Like Tim over at Balloon Juice, I too remember back when the wingnuts tried to hang Michael Moore around the neck of the Democratic Party. Alas, as Tim points out, “prominent Democrats seemed more than happy, eager, to kick him in the shins.”

Michael Moore has never had any influence on the Democratic Party. Sure, he’s made a few salient points about the Right, some of which our Democratic leadership might agree with. But he hardly commands a majority audience with the base. As a commenter on Balloon Juice points out:

Democrats didn’t need to [defend Moore], because the right-wing attempt to make Moore the grand poo-bah of the Dem Party was on its face laughable…

Democrats defended Moore where defense was warranted, but they didn’t engage in the “Michael! Michael!” idolatry that we saw at CPAC (“Rush! Rush!”).

And now we have this alleged conspiracy involving the White House attempting to “silence” Rush Limbaugh by…uhh…saying his name at a press conference? I dunno, I’m still trying to figure out what the wingnuts’ complaint is here. Tim speculates that it loosely follows this pattern:

Step 1: Publicly suggest that Republicans agree with Rush Limbaugh.
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Clear Channel replaces Rush’s show with Randi Rhodes and CounterSpin.

In Step 1, we have committed the Right’s most unpardonable sin – we have said something true! (Nothing flips out the GOP more than having their foibles pointed out to the public.) Obviously, Step 3 is never going to happen. And, frankly, no one has been able to fill in Step 2.

I’ll give it a shot.

Step 2: A few Republicans step out of line and oh-so-mildly criticize das Limbaugh, only to see the error of their ways and immediately go groveling to the Great One for forgiveness in order to make the yelling stop. This same group includes the fucking leader of the RNC, supposedly the TOP Republican in the country, who later lies about what he said and tries to play it off as a “misunderstanding.” Meanwhile, Limbaugh reaps huge ratings and manages to keep his name in the papers, thanks to our corporate media who just love a dust-up.

A few other Republicans play damage-control by going on TV and claiming “no, no, it’s actually the White House that started this whole thing” which, of course, is contrary to every bit of evidence we’ve seen over the last week or so. Ari Fleischer was talking to Schuster the other day and actually tried to pin the whole thing on Obama specifically, concern-trolling and tsk-tsk-ing the President for not living up to his “post-partisan ideals” (which really only exist in Fleischer’s head; the GOP likes to project these things on Obama when it is convenient to do so.)

(Watch the Fleischer/Schuster video by the way. Schuster eviscerates Fleischer for his rank hypocrisy in accusing anyone of being “childish” and “distracting” with a record of his own childish and distracting rhetoric and name-calling. Fleischer does a pretty good job of staying on-message, I’ll give him that. But his message is horseshit and is itself a ridiculous distraction. Schuster pretty well nails him for it.)

So now we’ve got Republican media personalities accusing the White House of being “childish” and “distracting the nation with this Limbaugh nonsense when there are more important issues at stake.” (This is the wingnut talking-point du jour, by the way. Meritless on its face, of course.)

Yeah…it’s all Obama’s fault.

Never mind the Chairman of the Republican National Committee crawling to beg forgiveness for daring to criticize Limbaugh. Ignore the fact that no Republican has been willing to say that Limbaugh was wrong for not only hoping that President Obama fails, but for claiming that every Republican feels the same way but is too afraid to say so. It’s all the White House’s fault.

Basically, as Tim says in closing:

Republicans could have kept their yap shut and let the country think that a drug-addled ignoramus pulls their strings. Instead they opened their mouth and proved it.