Take me to your leader

Who is the leader of the Republican Party?

After CNN and Fox carried Rush Limbaugh's CPAC speech live, in full, and without commercial interruption on Saturday, February 28, Rahm Emanual was just pointing out the obvious when, on Meet the Press the following morning, he called El Rushbo Gigante the "voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party". But is he? Nate Silver believes that the GOP has no leader at the moment, which is why the porcine radio host and RNC chairman Michael Steel have been butting heads lately. Needless to say, Kathleen "K-PAX" Parker is still dreamy about Mitt Romney.

People who deny that Rushbo is the leader of the GOP point to the fact that he is "just a talk radio host". He is a talk radio host, but he's not just a talk radio host. He is the godlike authority figure of millions of dittoheads. At Rush's mere word of command, the dittoheads can, and will, rise up and inundate anyone Rush targets with hostile emails, phone calls, faxes, and even IMs and tweets for all I know. That's why any Republican who criticizes The Bloated One quickly backs down. The dittoheads are actually the backbone of the modern Republican Party: angry white men suffering from relative deprivation who hate women and minorities. Rush knows this, and the rest of the GOP leadership knows he knows it. That's the source of his power, and that's why Rush Limbaugh really is the leader of the Republican Party.