What’s greater, his contempt for The One or for the GOP leadership?

Friday morning in a meeting with House and Senate Republican leaders, President Obama basically told them to stop listening to me, that’s not how things get done in Washington. “We can’t let Rush Limbaugh stall the stimulus plan.” Now, this is the great unifier. This is the man that’s going to unify everybody and usher in a new era of bipartisan and love. He’s obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He is more frightened of me than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party. I mean, to tell you the truth, folks, if the president is a little more worried about somebody on the radio than he is about somebody on Capitol Hill… I think Obama wants me to fail, there’s no question, Obama didn’t use the words, but President Obama, by telling you and elected Republicans in Washington not to listen to me because I am not how things get done in Washington, he has said that he wants me to fail. And we know how outraged the Drive-By Media got when they reported that that’s what I said about Obama’s policies…

This is a political play and a lot of people I think are misunderstanding this. “He’s frightened of Limbaugh.” I don’t think he’s afraid of anybody. He’s the president of the United States. This is a political play to marginalize me so that Republicans are afraid to associate with my ideas or any of us. He wants conservatism, mainstream conservatism to be thought of the way you and I think of communism. He wants it thought of as the most foreign, the most offensive, the most extreme manner of belief possible. There are no elected Republicans who are espousing conservatism today, so he’s gotta find somebody who is. I happen to be the most prominent voice, but there are many others, so he focuses on me. This is a Saul Alinsky radical rule number 13: Pick the target, me, isolate it, polarize it. It’s almost like Colin Powell. We’ll kill it, we’ll isolate it, we’ll cut its head off. That’s what’s happening here. This is a purposeful effort to get rid of conservatism as a mainstream way of thinking forever in this country, make no mistake about it.

Yeah, like I said Saturday, I can’t believe Obama “goofed” and took a dig at Limbaugh not realizing that it would leak. He knew it would; the question is, what was he hoping to gain by it? Presumably he’s playing off the media scrutiny of Limbaugh’s comment last week, which even people like Bill Bennett have (tepidly) criticized. An Obama vs. Rush fight becomes an “I hope he succeeds” vs. “I hope he fails” fight, and that’s not a fight Limbaugh can win when Obama’s approval rating’s in the high 60s and people are terrified of an economic catastrophe.

Speaking of which, he also rolled out the Obama/Limbaugh Bipartisan Stimulus Plan this afternoon. Exit question: Who ever thought Rush would back $540 billion in government spending?