Now comes Newsweek’s Howard Fineman with the same old line from the Obama White House:

Right now there are two RNCs here in Washington, side by side. The contrast is instructive.

One, the Republican National Committee, is a clueless self-parody. The other, the (R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney tag team, is providing the real muscle as the Republican right begins to build traction in taking on President Obama and the Democrats.

Should anyone connected to the GOP be asked about this sort of “analysis,” the response should be laughter, noting especially that it appears as part of the New Newsweek, re-invented as a house organ for the Obama administration.

After all, the notion that Rush Limbaugh is the face of the GOP is pushed by Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. The lapdog media immediately took up the meme, even though just 11% of GOP voters say the conservative radio commentator is the party’s leader. (Similarly, the Democrats have been trying to brand the GOP as the party of fmr. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and fmr. VPOTUS Dick Cheney for at least a month.) When this first came up, Ace made this observation:

[T]he media controls the public discourse. This is an issue because they want it to be an issue, and they want it to be an issue because… well, guess. Hint: It’s not because it helps the conservative cause.

Ace also notes — with emphatic profanity — that it is merely an attempt to keep the Right fighting among itself, rather than focusing on the Left.

The Democratic campaign is easy to figure out — Limbaugh, Gingrich and Cheney all perform valuable roles for the Right, but they generally do so as pitbulls, not as the face of a party trying to appeal to a majority of Americans, including a generally apolitical middle that can be turned off by more aggressive figures.

Thus, Fineman is simply carrying water for Obama, Axelrod and Gibbs to even suggest that GOP chairman Michael Steele should be playing the role of a pitbull. His job is to try to present the GOP position without making himself the issue — and to raise money for the party. It turns out that the real RNC is doing pretty well at fundraising — so much so that Obama is having to take time from pushing his left-wing agenda to shake his moneymaker for fatcats in Hollywood and elsewhere.

Indeed, Fineman himself ends up admitting that Obama’s growing problems have little to do with Limbaugh, Gingrich or Cheney:

Barack Obama launched himself to power by promising to rethink – and vastly change – America’s approach to the war. But in the last several weeks, facing the grim realities of his role as commander in chief, he has been forced to backtrack, seeking a political middle course on defense and national-security policy. The president has accepted military tribunals; asserted the state-secrets defense in court cases; and reversed a decision to release photos of interrogation sessions that led to the prosecution of American soldiers. He has maintained parts of the Bush administration’s domestic-surveillance program, and refused to advocate a wholesale review of Bush-era polices on interrogation.

In other words, reality bites. That reality would be reality, regardless of Limbaugh, Gingrich and Cheney pointing it out — and regardless the lapdog press trying to avoid it. Barack Obama’s problems are Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.

If Republicans had spent the last eight years telling the establishment media that the DNC was led by Keith Olbermann, Dick Gephardt and Al Gore, the media would have collectively guffawed. Accordingly, any Republican getting questioned about Limbaugh, Gingrich or Cheney should laugh at the questioner. Indeed, any “journalist” asking such questions should be mercilessly mocked as a mindless propaganda tool for Barack Obama and David Axelrod. Such people are an embarrassment to journalism and deserve to be embarrassed.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
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