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NBC and ABC had their White House correspondents Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper cover the Rush Limbaugh brouhaha as a news story when it first broke last week. CBS bided its time and now airs a four-minute essay on the phenomenon by political correspondent Jeff Greenfield that sums up the affair quite neatly. He called the question of whether the radio talkshow host is an authentic political leader of the nation's conservatives a "diverting political tempest."
Greenfield recapitulated Limbaugh's desire for the Obama Administration's platform to fail and the White House's challenge to Republicans to disavow Limbaugh's words. "Republicans charge the White House with unleashing a weapon of mass distraction," quipped Greenfield. Democrats "charge that Republicans are cowed by a commentator who is wishing the nation ill."
Greenfield actually lets the White House off lightly, failing to characterize its loyalty test for conservatives as the disreputable McCarthyite tactic that it is. Instead he called it another "old political tactic, trying to define the other side by its most polarizing figure." Limbaugh is for Democrats, he suggested, what Jane Fonda and Jesse Jackson used to be for Republicans. "Polls suggest that only a small minority of Republicans regard Limbaugh as an important leader of their party. Will that stop Democrats from trying to define him that way? Not likely."
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