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Defending himself against a growing ad boycott, Rush Limbaugh told his audience on Monday that the companies that have defected from his radio program have decided “they don’t want you or your business anymore.”

“So be it,” he said, reassuring his audience that the advertisers would be replaced.

Mr. Limbaugh, on his program Monday, asserted that the advertisers that had stepped away “have profited handsomely from you” in the past.

Then he said bluntly, “We’ll replace them.”

“Advertising is a business decision, it’s not a social one. Only the leftists try to use extortion, pressure, threats to silence opposing voices. We don’t do that." http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/as-advertisers-recoil
-limbaugh-says-so-be-it/

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A second radio station said it was dropping Rush Limbaugh's radio program Tuesday, calling the conservative host's incendiary comments last week about a law student "unacceptable."

Pittsfield, Massachusetts radio station 1420 AM WBEC, one of hundreds of stations nationwide that carry "The Rush Limbaugh Show," dropped the program from its lineup, according to station general manager Peter Barry. He said the decision was made Monday, and was based upon comments Limbaugh made last week regarding Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, "which we found unacceptable."

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Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

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March 3, 2009. So Michael Steele predictably has apologized to entertainer Rush Limbaugh for his comments to entertainer D.L. Hughley over the weekend. No word on whether Steele is now willing to concede that Limbaugh is in fact the de facto leader of the party (even if Steele is the de jure leader).

A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as "losers." With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we're cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush's every rancorous word—we'll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Which brought to mind another way of measuring the power of Limbaugh: Is there anyone on the left who could so quickly cow Kaine or other elected Democratic officials in the way that Limbaugh has Steele?

I don't think there is. We ask in Public Opinion today whether Limbaugh is the Michael Moore of the right, but if Kaine got into a fight with Moore, can you imagine him doing a 180 within days and publicly self-flagellating for stepping out of line? Suppose Kaine or another prominent Democrat dissed Markos Moulitsas and the DailyKos crowd. Does anyone think that Markos has the juice to force what Josh Marshall aptly calls Maoist self-criticism from defiant party leaders? Could Keith Olbermann? Rachel Maddow?

We can quibble about whether Limbaugh "leads" the Republican Party, but know this: He currently has a role in American politics that is unmatched by anyone else on either side of the political spectrum. And Republicans should carefully consider whether they want that sort of power vested in one unaccountable person. (And whether they could do anything about it anyway.) http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/03/03/stee
le-republicans-bow-to-limbaugh--is-there-a-rush-of-the-left, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) made headlines when he criticized Rush Limbaugh for hammering Republican leadership for their pliability on massive Democratic spending plans. He scoffed at the idea that Rush provides leadership, telling Politico that Rush and other commentators were merely “living well” and not having to worry about what was best for the party. Today, Gingrey is singing another tune entirely, attempting to clear up the “misunderstanding”:

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Regardless of what yesterday’s headline may have read, I never told Rush to back off. I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent.
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Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience. Everyday, millions and millions of Americans—myself included—turn on their radios and televisions to listen to what they have to say, and we are inspired by their words and by their determination. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/01/28/gingrey-to-rush-im-sorry-so-sorr
y/ 2009 presented Limbaugh with a "Defender of the Constitution" award. The presenter stated, "The only way we will be successful is if we listen to Rush Limbaugh!"

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It's not only conservatives who are listening to Limbaugh, it's also the Republican party in particular. In the party's case, however, the members are both attentive and fearful. Consider the recent apology of Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele (shown above with Limbaugh). In an interview that aired Saturday night, Steele told CNN's D.L. Hughley, "Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”

Limbaugh lambasted Steele: “So I am an entertainer and I have 20 million listeners because of my great song and dance routine. Michael Steele, you are head of the Republican National Committee. You are not head of the Republican party. Tens of millions of conservatives and Republicans have nothing to do with the Republican National Committee…and when you call them asking for money, they hang up on you."

Steele then backed down: "“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. …There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” http://www.theliberalcurmudgeon.com/2009/03/republicans-kowtow-to-part
y-boss-rush.html else outside politics do we know who can do this:

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In an UNPRECEDENTED move, Speaker John, “Orange Julius” Bohener caves to Limbaugh’s call to refuse the President’s request to hold a joint session to deliver his jobs plan Wednesday, September 7.

