I joked last night on Twitter that liking The One’s speech could be the new RINO litmus test. (Chris Christie flunked!) From this afternoon’s Rush:

“Fox Loved it,” he said. “The Fox All Stars, when this was done, were slobbering over the speech. It was predictable. They were slobbering for the predictable reasons – it as smart, it was articulate…It was everything the educated, ruling class wants their leaders to be and sound like.”

Limbaugh parsed the speech in detail, finding in it the same themes that conservatives have been complaining about all week, namely, a call for “civility” that is code for an attempt to muzzle conservative media.

“We had a speech last night where essentially the people of this country were commanded to change the way they are behaving because of events like this,” he said.

Not the first time recently that he and Kraut have clashed. Remember when Limbaugh called him out for criticizing Palin and DeMint after they backed O’Donnell over Castle? I can’t help worrying, my friends, that the primaries shall result in a Great Cleaving among the heroes of the base, with people like Rush and Beck on one side and Krauthammer and Christie on the other. What happens then? Can the dreaded “RINO” label be avoided, or must one side necessarily bear the scarlet “R”?

Two clips for you, the first via the Daily Caller of Krauthammer’s response to Rush on this evening’s Bret Baier show and the other of the panel’s effusive praise of The One’s speech last night. You already know where I stand on the latter, but then, the scarlet “R” has been branded on my forehead for ages.