His conclusion, after a brief CPAC recap and ode to my beloved boss: Not at all like one, very much like the other. I wonder where Rush critic-in-chief David Frum would come down on that question. Both Hitler and Malcolm X were, after all, “saturated with race consciousness”:

The same applies to Rush’s yearning for a domestic failure for President Obama. His wish sounds (and will certainly be made to sound) like a wish for more economic hardship, more bankruptcies, more layoffs, more foreclosures. Nor is Limbaugh content to offer that wish for disaster only in his own name. He added in a broadcast last Friday, “The dirty little secret …is that every Republican in the country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so.” Those words too will be tossed into the teeth of every Republican in an economically hard-pressed district. “You won’t admit you want the recession to be worse – but Rush Limbaugh admitted it for you.”

Limbaugh explained at CPAC that he has some reserved private meaning to his words. He means only that he wishes the president’s harmful program to be rejected in Congress – or in some other way prevented from going into effect. But that’s not what the listener of the Limbaugh radio program hears, and frankly, I don’t think that Limbaugh’s CPAC explanation is precisely accurate. When Rush goes on to say that the only reason Republicans refrain from openly wishing for disaster is their fear of challenging a black-skinned president, as he again and again does, he is revealing that there is something more going on here than a mere call for more economic individualism. Limbaugh’s wishes for Obama’s failure are saturated with race consciousness – a race consciousness that Limbaugh (again falsely) attributes to the whole Republican Party. And he’ll be believed on this too.

Reid’s already pushing the “Republicans want Obama to fail” meme, in fact. I don’t think Zo addresses the subject directly, but I can’t be sure — my head’s always spinning after I watch one of his clips. Enjoy.