Dems Push Fresh Round Of Anti-Rush Limbaugh Attacks

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In Latest Attack Swarm, Dems Twist Mundane Ted K Comment





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Demonstrating that not even weekends are safe from Democratic Party-sponsored anti-Rush Limbaugh attacks, the talk titan is now under fire for a relatively mundane (and actually quite accurate) reference to the shameless political exploitation of Ted Kennedy's illness.

This effort provides a diversion from Obama's latest problems, which include the withdrawal of three more of his nominees.

In their quest to impose radical socialized health care in the United States, Democrats have clearly built their plan around sympathy for Kennedy and his ongoing battle with cancer. Since the Massachusetts senator's illness became public knowledge, Limbaugh has refrained from criticism of Kennedy, an approach also taken by other talk hosts across the country.

On Friday's program, Limbaugh said this about the strategy by Democrats, which is sadly reminiscent of their previous use of Senator Paul Wellstone's untimely death for partisan purposes:

RUSH: I asked the question yesterday, the soonest we're going to get health care reform -- and, by the way, the Democrats are pushing for this fall, they'd like it as soon as they can -- if they get national health care, folks, the country as you and I have known it is over, but the failing health of Senator Kennedy is, as I told you way back when, the driving force here. The failing health of Senator Kennedy is already being used as an inspirational effort, or technique, to get national health care on the fast track. This is supposed to get you a job. You're losing your job and losing your house because of health care costs. And I asked you to think, you're expecting to be out of work until November or December, whenever they can get this done, if by then, and then all of a sudden once health care reform is done your job's going to come back?

Krauthammer says: "Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the earmarks. ... Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle." Krauthammer is accusing Obama of a brazen deception being at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan. "The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this: 'Our economy did not fall into decline overnight,' he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy--" even though we have our own all over the place, "--not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools. The 'day of reckoning' has arrived. And because 'it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.'"

Krauthammer writes, "Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people. At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation," it goes on and on and on. "But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy.

"And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis. What's going on? 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,' said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. 'This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.' Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his 'Big Bang' agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy. Intellectually dishonest to the core." Obama deceiving the American people and it's working.

The latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll has an approval rating at 63% over the previous reporting period a week or ten days ago, at 60%. Does this puzzle you? Your economy is tanking all around you, your president is deceiving you as to why. Your president is further deceiving you as to the solutions. Yet his approval numbers go up, they slightly uptick to 63%.

We are still at the stage, I told you all week long, be patient, it's going to take a while for people to see the deception, and they might not ever. You see, Barack Obama benefits from a truism here. It is not what he accomplishes. He doesn't have to accomplish anything to keep his poll numbers up, and this he knows. All he has to do is give speeches about what he cares about. Yesterday he cared about health care. And who doesn't? It's like the environmentalist wackos making you think they care about saving the planet, making you think they care about clean water and clean air. Who doesn't? So if you oppose clean water and clean air, you must want what? Dirty water, dirty air. If you oppose Obama on health care, you must want what? People to get sick and not have any way to get well. So it's not what he says, it's not what he accomplishes. It's what he says he cares about.

There's another poll out today, I think from Rasmussen. Thirty-four percent of the American people believe that they can't get a good job without the government being involved. Thirty-four percent believe the government is important to getting a good job. Not with the government, but outside in the private sector. But is this what you voted for? Somebody who says he cares about certain things, accomplishes nothing on them, deceives you as to the real problems, and in the process, takes no steps to fix them. Let me tell you what's going on here. We have a banking and a credit crisis. Obama and his team had a show gathering to focus on the problem, but they have done little, if anything, to so much as start fixing it. Any leader would keep focused on fixing that mess, but that's not the stuff that makes approval numbers rise, because there really isn't much he can do except shift people's attitudes about it.

So he's moved on to health care. This is highly visible, it's news leading, gets a great focus, plus it has the great liberal lion Teddy Kennedy pushing it. Before it's all over it will be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill. So when you have the banking and the credit problem still unfixed and with health care still unfixed, they'll move on to another caring story: alternate energy -- I don't know; your guess is as good as mine. But whatever it is, the approval numbers will go up because it's not what Obama accomplishes; it's what he cares about.

As can be seen above, the reference is to the Obamistas and their use of Kennedy's cancer to impose socialized medicine. It's NOT an attack on Kennedy himself.

