Weak Campaign Means Increased Role For Rush Limbaugh

DE FACTO STRATEGIST

Rush Limbaugh Fills McCain Campaign's Leadership Void





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It's never a good sign when one's campaign strategy is taken over by outside forces. But in the case of John McCain, it may have become a necessity.

That's because conservatives need him to win even more than he wants to succeed, given the fringe alternative on offer by the Democrats. Yet his own effort to date has been lackluster, to say the least.

Filling the void is talk titan Rush Limbaugh, who has assumed the role of de facto campaign strategist. Where McCain can't or won't confront his political foes, Rush is there to do it for him, with as-yet unknown results.

During Wednesday's show, Limbaugh spelled out why he feels it's necessary to take on this role:

CALLER: The reason I called is because I feel McCain has really been blowing the debates, both of them. In both debates, Obama started trying to track all the current-day problems back to eight years of Bush administration. And I thought when he did that, McCain should have gotten up there and said, "This isn't tracked back to eight years of Bush administration. This is tracked back to President Carter and President Clinton and Democratic Congresses that forced the banks to make risky loans to people that couldn't pay for them."

RUSH: Yeah. You and I and the rest of the Republican Party, the conservative movement, agree a hundred percent, and watch this stuff and say, "Okay, it's up to us. We're going to have to be the ones to secure victory for him. We're going to drag him across the finish line and then take on the other challenges that that presents." You know, one step at a time here. We can do it. That's the way it's going to have to be done.

I'm going to splay to you so you can no longer be frustrated, why McCain does not do that. I mean, Obama handed him a slow pitch, softball, hanging curve.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: All he has to say, "I'm sorry, Senator Obama, but the roots of this particular crisis are in fraudulent mortgage lending started and suggesting by Jimmy Carter, expanded by Bill Clinton, implemented by Jamie Gorelick. You have two advisors who implemented these loans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." He could have just knocked it out of the ballpark. He won't do it, and I'm going to tell you why very simply.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: So that you don't get frustrated anymore, because it's going to keep happening for the rest of the campaign. McCain is going to get hanging curveball after hang curveball and he's going to strike out.

John McCain believes that the key for him to win the election is in the undecided moderates -- the independents, moderates, all these people -- who have not declared who they're for, the great undecideds, and the theory goes that they're all moderates.

Now, by moderate, I mean people who do not make up their minds because they think it's offensive to have an opinion about anything. This is the theory, and I think it's all wet and wrong. But McCain believes it. The theory is that moderates get offended by "partisanship."

So McCain does not want to be partisan and offend them, 'cause that's who he's seeking the votes of. Now, here's where this theory is so flawed, it's embarrassing anybody accepts it.

It is a myth, and it's one of these theories that's been alive in American politics put forth by Democrats and put forth by the media to get conservatives to shut up. It is designed to scare people like McCain into not saying what he knows is the truth because he believes he will offend these precious moderates, and what will they then do? What will they do? You tell me, Edward. What will the moderates do if McCain offends them by being partisan? What will they do?

In the end, it's better to have Limbaugh mobilize his vast audience for purposes of holding Obama accountable than for McCain to do it himself. But Rush's listeners have very little time to turn this ship around. Without exceptional motivation, they may very well see their worst nightmare come true on election day.

It may very well be up to Rush and his fans to keep this from turning into a repeat of Bob Dole's 1996 fiasco.


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