TOM DELAY'S 'ROLE MODEL'

There's a good editorial at Salon from Joan Walsh about how Tom DeLay said that Rush 'The Blowhard' Limbaugh is...ugh...the role model for the Republican Patsies...er, ah, I mean Party.

Here's a taste to whet your appetite....

DeLay: Limbaugh's a GOP "role model"

.... just watched the disgraced Tom DeLay hail Rush Limbaugh on "Hardball," and warn: "Republicans better understand and look at the role model he's presenting ... Stand up and fight!" At the same time, the former House GOP leader insisted Limbaugh is the leader of the conservative cause, but not the Republican Party, and blamed Democrats for hyping Limbaugh's role.

Where to start?

The GOP's reputation is circling the drain, and President Obama's approval ratings are at an all-time high, according to a new WSJ-NBC poll. Just under 70 percent of Americans approve of Obama's performance, while only 19 percent of Americans disapprove, despite GOP obstructionism and loons like Limbaugh fervently wishing he'll fail. Only 26 percent of those polled have a favorable view of the GOP -- an all-time low. Still, terrified Republicans are trying to have it both ways: Keep the divisive Limbaugh on his big white pedestal, while blaming Democrats for saying he's their party leader.

But come on: Did Nancy Pelosi make Rep. Phil Gingrey apologize to Limbaugh last month for criticizing him? Did Howard Dean make Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele crawl to Limbaugh exactly 51 minutes (according to "Hardball") after Limbaugh attacked him on his radio show yesterday.....

It's Tom DeLay, not President Obama, who is now designating Limbaugh as his party's "role model." It's irresistible to respond: Really? Limbaugh's the "role model" for the party of family values? A thrice-divorced, drug-abusing, Parkinson's-mocking, cigar-sucking egomaniac, a poster boy for meanness, overindulgence and excess?

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So for now the future of the party is an admitted Oxycontin addict who plea-bargained his way out of a drug conviction, who mocks children and Parkinson's sufferers, who exhibits strange sexual fears about our first black president (why is he worried about "grabbing his ankles?"), who was famously detained on a Dominican Republic vacation for carrying Viagra without a prescription?

Well worth the read!