But that certainly didn't stop the sleazy partisan smear machine from putting in some weekend overtime hours in the name of scoring political points. Joining in almost immediately were their mainstream media allies, led by the AP:

A Democratic official rebuked conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on Friday for suggesting a health care proposal will be named in memory of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer. On his radio show, Limbaugh said President Barack Obama's proposed health care revisions will be championed by "the liberal lion Teddy Kennedy."

"Before it's all over, it'll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill," Limbaugh said.

Brian Wolff, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, called the remark outrageous and reprehensible.

Limbaugh has been at the center of a partisan dispute since telling a conservative group last month that he hoped Obama's economic policies would fail. Democrats have accused Republicans of letting Limbaugh be their de facto leader, which GOP officials deny.

But Limbaugh was clearly referring to this Fox News story from January 13 2009, which uses remarkably similar language:

For more than four decades, Ted Kennedy has built a reputation as a "lion of the Senate" with all of his legislative accomplishments. But there's one noteworthy feather missing from his legislative cap: national health care.

In the twilight of his career and battling brain cancer, the Massachusetts Democrat now is making what could turn out to be his final push to get health care legislation across the finish line.

"He obviously sees this as the crowning achievement of his career," said Tom Mann, a congressional scholar at Brookings Institution. "But there's a lot of uncertainty as to whether anything substantial will pass this year."

In the coming months, Kennedy's committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is expected to help craft legislation to expand health insurance coverage. Joining Kennedy in his effort will be former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whom President-elect Barack Obama nominated to be secretary of health and human services.

A spokeswoman for one of the architects of a national health care bill said that any legislation that emerges would be named after Kennedy.

"He wouldn't name it for himself, but the majority of the body working on the legislation would say he's devoted his life to it," said Jude McCartin, a spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., a member of Kennedy's committee. "Now that we're on the verge of doing something major, the naming of the legislation should reflect his longstanding involvement,"

But it is unclear if legislation can get passed this year, given the attention lawmakers must pay to the financial crisis.

"Sen. Bingaman thinks we have the immediate issues before us to take up the time of Congress," McCartin said, adding that a bill on health care reform could be introduced later in the year. "It takes a while to develop any significant legislation."


[...]


To that end, Kennedy has surrendered his role on the Judiciary Committee so he can focus on health care. Political observers believe his diagnosis may help him get legislation passed.

"Is there an added urgency? Of course," Clymer said. "And that may have some impact on his colleagues."

Ellen-Marie Whelan, a senior health policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, said lawmakers will want to get legislation passed on Kennedy's watch.

"We don't know what his long-term prognosis is," she said. "It creates another reason to do it sooner than later,"

Aides to Kennedy's fellow committee members declined to discuss the impact Kennedy's condition could have on getting a bill passed.

And the far-left, circulation-challenged Boston Globe was also up after hours joining the partisan smear effort, which even included a highly-edited, out-of-contextYouTube clip:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly launched a petition drive urging Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to denounce Limbaugh. The committee's executive director, Brian Wolff, called the remark "reprehensible" and "truly outrageous."

"Leader Limbaugh minimizes the struggle of hardworking Americans without access to affordable health care and demonizes a patriotic Senator who has spent his life fighting so that every person has the opportunity to live the American dream," Wolff said in a statement, calling the radio host by the moniker Democrats are using to suggest that Limbaugh is the leader of the GOP.

"Leader Limbaugh crossed the line. National Republicans must stand up to their leader, Rush Limbaugh, and tell him that enough is enough."





Americans United for Change, a liberal-labor coalition, added its outrage.

Jeremy Funk, a spokesman, said in a statement: “Even for someone with a long, sordid history of spewing sexist, racist, and disgusting rhetoric, Rush Limbaugh has really outdone himself this time with this wildly uncalled for and tasteless remark about ailing Senator Ted Kennedy. But as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, the question is: will Congressional Republicans defend or admonish their leader’s latest antics? No one is holding their breathe for the latter.”

If this contrived "controversy" has a familiar ring to it, it's probably because it bears a remarkable resemblance to a previous anti-Rush smear effort, "phony soldiers". Then and now, words have been taken wildly out of context in order to feed the partisan beast.

Interestingly, Democrats are actually planning a variety of efforts to memorialize Kennedy, including $5.8 million in Obama's budget proposal for the "Ted Kennedy Institute for the Senate, for the planning and design of a building and an endowment."



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