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Who Will Tell The Childen That Limbaugh Isn't Widely Admired?

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jerry Taylor has a post on the Corner that's another great window into the style of conservative movement thought:

There's nothing strange or mysterious, Victor, about President Obama's political assualts on Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and other radio voices on the Right. The administration hopes that it can convince the public that these guys are the leaders of the GOP at the moment. Since these guys are thought to be relatively unpopular with non-movement Americans, this holds all sorts of political promise.

I love the delicate formulation of the last sentence: Guys like Limbaugh are thought to be relatively unpopular with non-movement Americans. In fact, they're known to be extremely unpopular with Americans as a whole. Limbaugh has a 19 percent favorable rating (versus 40 percent unfavorable), including 14 percent favorability among independents and 7 percent among Democrats. That doesn't make Limbaugh bad, but it does make him unpopular. This sort of casual abuse of language can tell you a lot about the state of a movement.

--Jonathan Chait