In the great litany of items tossed out by a Rush Limbaugh — filler of three or (when he had a tv show) three and a half hours every weekday — or specifically cirated by him… He apologized and offered as his greatest regret a regular bit ran for two weeks mocking recent AIDS deaths — hard to say if that mitigates anything given it came out of him in the first place — and the bit about claimimg “did ypu know thete was a White House dog?” cue photo of a gawky young Chelsea Clinton… Did not happen — which at least obviates that one.

Beyond that his statement on Donavann McNabb — overrated and overrated because the league was in need of a:top flight black quarterback — strikes me as inaccurate but defendable. McNabb always seemingly the fifth best qb in the league for the decade he played — behind Brady and Manning and two others that varied with the year — with it seems as I look him up on google Eagles fans souring on him in retrospect(a love/hate relationship regardless) and a most recent controversy regarding him getting drunk before playing in his one Super Bowl.

Behold some piece of theInsane. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Friday that he will order flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of conservative talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh, who died this week at the age of 70 after being diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer last year.
“I know they’re still figuring out arrangements. But what we do when there’s things of this magnitude, once the date of internment for Rush is announced, we’re going to be lowering the flags to half-staff,” the Republican governor said.
Nothing much in regards to the politics of the man, but… Why and what is the purpse? Certainly not a unifying message for the state. Largely a case of flag lowering inflation. To the younger people — about their 20s– we may need to explain who the hell Limbaugh was amd why he mattered somehow anyways.
So far as I can tell, this may be the last nibblet of Limbaugh “controversy” that plucked into my mindspace.

In one particularly odious example of fueling divisive racial paranoia, Limbaugh told his audience, “It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,’ and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he’s white.”

In as much as I can suggest 1996 as the Year of High Republicanism and Limbaugh right in there with Gingrich —
this 2009 monolouge and the story it blasted off from — a local school bus fight berween schoolkids — owes more to Drudge in getting broadcast to the multitudes. From there Limbaugh is one of a multitide, and replacable — bunches of Fox News hosts and Limbaugh clones on the am dial more than capable of fanning racial flames into the air without Limbaugh as any conduit.

So… whateth did he do, in the end?
in the end, even if I came not to think very highly of Rush, he did have the Clintons’ number from day one. He saw them for the liars, opportunists, and political grifters that they were, a couple who held no core beliefs, only positions that could change as needed to amass more power. No matter what else he was, said, or did, no matter his innumerable human failings, he was right about Bill and Hillary.
All of which slashes against his stated charge at the start of the Clinton Years that we are witmesding “the most concentrated push to left liberalism” im American History. And besides which…
although Limbaugh never influenced policy as much as he influenced the tone of right-wing political culture. He followed and endorsed the policy trends from Gingrich to Dubya to Trump (and those were three very different political leaders) rather than setting them.
Indeed, a curious matter of how his obitiary is written as harbinger of Trump…
Regarding my thoughts on the kingmaker question, everyone’s going to write about how politics might have been different if Limbaugh hadn’t been such an influential figure. But I’m wondering how we would see his legacy differently if say, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz had been elected president in 2016.
Or, I could suggest, if Mitt Romney had won in 2012. I guess he would be there standing in opposition to any liberalizing immigration (see Bush administration) but otherwise he is just cheerleading the Republican administration, whatever the posture is on (say for instance) Trade.
Always ready to admit it…
2006, after Republicans lost the House in midterm elections, Limbaugh admitted that he’d long been “carrying water” for GOP elected officials even though he didn’t believe they deserved it. Over time, as the talk-radio style of culture-war point scoring over a substantive agenda, and loyalty over intellectual honesty, became more common among GOP politicos as well as right-leaning entertainers, the coalition got less and less conservative, culminating in the GOP’s takeover by populists who openly championed tariffs and etc.

To the point:
but I have had a deep personal animus to this man. Rush Limbaugh made my father angrier than he needed to be in his old age.
Oh, I suspect if the poster of this thought Limbaugh haf said anything worthwhile, thwy’d offer more allowance for this “rabble rousing” aspect, but I.gather this is a personal experience that abounds … For ” the legacy”.

Untelated in commentsville:
It is a little known fact that in 1932 the Republicans won a majority in the House and Senate but between the election and the inauguration of Roosevelt, enough of them had died from various causes that their replacement by Democrat governors gave Roosevelt the majority he needed.
For some reason, the claiming on this inaccurate statement grates me. It is the 1930 midterm that saw the Republicans crater to a bare Charles Curtis (first poc vice president) tie breaking Senate majority and losing the House after post election day special election.

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