Right On The Right

The media has tried to make this thing into a battle between John McCain and Rush Limbaugh, as opposed to McCain vs. the fractured field. Rush Limbaugh has embraced this and today on his show, he refused to concede. Here's the video of his announcement and a select transcript:

RUSH: Thank you. Thank you. (wild cheering) Here is the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen. I think this is it. There was a lot of anxiety among a lot of conservatives about Senator McCain. It's simply indisputable. But there was no figure in our roster of candidates who rose up to challenge him or galvanize conservative support. All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse -- and so, just as I predicted, the base has fractured. Some going here, some going there. Senator McCain's been able to cobble together enough votes to win in a few states. Fine. He deserves credit for that. But to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite... He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of the Republican establishment -- and that distinction is key. The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media. But both are just far-fetched and wrong. Thank you. Thank you very much for your steadfast support, and I trust it shall continue because I shall.

Rush Limbaugh does not like the man who is now the presumptive Republican nominee. Rush Limbaugh doesn't like people telling him what to say and what not to say. Hot Air has Rush Limbaugh's response to a woman asking him to stop talking about McCain:

What is readability? It's simply how smart someone has to be to understand a majority of the content posted on a blog or website. Using an automated system, I compared my site, Rush Limbaugh's site, and Al Franken's site. According to the system, my site requires a high school reading level, about where I expected. Rush, in his glory, has a site with the vocabulary of a genius. Meanwhile, Franken's Senate site is best-suited for junior high students. Go figure. Think of it what you may...

What do I think? I think this is simply because Conservatives have a great vocabulary, and the only words that will register as "upper level" on liberal websites are universal, in reference to healthcare, impeachment, in reference to our President, and probably lots of words for "rationalize" since they have to try to rationalize their own mentality.

Rush made a subtle endorsement of Mitt Romney a couple days ago, he spent yesterday's show answering questions about the Hucksters, and today he went after Huck again. To the right is a screenshot of one feature on Rush's site. A caller gave him the perfect opportunity to expose Mike's record, and he jumped on it:

RUSH: Can you tell me -- I mean, I understand the technique here, because this is the second or third attempt on the part of Huckabee supporters, who, by the way, you know, I think he's a fine man. He's just not a conservative. And this is what, to be quite honest with you, offends me greatly with this attempt to compare him to Ronald Reagan. You have to go back and cite their records as governors, some sort of a non-establishment candidate and so forth. Could you tell me something about Huckabee rather than trying to compare him to Ronald Reagan...

Rush goes on to make it clear that he will not be endorsing anyone, and says the caller put him in a difficult snafu asking him for his opinion on Huck's record. Rush is blatant about saying Huckabee's not a Conservative however, and that should resonate with the voters of Iowa. Let's see.

Rush Limbaugh refuses to endorse, with two possible exceptions. The first exception is the possibility of a two-man race in the later states where one man is a non-Conservative. The second exception, of course, is in the General Election. As of right now, Rush hasn't come out and said who he's for. We all know who he isn't for however, and that may be just as powerful. To the right is a graphic showing the long list of anti-Huck articles on Rush's site today, and it is an extraordinarily long list that covers a lot of issues. Here's an excerpt from just one of those segments:

RUSH: So Huckabee writes this piece basically savaging the Bush administration's "arrogant bunker mentality." Now, one thing I know, I remember back in the '92 campaign, Ross Perot came along, and I had my instincts. I had misgivings about it from the get-go, and I shared those misgivings, and I tried to talk the Perot people out of it. "You people are being fooled. He's not even serious about wanting to be elected. There's something else going on here. I'm going to get to the bottom of it and find out." I found out what it was. When it looked like he was going to win, he pulled out, then he got back in. He basically gave the election to the Democrats and Bill Clinton. But what I remember is that all during that period -- when I was so intense and so purposefully desirous of trying to get the Perot people to see the light -- they didn't want to see it. They were like cultists, and I learned that you cannot talk cultists out of their cult.

Huckabee's comments about the Bush administration's "arrogant bunker mentality" were a complete dealbreaker for me. It wasn't just the anti-Huck articles that gave us an idea of Rush's subtle endorsement. Hot Air noticed it too. There are a plethora of pro-Mitt articles. Here's an excerpt:

Do you realize how long it has been since a political person, a presidential candidate of either party, spoke extensively of the founding of this country and how crucial everybody's understanding of that is to maintaining American exceptionalism? Mitt Romney took the long view of this country, from its founding to its future, farther than we can see, and he described what it is that binds us together and defines us as Americans. It is crucially important that people understand this. This was a speech of the long view, a speech of leadership and of vision. It didn't attack anybody. It was optimistic. It was positive. It had reinforcement of American traditions and values.

This is as close to an endorsement as we're going to get before the Hawkeye Cauci, unless Rush has some sort of major surprise in store for us today. I'm a Fred Thompson supporter, but if I was forced to caucus between Mitt and Huckabee, it'd be Mitt in a heartbeat. Let's see how things go down tomorrow.