Rush Limbaugh

But that never came to pass, and surely you remember why: The Republicans who won in ’94 mistakenly believed that Americans had ratified their right-wing philosophy, when voters had simply been using the GOP as a protest vehicle. When 1996 rolled around, the economy was stronger (thank you, 1993 budget), the Republicans’ brand was tarnished (voters came to loathe the Gingrich Congress), and Clinton was again able to charm the country with his sunny demeanor.

The story of Clinton’s first term, in other words, is the story of the difference between midterm and presidential elections. You might think Limbaugh, having lived and broadcasted through it, would appreciate this. Apparently not.

On his radio show on Tuesday, he took after me for something I’d said on “Hardball” on Monday — namely, that “the party of Sarah Palin, the party of Rush Limbaugh can win in 2010, but that same party can’t turn around and win in 2012.” Limbaugh played a clip of me (the full video from “Hardball” is below) and then replied:

This guy is supposedly some brainiac at Salon.com. I don’t know how the Republicans can take victory in 2012 (SK: I think he meant 2010) as a vindication of their strategy when there isn’t one. What’s happening here is, Mr. Kornacki, is that independents and Democrats are running as far away and as fast as they can from Obama. And Obama’s still going to be there in 2012. (Laughs) He’s still going to be there. What this guy’s trying to say, ‘You Republicans, don’t think conservatism’s going to win for you, ‘cause that’s not going to win for you….’

First, he’s wrong: The GOP clearly has a strategy right now, and it’s evident with every Senate filibuster, every “no” vote on healthcare, and every denunciation of the stimulus. Today’s Republican Party is treating the Obama administration just like the Republican Party of the 1993 and 1994 treated the Clinton White House. The strategy is to say no to everything and to benefit from the buyer’s remorse nature of midterm elections, which (as I noted on “Hardball”) should be particularly apparent this fall, with joblessness near or above 10 percent.

Second, I’m well aware that Obama’s still going to be there in 2012. And it’s exactly why I’m so bullish on his reelection prospects. If recent presidential history has established anything, it’s that the political turmoil Obama is now enduring was essentially inevitable. There have been five presidents in the modern, “permanent campaign” era of American politics, and Obama is the third to reach this same low point in Year Two of their first terms. Clinton and Ronald Reagan were the others, and both, not at all coincidentally, rebounded to win second terms.

Does Rush not remember that Republicans were gloating in 1994 about how independents and even some Democrats were abandoning Clinton just like they’re gloating about Obama today? And just like Democrats in 1982 and 1983 were crowing that independents and even some Republicans were fleeing Reagan?

The Clinton and Reagan comebacks provide very important lessons for those who would write Obama off right now — and for those who would read the GOP’s bright 2010 prospects as much more than a predictable reaction to double-digit unemployment and single-party control of the White House and Congress.  (I wrote much more about the parallels between ’82, ’94 and the present day — and why they portend well for Obama’s ’12 prospects — here.)

The point I was making on “Hardball” is that the GOP is doing itself no long-term favors by blindly rejecting and obstructing Obama and by defining itself as Rush Limbaugh’s party. It won’t hurt them much in 2010. Midterm elections, by nature, just aren’t about the party that’s out of power. But presidential years are different. And, especially if the economy is showing signs of life, the GOP is positioning itself to pay dearly in 2012 — just as Bob Dole paid dearly in ’96 and Walter Mondale did in ’84.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out one more thing that Rush screwed up. That thing about me being a “brainiac” — well, as more than a few friends have already made sure to tell me, he’s wrong there, too.

On Wednesday, the day after yet another debate in which Romney turned in a strong performance and his rivals failed to lay a glove on him, Limbaugh insisted that “Romney is not a conservative. He’s not, folks. You can argue with me all day long on that, but he isn’t.” He pronounced himself thoroughly unsatisfied with Romney’s efforts to distinguish his own Massachusetts healthcare law from President Obama’s and suggested Romney wouldn’t uphold conservative principles as president in the face of pressure from the liberal media and “Democrat members of Congress.”

Then yesterday he warned that Romney and his establishment allies are seeking to move up the dates of early primary contests because “they know that he’s vulnerable” to attacks from a right in an extended campaign. There’s not actually anything to Limbaugh’s claim; New Hampshire’s (almost certainly empty) threat to move its primary to December is rooted in the state political establishment’s bipartisan desire to preserve its first-in-the-nation status. But by hinting at a sneaky plot, Limbaugh simply reinforced the doubts that he’s been trying to stir. He also went after “RomneyCare” again, ridiculing Romney’s standard talking points on the matter. “Romney saying, ‘If Obama had just talked to me, I could have spared him,’ is like Bill O’Reilly saying, ‘If Al Gore had just come on The Factor he’d be president today,’” Limbaugh cracked.

The immediate significance of this is obvious. Limbaugh is the most listened-to conservative radio host in America, with an audience that includes no shortage of Romney-skeptical Republicans. So the more Limbaugh pushes against him, the harder it will be for Romney to shatter the 25-30 percent ceiling that he’s faced all year.

If there’s good news for Romney, it’s that Limbaugh doesn’t seem to have a favorite among his rivals. He’s expressed disappointment in Perry (“I don’t know that he knows yet how to run for president, run for the office of president”), and while he has flirted with Herman Cain, Limbaugh was also quick to attack him for his initial response to the recent story about a racially insensitive word that was at some point visible at Perry’s hunting camp. Limbaugh’s dilemma mirrors that of every anti-Romney Republican: With Perry fading, there’s no obviously credible alternative in the field for them.

What may be more interesting about Limbaugh’s crusade is what it reveals about the psychology of the Obama-era right. You probably wouldn’t know it from what he’s saying now, but Limbaugh pretty much endorsed Romney when he ran four years ago. The big moment came as Romney was fighting for survival, fresh off a near-miss in Florida and needing a big day to prevent John McCain from running away with the GOP race. Limbaugh announced to his listeners that at the start of the campaign he hadn’t believed that any of the candidates represented the three legs of the conservative stool stool (national security, social issues and fiscal policy), but that he’d changed his mind:

I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney.

The important thing to note here is that Limbaugh said this even though RomneyCare and the individual mandate at the heart of it had been on the books in Massachusetts for nearly two years.

It’s funny when you think about it. Limbaugh is currently pleading with his listeners not to be fooled by Romney’s claims that his law is different than Obama’s. On yesterday’s show, he played clips of one of Romney’s healthcare advisers explaining why the laws are essentially identical, then told his audience, “This issue is not going to go away.” But Romney’s law was well-known in 2008, when Romney didn’t exactly shy away from promoting it, and yet it didn’t keep Limbaugh from pronouncing Romney the embodiment of conservatism.

This illustrates perfectly how irrational and hysterical much of the right’s response to Obama’s presidency has been. The individual mandate is actually a concept with deep conservative roots, one that numerous congressional Republicans touted as an alternative to Bill Clinton’s reform proposal in 1994. This is why Romney had no trouble finding a representative of the Heritage Foundation to join him on stage when he signed his law in 2008. And it’s why that law just wasn’t a big deal to Limbaugh and most other conservative opinion-shapers back in 2008 — and why it only became a problem for Romney when Obama embraced it at the national level.

It’s not that hard to imagine an alternate universe in which Romney somehow won the White House in 2008, then muscled through a national version of his Massachusetts law — with Republican support. But it was Obama who won, and when he tried to do the same thing, virtually every Republican in America accused him of destroying capitalism. As Jonathan Bernstein put it, it seems that to the right the Affordable Care Act isn’t socialism but that Obamacare is.