In that sense, I think he is supportive of the stimulus because he understands it’s absolutely necessary.  Many intelligent Republicans feel the same way.  They’re all for stimulus when it helps banks and CEOs, but suddenly become principled defenders of the free market when it comes to unionized auto workers.  Not a single Republican wanted to make CEO pay at the big three “comparable” to foreign auto CEO pay; only the disparity in worker pay aroused their noble principled objections.

Conservative outrage artist entertainers like Limbaugh may, I’d speculate, not understand that the principles they are advocating for are in fact cynical poses and so will continue to support destructive principles even when intelligent Republican legislators give up the charade.  One thing we can say about the outrage artists:  they’re accountable to their listeners, who may genuinely consistently believe in non-internvention by the government in the market, which is why they were so outraged about the bailout — and will be outraged about the coming stimulus package.  Gingrich is way too smart to listen to those consistent conservatives.

You (and millions of people like you) want Obama to succeed, and so does Newt Gingrich. This is an awesome achievement.

That said, I think that one has to be careful in claiming that Obama is synthesizing anything particular, say me and Gingrich.  Obama’s stimulus, though some (like Krugman) claim it doesn’t go nearly far enough, is even as it stands in clear violation of the principles that Gingrich has claimed in the past to passionately believe in.  Gingrich wholly supports libertarian conservatism and has blurbed Grover Norquist’s Leave Us Alone: Getting Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.

Perhaps Gingrich has changed his mind about his economic principles — which is fine by me — or perhaps he is basically admitting that he understands that his own previously strongly held public views are in fact harmful to the economy and that given the nature of the financial crisis (rich people are hurting!) the jig is up; his ideology has been too irreparably exposed as a fraud.  In any case, I don’t see much synthesis going on here.  Gingrich is basically just caving in to the idea of a stimulus, against his own stated ideology.

Limbaugh, on the other hands, still seems to want to maintain that Obama is some kind of crazy socialist redistributor and perhaps even agrees with conservatives who believe — as George Will has argued — that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.

While he is not a serious politician you can’t discount the self-described dittoheads who take what he says chapter and verse and vote accordingly.

Is it not appropriate to treat Limbaugh as a real political actor?

This idea that we shouldn’t discuss Limbaugh openly — is this because Limbaugh’s influence on our politics is insignificant and not worth analyzing? Or is this because we think that by ignoring Limbaugh, we can somehow make him go away? Limbaugh would love for us to ignore him, because that way he can stir up huge numbers of conservative voters without facing any pushback from liberals, while conservative politicians lull us into a sense of complacency. I think it’s willful ignorance to pretend that Rush Limbaugh isn’t a very real force in American politics — far more influential than most New York Times columnists. Am I wrongheaded to discuss him, or do we just find it degrading to include him in our political discourse because he’s too lowbrow?

(I hate treating him as a real political actor but) Limbaugh would claim that he would love to see people’s lives better off but that Obama’s policies will lead to people being worse off.  Anyone who (i) approves of the goals of a president and who (ii) believes that the president has hit upon a reasonable way to achieve those goals would be irrational not to support the president.

Gingrich seems to be saying that he approves of Obama’s goals and that he’s come upon a decent way to solve the problems and that therefore Republicans should be wary of intentionally sabotaging the president just to make him look bad at a PR level (a technique Gingrich himself helped perfect).  I assume Limbaugh agrees with the goal of “improving” people’s lives — at least in his public statements — but thinks that Obama’s strategy for doing so would not be successful.  What Limbaugh is saying is “I’m not trying to sabotage the president’s agenda; I really believe what I’m saying when I criticize him.”  More locally, Limbaugh may have different priorities.  He may prefer to torture people he designates as terrorists over not torturing them, and so regards the goal of ending torture as undesirable.

I’m willing to take Limbaugh at his word and to say that his priorities are all screwed up and highly damaging and destructive to the future of the country.

I certainly take your point that you may believe a president’s approach is wrong, and so you hope the president will “fail” to enact policies that will be bad for the country. But that’s not what Gingrich was getting at when he said, “You’d have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.” Gingrich didn’t mean you’d have to be irrational not to support bank bailouts and auto bailouts and massive government spending. Gingrich didn’t mean you’d have to be irrational not to want more government regulation, more government involvement in health care, a repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Gingrich meant you’d have to be irrational not to want Obama to be a more successful president than Bush was, by the most basic measures we think of: are people’s lives better off or worse? Are we moving in the right direction, or the wrong direction?

To describe Bush as a successful president is to suggest that Bush’s goal was to create the situation we have now — where unemployment is likely to hit double digits, where our military is stretched to the breaking point in a war that most Americans believe is unnecessary and most humans think is immoral, to be so unpopular that the most devestating attack you can level at your political opponent is to compare them to Bush.

A distinction can be made between fighting for what you think is best for the country — which means expressing your views forcefully even when the president disagrees with them — and fighting to politically destroy the president because you want him to be an overall failure.

I would argue that there is no such thing as “failing as a president” in some overall sense.  Bush did not fail as a president because of bad luck or Democratic opposition, but because he lived in a conservative fantasy world and ideological bubble that made him think he could do anything he wanted without consequences.  I do wish Bush had been more “successful,” in a sense:  by not pursuing his destructive agenda or by being a “failure” at implementing his policies.

My preferred alternative to an “unsuccessful” Iraq invasion isn’t a “successful” Iraq invasion, but no Iraq invasion.  To the degree that there are elements of our political situation not really related to Bush’s policy preferences, it’s incoherent for me to say that I wish Bush success.  If, for example, the state of the economy is genuinely independent of Bush’s policies, then what I’m ‘wishing’ for and working for is the success of the economy in general.  I would want to be even more emphatic not to attribute the random situation of the economy to a political leader.  I have no particular desire to see someone get credit for something he doesn’t deserve.

What Gingrich is implicitly saying is that he thinks Obama is taking the right approach.   When he says he wants Obama to succeed, then he’s also saying that he thinks Obama’s approach might plausibly lead to success.  If he thought that Obama’s approach was going to be counterproductive — like those Republicans who incorrectly claim that the New Deal prolonged the depression — then Gingrich should say, “I hope for Obama to succeed by not prolonging this economic crisis with his misguided and destructive stimulus.”

Lee, what about the distinction I was trying to draw above between one’s overall goals and one’s strategy? Are you saying that because you have ideological differences with Bush, you’re actually HAPPY that Bush’s presidency was a failure? Tell that to the million-plus Americans who lost their jobs in the last quarter. Tell that to the parents of soldiers who lost their lives fighting in an unnecessary, counterproductive war. You may want Bush to fail at privatizing social security or some other specific agenda item, but saying that you want Bush to fail as a president is like saying you want you want our political leaders to be misguided and ineffectual. As I said in my post, Limbaugh is entitled to his opinion about Obama’s policies. But is it responsible for any American to want their president to fail?