP leaning electorate.

What is interesting about this election is that many Whigs have thought the opposite would happen. The GOP would continue down the path of “purity” and in to political oblivion, opening the door for a third party of fiscally conservative but socially moderate individuals to break into the mainstream (such as the Whigs). Now, as a Whig, I have to ask myself what I would do if the “purists” decided to leave the GOP altogether. I realize there is little chance of this happening, but if it did, I would be inclined to support the GOP. There have been glimmers of such a GOP such as McCain pre-2008 election and his daughter who has been assaulted for her moderate views. However, until there is a clear separation of these factions, I see little hope for the GOP to defeat the Democrats in any presidential election. We shall have to wait and watch this drama as it unfolds. I believe the next presidential election will decide the fate of the GOP. If they nominate a moderate, Rush and loyal followers will be outraged and left with little option but to flee. However, I believe if they nominate a “purist” such as Sarah, they will fail miserably and open the door for the Whigs.

Normally I would not even respond to such dribble, but it appears that the author (and I use the tern very loosely) is out to blemish the Florida Whig Party with accusations of being “right wing” or “Republican” or what ever slanted terms they could apply.
For starters, why is Rush Limbaugh such a sore topic with this guy? I get frustrated when someone makes up statistics and then expects everyone to agree. “However, for all the people that love him there are two that hate him.” This goes to the credibility of the writer. I would love to know where he got this statistic. Rush does have the #1 talk show in the country, so he must be doing something right.
The writer insinuates that ACORN is an honest, upright organization when we all know differently. Fox news is worth talking about though since there is a vendetta from the White House for them and any organization or in some cases any individual that dares challenge the position or authority of the president. When did the President of the United States stoop to attacks or name calling with unfavorable news media? This demeans the office and the entire administration. By the way, I thought the president’s name was Barack Hussein Obama. Are you telling me that you are offended by using his real name? What is your problem?
As far as the President not have an influence in fuel prices, every time he proposes and new program or basically just opens his mouth, the stock market drops 200 points. The destruction of our monetary value from his proven to fail policies affects directly the price of the fuel we purchase and his weakness as a figurehead of the country only emboldens OPEC to do just what they want to do.
Understand, we are all our own personalities and stand for varying degrees of compliance with the party stances. Obviously we agree or we wouldn’t be running with the party. We are not mindless robots that do what Nancy Pelosi or Barack Hussein Obama demands, like other organizations.
With the current administration and its actions, I don’t mind saying that I am opposed to almost everything they are doing. Does that make me a Republican? In the authors eyes I am sure he would call me a sympathizer. I call myself a patriot.

Hi Paul,

I have several issues with your response, I’ll address them in the order you have written them.

I urge you to find me any poll taken within the last year that has Rush with a unfavorable/favorable ratio less than 1.5. Please, do some research before making statements. Yes, he has a solid 20% of the country that love him, but those are the type of people that turn off the other 80% of Americans from the Republican party. That is exactly what the MWP is trying to avoid.

You must be a politician with the way you suggest I am supporting ACORN. I made no such statement. My only statement was that, in context with the article published by Florida MWP, it didn’t make any sense to mention them. It is a typical topic brought up by Republicans to try to be divisive and drive a wedge between Republicans and Democrats by insinuating ACORN is responsible for the 2008 election. Once again, exactly the type of bogus politics the MWP was meant to avoid.

I watch all news channels, it’s the only way to gain perspective of what is going on. You would be hard-pressed to insist that Fox isn’t a GOP supporter. Something the MWP wouldn’t be fond of.

Yes, Barack Hussein Obama is our President’s full name. However, you typically don’t type out the full middle name of, well, anyone! Again, this is a typical Republican move to try to insinuate that our president is a Muslim. Divisive politics, one of the main reason’s the MWP was formed in the first place.

Do you have any investments? The market has risen tremendously in the past 6 months, so I’m not really sure what you are talking about. Please, check one of the many financial websites and look at the DOW for the past year.

I would hope we are all patriots. The point is, if it looks like a duck and quaks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Given your response you have given me no reason to second guess my initial assessment that the Florida MWP is simply a group of Republicans who have eyed a chance to get in to politics under the guise of “middle of the road” politics. It is a bit offending since I was elated to finally find a party that wasn’t as polarized as the Republicans and Democrats and you have shattered that dream.

On a final note, if you would like to respond directly to the article I would gladly post a link to your response. What you have written here is nothing but off topic attacks. I would like to see a direct response to my assessment of your oil statistics.

