Quote of the Day

"The cop-out for Republicans is to dismiss Limbaugh as a showman, and not a consequential political messenger. 'I’m in a very different business,' Rick Santorum claimed last week. But the general public probably doesn’t see such a sharp distinction. Limbaugh’s show is almost entirely about politics, and the themes he stresses invariably echo and influence the themes that Republican politicians across the country emphasize. And Republicans themselves have spent the past two decades promoting the image of Limbaugh as their leader... Because they put Limbaugh on a pedestal all these years, Republicans have only encouraged Americans to regard his garbage not just as the rantings of a radio host, but as the message of the Republican Party."

-- Steve Kornacki in a Salon piece called "Rush Limbaugh and the Poisoning of the GOP Brand"

Yup, that just about sums it up.

Quote of the Day

"If Sarkozy is right (that the end of Gaddafi's regime is near), then it will be the outcome that hawks on the right have been saying they wanted all along. That it is now on the brink of being achieved five months after the implementation of the no fly zone would seem to suggest that, just maybe, there was actually some wisdom to "leading from behind." At the very least, it exposes the attacks of Krauthammer, Romney and others for what they were: overheated efforts to reinforce the Obama-as-Carter caricature they’ve been pushing since the start of his presidency. Nor is it the first time Obama has defied this caricature: Remember when our "weak" and "naïve" president announced that Osama bin Laden -- the man who had eluded George W. Bush for nearly eight years -- had been killed?"

-- Steve Kornacki in Salon