In his op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh completely destroys the basis of Barack Obama’s new Spanish-language television commercial, in which Obama slanders both John McCain and Limbaugh. In Limbaugh’s words, Obama has extracted “two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and buil[t] a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions.”
Just so. And now the question is whether the mainstream media, which got so wound up about John McCain’s ads on sex education and lipstick on a pig, to the point where they were declaring open war on McCain for his “lies” (the sex education ad turned out to be far more complicated than the MSM portrayed), will now demonstrate similar consternation and fury over Obama’s deeply misleading and ugly ads?
The question is rhetorical; we already know the answer.
The other thing to note about this episode is the force and speed with which Limbaugh responded. The moment the television ad was up, Rush began an effort to correct the record through his radio program, comments to reporters, and now his Journal editorial. It has succeeded, and an ad that was supposed to help Obama may well turn out to hurt him. As Limbaugh wrote, Barack Obama, in appealing to racial divisions, is playing with political dynamite. It is a very unfortunate turn for the candidate who once promised to be a unifying figure and source of civic and racial comity.
Barack Obama has tangled with the wrong fellow. There’s a reason Rush has been on top for two decades. This latest episode helps demonstrate why.