Regards,
Mike

Rush Limbaugh: First off, anyone defending this guy is a Republican. But let’s put that aside and concentrate on the story. The Florida MWP states that by dropping Rush from the bid for the Rams they are being hypocritical. Then it becomes more of a rant that this will result in a drop of ticket sales that will cripple the NFL (I wish, then I could finally afford to go to a game!). Finally, it ends on a small note about how ACORN is destroying our country (How are these related? I still can’t figure that out). Now, let’s put our thinking caps on for a minute and think about this from a business and sports enthusiasts stand point. Our friend Rush is a very well known player in politics. However, for all the people that love him there are two that hate him. Adding him to the bid for the Rams immediately caused controversy and I heard more about Rush than I did about the Rams. It seems like a logical move to remove this man from the equation so the deal can go through and everyone can make money and players won’t have to quit because they are playing for a bigot. Maybe some day we’ll even take the Rams as a football team seriously. But for now, I would much rather keep my politics separate from my sports. Sports are for entertainment and mixing entertainment with politics just seems like a horrible idea. This post seemed more like a regurgitation of Rush then it did a forward thinking Modern Whig and I want nothing to do with it.

Time to Retire: Now here is a gem. Do I agree that the woman with the bobblehead looks ridiculous? Absolutely! There are plenty of people in politics that don’t belong there and from this small sample I would agree she is one of them. However, the logic used by the Florida MWP for her dismissal is nothing short comical. The last time I checked, OPEC was responsible for the price of gasoline. That price is based on something called “supply and demand”, a common economic principle familiar to many. Comparing the price of gasoline before and after the presidents terms in office is akin to comparing the amount of rainfall during that time period. For the most part, the President has NO influence. In fact, Bush made several trips to Saudia Arabia to try to get a reduction in oil prices when they were outrageously high during his term (they ignored him). Also, if you are going to talk about gas prices, you need to look at the overall picture. Let’s use some real facts. Take a look here and here. First we have the average gas price over the past year. It clearly shows a sharp decline in gas prices right before Bush left office. Did he magically convince OPEC to drop the price of gas during this period? No. The economy was failing and people stopped driving. Demand down, supply up, we get lower prices. The second tells an even better story. In constant 2007 dollars, gas prices during the Bush years spiked to their highest level since Reagan was in office. My point is that this post is a clear perversion of the data and clearly paints the Republicans as the gas price crusaders. This nonsense is exactly what I expect from the staunch right-wing Republicans and exactly what makes me scared these people exist in our great country.

I’m not even going to comment on the latest post citing “FoxFaux News”, or how the president is still being referred to Barack Hussein Obama. Just come out as Republicans and let the MWP live in the center.

The GOP also released a new commercial, “Daisy”, which target’s President Obama by suggesting he has made the country less safe. The backdrop? A nuclear explosion. I guess Rove politics are back in style. It worked before, why shouldn’t it work again? The Republicans are playing Gitmo like a fiddle.

I receive credit card offers every day. They offer great 0% APR for a year and low rate balance transfers. It takes about 2 minutes to read through the first page of the offer and notice the related fee’s. That’s because credit card companies are already required to divulge all of the details related to the offer. So the “hidden fee’s” associated with credit cards would be better named “fee’s I got stuck paying because I was too lazy to read the fine print”. This is not the fault of the credit card companies and I don’t think they should be punished for the “buy now, do my budget later” mentality of many Americans. The reason we got in to the subprime mortgage mess was because people were unable to realize they couldn’t afford to pay variable rate mortgages. For all the blaming of the mortgage companies and AIG, there has been marginal blame on the consumer.

These “reforms” will essentially remove the punishment system built by the credit card companies. If you make poor decisions such as not paying your bill or taking cash advances on your credit card, you pay higher fee’s. That make’s complete sense to me. If you don’t pay your mortgage, they take your house. So now we are bailing out the people who can’t pay their mortgage or their credit cards and saying “it’s not your fault”. Someone tell me how this helps our nation’s problem of over consumption? At the household level, Chinese families save over 50% of their income, do you want to guess what American’s save? Try 0%. That is obviously a major problem. By consoling these mistakes we will not be teaching American’s the lesson they need to learn. Live within your means.

RUSH LIMBAUGH MAKE’S BOATLOADS OF MONEY AS A SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE LEADER. In 2007 Rush Limbaugh made $33 MILLION DOLLARS. If you take away the audience, you take away his money. He is vested in keeping his audience at his heels and because his audience is (currently) a large electorate for the GOP he has the Republicans by the neck! So how does he stay in business? He abuses religion as a tool to fire up the deeply religious social conservatives on hot button issues such as abortion and gay marriage. If anyone mentions that the party should move towards the center on these issues, he relentlessly attacks and belittles them. Think: John McCain (Palin was not his first choice), Megan McCain (how dare she support gay marriage and be a Republican), Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and now Colin Powell.

As more and more Republicans begin to realize that they will soon be out of jobs by supporting out-dated policies, they will need to come up with a way to deal with Rush. Maybe Specter was the smartest of all, abandoning the party before it completely falls apart. My prediction? The GOP doesn’t have the gall to stand up to Rush and they bleed members to the Democrats and other third parties. By 2012 they’ll have little chance at the presidency. You heard it here first!

“I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage” -John Baldacci

Another blow to the social conservative movement. More to come on Rush’s latest comments tonight.