Many were puzzled about why Rush Limbaugh suddenly took after candidates running in the Republican primaries last year. He lit out with all tail feathers burning after not the least of the Republican candidates, but the front runners…
and not with his usual entertainer-like aplomb, but something that sounded in affect alone, like disappointment, rage and screed. A kind of angry, grim scorn. Aimed at his own.
Many didn’t understand the reasoning in that, inside or outside the GOP. Still don’t.
How can such endless demeaning of one’s leaders be understood in the mold of hero Ronald Reagan? Listening to the denigrations back and forth within the R party alone, it seems The Gipper would be saddened and deeply taken aback by how the legacy he left for those who could see it– the shining city on the hill – has been made into a shantytown mentally, spiritually and otherwise.
Listening to Mr. Limbaugh, whom I, despite others’ negatory comments re his bodily presence, thought looked pretty spiffy in his all black clothing at PAC… but still I wondered why is Mr. Limbaugh sounding as though he’s taking a game page from Titus Andronicus … wherein the succession to kingship is so bloody and so murderous with all potential heirs maimed and murdered, that in the end, there is no heir of worth left.
Following that ancient path of disabling/ “killing” one’s own primary leaders has a sure outcome. The same one, over and over. None who are left at the end are fit to lead the kingdom, for all the imperious rage they now carry about avenging the murders of friends and family members within the clan remains their underlying focus in every and all matters.
Perhaps most telling in Shakespeare’s play, the one who wants most to be king, allows the husband of the woman who represents the spirit of beautiful liberty… to be murdered in order to foul succession to the kingship. Thus the tender unprotected woman is forced to lie over her husbands dead body while she is raped.
Is this what is has come to in the GOP? That cant be. It cannot be that the protectors of the spirit of the party are off-ed one by one, til there be no one left.
I say it again, in part, because I find it so astonishing to see it played out: A party cannot create a bold succession by killing off all their own most powerful heirs.
Makes no sense. Really. Forget it’s Mr. Limbaugh. Despite the stories flying in MSM and blogosphere, I’ve spent some time with him, and he is a complex and unusual heart and mind to say the least. (And don’t be writing me saying how bad he is. I know his bull-headedness. I also know his hidden good. You and I know, many of his listeners thought what he speaks about, long before there ever was a Rush Limbaugh. I like knowing the ditto-heads, so to speak, out in the open, rather than the way it used to be, under the table, behind closed doors, behind one’s back. One can dislike any and all of whatever any of us have to say, but if there’s a choice, on most days, I like it said in sunshine and in person, rather than in the dark and anonymously.)
Just for a moment, consider this: think of anyone in power literally hitting an intact hull of their own most promising ship—on purpose— and willing it, literally, to sink. Not meaning Obama. Lay that aside for a moment. Instead, think of blowing open the hulls of McCain, Romney, and now Michael Steele.
Some think that Mr. Limbaugh most recently going after the RNC Chair, Mr. Michael Steele, seems more of the same Limbaughsian tactic that they don’t understand… mainly because many seasoned participants in the GOP and elsewhere have not yet seen any party win by rage out front, but rather only by relentless persuasion that might have outrage somewhere in the equation, but carries many gifts toward life also.
My two cent’s worth: There is a core to any party that has to remain healthy; the anlagen, the center of the cell, the original thing that holds its DNA.
Regardless of any views I might put forth or read elsewhere, I am never going to believe that the Republican party is based on harm to others, or it’s DNA is twisted to attack one another and itself. The spirit of liberty in the center of the party ought be protected, not harmed.
Whatever is in the subtext of slaying one’s own, doesn’t that belong to some other age, a Darkest one?