The Man Who Ate the G.O.P.

In an ailing radio industry, with a graying audience and a pro-government landscape, Rush Limbaugh should be shuffling off into irrelevancy. Instead, his ever more outrageous attacks have everyone debating whether he’s the G.O.P.’s de facto leader, while the party shapes its ideology to fit his needs.

by Michael Wolff May 2009
Vanity Fair

Rush Limbaugh, it seemed to me, had to be in huge trouble. Beyond his history of drug problems—in liberal circles there remains a constant is-he-isn’t-he speculation about the status of his prescription-painkiller addiction—beyond even the fact that the mighty conservative tide which he’d ridden to such success had certainly peaked, there were the terrible problems in his core business. Radio advertising rates were falling—even before the recession—Internet competition was rising, and Rush’s much-vaunted audience of 14 million was down from its high of 20 to 25 million during the Clinton years to closer to cable-TV size. The view at MSNBC was that, on a minute-by-minute basis, Limbaugh’s audience was now no bigger than that of its liberal stars, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

So, when, in the beginning of February, Limbaugh said he hoped that the new president would fail in his efforts to deal with economic calamity, this seemed much more like a desperate bid to stay in the game than it did a stroke of master showmanship. By any logical assessment of behavior, it still seems as if the man may be imploding. And yet, within a month of his issuing his provocative or nihilistic view about an Obama-led recovery, the argument had become not whether he was hopelessly marginalized but whether he was the most significant figure in the Republican Party.

(More here.)

Here is a bonus: Rush Limbaugh's 10 Dumbest Remarks

Rush Limbaugh’s three-decade career in radio has produced some of the dumbest statements ever uttered. To coincide with Michael Wolff’s article on Limbaugh from the new issue, VF.com presents a list of the schlock jock’s 10 most asinine pronouncements:

1. “There is no conclusive proof that nicotine’s addictive... And the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease.”

2. “Columbus saved the Indians from themselves.”

3. "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting."

4. “[African Americans] are twelve percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”

(Continued here.)