If "El Rushbo" Has a Heart Attack, the Repubbys will be

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rudderless. There's no "there" there.

Commentary by Margaret Carlson

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Rush is wrong.

There, I said it. It wasn’t so hard.

Not for me, anyway. If I were Katie Couric I wouldn’t be so foolish. Rush Limbaugh could feast for a week on a big network anchor like her. And if I were a Republican officeholder, forget it. Anyone who dares to quibble with Rush’s wish that President Barack Obama should fail has to publicly grovel, as did the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele.

After remarking on CNN last weekend that Rush can be “ugly” and “incendiary,” Steele contritely said he didn’t mean to question the “leadership” of Rush, for whom he has “enormous respect.” He had just been a “bit inarticulate.”

Inarticulate is one thing El Rushbo isn’t. He fills the air for three hours a day, attracts more than 20 million listeners a week, by his count, and was a headliner at a convention of conservatives in Washington last weekend.

Dressed like Johnny Cash and bouncing up and down as he gave his “first ever address to the nation,” he generated excitement bordering on adoration. He certainly got more juice than Mitt Romney, who has tried hard to woo Rush’s audience and won the convention’s straw vote with 20 percent.

That doesn’t make Limbaugh king of his party, but it does make him a kingmaker, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President George W. Bush, who celebrated Rush’s birthday at the White House with a chocolate cake decorated with a microphone, would attest.