Thursday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

I can't believe I'm going to link to Joan Walsh here. After all, Walsh was one of the chief mainstream spokespeople for the Oh Poor Hillary movement (as opposed to the PUMAs, which were utterly batshit crazy) and is usually the poster child for ineffectual liberals on cable news. But in this piece about the Limbaugh foofarah, she's spot on.

Money quote:

The GOP is in free fall, and it just keeps eating its young. Sarah Palin was the first sacrificial lamb, nominated for vice-president before she was ready (if she'll ever be) and then slaughtered (for the time being, at least) by McCain campaign leaders. Bobby Jindal was trotted out to almost certain failure after Obama's speech last weekend. Now Limbaugh has emasculated the brand-new RNC chair, Michael Steele. I'm sure it's an accident all three represented a possible future of the party that wasn't white and male.

So for now the future of the party is an admitted Oxycontin addict who plea-bargained his way out of a drug conviction, who mocks children and Parkinson's sufferers, who exhibits strange sexual fears about our first black president (why is he worried about "grabbing his ankles?"), who was famously detained on a Dominican Republic vacation for carrying Viagra without a prescription? I wouldn't mention that last little issue, except it helps me agree with Tom DeLay that he's a role model for Republicans: Clearly a party that is afraid to stand up to a bully like Limbaugh needs some kind of political Viagra, immediately. It would be nice to see a Republican whose bouts of integrity and courage lasted more than four hours.