He seeks to control debates by banning opponents from them.
Concealed within President Obama’s carping about Rush Limbaugh is a distaste for democracy. Obama is not the first aspiring tyrant to complain that the pen is mightier than the sword, or in this case, that the pundit is mightier than the president.
Speaking to CNN last week, Obama whined that Republicans listen to Rush Limbaugh too much. They need to “think less about politics and party and think more about what’s good for the country,” he said. “I’ve made this argument to my Republican friends privately, and, by the way, sometimes they say to me privately, ‘I agree with you, but I’m worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the tea party back in my district’ or, ‘I’m worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on radio.’”
If Obama’s story here is true — that GOP pols whisper anti-Limbaugh fears to him over dinner — they are even bigger weasels than previously suspected. Obama’s attempt to drive a wedge between these spineless Republicans and Limbaugh is part of his drive to build a de facto one-party state. That’s all he means by “unity.”
By “bipartisanship,” he means collusion in error, free of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative voices who would counsel against it. Talk radio is the lever by which American politics is pulled to the right, so Obama has to smash it.
