Inside Politics Weekend: Michael Moore=Rush Limbaugh?

Michael Moore=Rush Limbaugh?

The two gentlemen are as different as Neptune and Uranus, martinis and highballs, Titleist and Callaway, Donzis and Chris-crafts, night crawlers and helgramites — uh-h-h, right? Well, hold on to your foundation undergarments, folks. Mr. Moore and Mr. Limbaugh may have one thing in common, at least for a few nanoseconds.

Both have been vilified by political parties, then manipulated by political strategists. Republicans reviled Mr. Moore, then claimed he was the terrifying face of the Democratic Party to sway vulnerable voters. Democrats did exactly the same with Mr. Limbaugh, and are still doing it. This all yields marginally good political theater, and of course, convenient fodder for this column and others.

But their commonality ends there. Mr. Moore rejected the idea that he is the Democrats’ Rush Limbaugh, and claimed that the strategy backfired on the GOP.

Thanks to the Republican attacks on me, average Joes and Janes started to listen to what I had to say. … Obama and the Democrats going after Rush is a good thing and will not do for him what the Republican attack plan did for me — namely, the majority of Americans will never be sympathetic to him because they simply don’t agree with him, Mr. Moore says.

The days of using my name as a pejorative are now over. The right wing turned me into an accidental spokesperson for the liberal, majority agenda. Thank you, Republican Party. You helped us elect one of the most liberal senators to the presidency of the United States. We couldn’t have done it without you, Mr. Moore concludes.

Mr. Limbaugh, however, does not appear to be an accidental spokesperson. He has embraced the role of articulator in chief, several steps ahead of Democratic strategists. The canny radio host challenged President Obama to a debate. Now, that would be noteworthy political theater, and maybe pay-per-view TV.

Meanwhile, Mr. Limbaugh continues to offer directionals to semi-coherent GOPers — like who really leads the Democratic Party. It’s not Moveon.org, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or even George Soros, he explains.

It’s David Axelrod with a little Rahm Emanuel thrown in, Mr. Limbaugh says. While everybody’s running around trying to figure out who it is that is the leader of the Republican Party, the real interesting question is, who’s running the Democrat show?

Mitt=Sarah?

Mitt Romney — contender, not has-been — has resurfaced in the quicksand of the GOP.

With a more statesmanlike bearing and some measured criticisms of the Obama administration, Romney suddenly seems like the only adult left standing among the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, said Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe. It’s early, of course — ridiculously early — for anyone except potential candidates to be thinking about the next presidential race. But there’s been plenty of positioning going on in the now-leaderless GOP.

Maybe the aforementioned equation should read Mitt+Sarah=2012.

Quotes of note

I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. — Meghan McCain on Ann Coulter, in the Daily Beast.

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