“What he (BOEHNER) oughta do is say ‘no’ and offer September 6th, September the 8th, September the 9th, September the 10th…whatever, but he doesn’t get September the 7th. He should do this. It’s very simple. He says to the president, ‘you did not consult me before you publicly issued the date. You were obviously trying to disrupt the plans at the Reagan Library. You’re going to have to learn that if you really want to work together as you repeatedly claim, Mr. President, I’m gonna show you how it’s done. Here are the dates that you can have.” http://3chicspolitico.com/2011/09/01/rush-limbaugh-leader-of-the-repub
lican-party-tells-speaker-john-boehner-to-put-the-president-in-his-place-where-are-the-jobs/, all the articles are from the left; because the right would NEVER admit it...if they did, Rush would go after them and they'd have to apologize. Nobody ever said he wasn't reeeely good at what he does; here's an example:

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Rush was on some kind of rant. He began by saying Obama’s approval ratings had declined to 45%. The reason, he said, was that the left had become dissatisfied. Limbaugh never took the next step, however, of saying WHY the left was dissatisfied. Instead, he shifted in mid-paragraph to an anecdote about being picked up at the airport in Boston at 3 AM and having the driver strike up a conversation about the heat.

Apparently, his driver was impressed by the fact that it had been 99 degrees in Boston that day. Limbaugh asked him if that was a record. The driver admitted it was not — that Boston often reached 99 in July.

Limbaugh then went on to talk about all the other stories he had heard about the recent heat wave. He asserted that of all the cities that suffered from the heat, not one had really set a record for temperature. Instead, he informed his driver and his audience, all the records referred to the heat index. The heat index, he said, was invented in 1978, meaning it hadn’t always been there, and had been implemented in 1979. For Rush, it is an artificial standard.

He made special mention of MSNBC, where a panel including Rev.Al Sharpton and Michael Shmerconich made fun of Rush’s attempt to discredit the heat index.

Never mind that both of these people, Sharpton and Limbaugh, have bigger fish to fry than this fight. Or do they?

After listening for about fifteen minutes, I realized that the debunking the heat index argument is Limbaugh’s proxy for the issue of global warming. After all, if there were no records set in July, in a week where the media spoke constantly about heat, then global warming can’t be real either. It’s an artificial construct like the heat index.

In geometry, this kind of reasoning is known as syllogism. if A = B, and B=C, then A = C right?

By the time I got out of the car, I was both deeply respectful of Limbaugh’s ability to lead an audience into a cul-de-sac by just raising his voice and using the inflections commonly associated with reasonable argument, and appalled at how deft all this right wing talk has become. There’s no way even Rachel Maddow with her Rhodes Scholarship can touch this. It is the finely honed rhetoric of religion, in which a reasonable argument is often constructed on a strange (to me) premise. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-boehner-consults-limbaugh-2011-7, even making a joke out of it, Limbaugh himself admits it:

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El Rushbo LOOKS ASKANCE at efforts by a gaggle of GOP big shots to “rebrand” their troubled party. Limbaugh says, in effect: Rebranding? We don’t need no stinking rebranding! I am the brand! http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2009/05/04/rush-limbaugh-remind
s-republican-leaders-that-hes-running-the-party/

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From Rush's own mouth in 2009:

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LIMBAUGH: They think we have a relentless machine that's constantly pounding them. We do actually -- me!" http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/2009/05/04#0025 of these come from as far back as 2009, none from the recent debacle. He's been titular head of the Republican Party for ages, and even the Republicans know it.

There are numerous articles about how some in the Republican Party quietly don't like Rush and fear his influence over the base, but the base itself adores him, and nobody dares stand up to him lest he utilize his power to harm them. I'm not going to look for those articles because most everything on the first three pages of Google is about the recent fuss--the other stuff was easy to find via the dates, 2009, 2010, 2011.

Grover Norquits weilds almost as much power where taxes are concerned, and they're afraid to stand up to HIM as well. It's just the way it is.