David “The Other Limbaugh” Limbaugh writes that since Democrats were right about Iraq after all, it means they were actually kind of negative-wrong, which is sort of like being wrong in two directions at once, so therefore the Republicans were right, and we must attack Iran.
This is one of the weirdest arguments I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. It’s like Limbaugh’s fax machine spat out the weekly directive, ‘Help push attack on Iran!’ and when he was done citing the usual false charges and scare items (nukes, madman, evil, Hitler, imminent threat, etc), he sighed and was overcome by that weary self-insight that both he and his brother seem, sometimes, to be freighted with.
No really, they do. Consider this passage from a David Limbaugh column of February, 2003:
Some have suggested the conservatives’ hawkishness toward Saddam Hussein can be traced to their search, since the end of the Cold War, for new bogeymen to replace the Soviet Communists as the focus of their aggressive propensities. They’re wrong.
If you change one word at the end (to They’re “right,” or “smart,” or “teh roxxor”), you have a cogent and factual statement of rare directness that would’ve been difficult to arrive at by accident. (The preceding link features Francis Fukuyama making that very admission about the Cold War and bogeymen.) In truth, American conservatism is unable to exist without a constant parade of threats and enemies, without claiming a perpetual state of siege in which America is at all times imperiled by a uniquely evil and powerful adversary.
Limbaugh might be a professional barnyard rube, but like any other well-connected conservative, he knows the hollowness and ideological panic that took hold following the collapse of Soviet communism, the longing for a “new Pearl Harbor,” and the consummate rise of neoconservatism as the dominant force in American foreign policy.
The late-period Saddam Hussein was just a more ridiculous threat than most, and required an extra degree of bosh and flim-flammery, especially from pundits like the Limbaughs. But watch now with sympathy as David tries valiantly to blame the failure in Iraq on unspecified ‘Democrats,’ and seemingly fails to convince even himself. This represents a watermark in middle-lowbrow Republican opinion, circa late 2006 — it’s the best (as in, objectively the worst) that a true huckster like Limbaugh can come up with at this historical moment, even with the wider-than-average latitude that he enjoys for manipulating his readership.
