Talk about too clever by half.
According to today’s Politico story by Jonathan Martin, the entire decision to go after Rush Limbaugh was cooked up by supposedly clever White House aides and outside advisors. Says Martin in his story:
David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager last year and a member of his inner circle still, will publish an op-ed in Wednesday’s Washington Post chiding Republicans for being “paralyzed with fear of crossing their leader.”
A senior White House aide has been tasked with helping to guide the Limbaugh strategy.
With the certainty that only a political idiot could not see, Rush has just taken these bozos up and called them out.
He has challenged Obama to a one-on-one debate on his radio show, no teleprompters please.
With an ineptness that leaves one breathless, the Obama team has now effectively labeled Obama himself as “paralyzed with fear” if in fact the President doesn’t have the guts to accept Limbaugh’s challenge. After all, if they claim that GOP chair Michael Steele and “Republicans” are cowards for not taking on Rush, Obama himself will surely have the guts to do what they claim Steele and Republicans do not: take on Rush Limbaugh one-on-one.
Not since 1981 when the striking Air Traffic Controllers Union dared Ronald Reagan to fire them has such a potentially momentous challenge occurred. In that showdown, union leaders smugly assumed Reagan would not have the guts to fire them as he promised. They guessed wrong. The resulting mass firings of thousands not only wrecked the union, historians later realized that it sent a sharp and chilling message to the leaders of the Soviet Union that Reagan was not to be fooled with. The event raised the stakes in the Cold War and famously resulted in sending the entire USSR to the ash heap of history.
Learning nothing from history, the Obama crowd has now set up a breathtakingly stupid proposition: either Obama debates Rush one-on-one or he is, in the words of his own staff, paralyzed with fear. Now there’s a message to send to al Qaeda. The President of the United States has no guts.
Amazing.
