Why So Sad, Rush Limbaugh? Republicans Scored A Touchdown Today [Op-Ed]

As you might have expected, Rush Limbaugh is not happy with how everything turned out on Capitol Hill today. But why? Contrary to what the media would have you believe, the GOP actually scored a big win today.

On his radio show this afternoon, Limbaugh criticized the Senate deal being worked out between Democrats and Republicans right now to avoid a bigger government shutdown, and bemoaned what this perceived surrender means for the GOP.

He said that they basically folded, and “agreed to not oppose anything” because there’s just too much pressure to be “Democrat-lite” and distance themselves from the Tea Party.

“I can’t tell you what the Republicans think they’re going to achieve, except this. I really do believe that some of this is oriented toward driving the conservatives out of the party,” Limbaugh said.

In addition to jettisoning their conservative base in order to be “liked by Democrats,” Limbaugh said that the GOP effectively destroyed themselves as a viable political party.

“I was trying to think if ever in my life, I could remember any major political party being so irrelevant. I have never seen it. I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican party has been doing. There has not been any serious opposition…against what’s happening in this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to try to make everyone like them and what they’ve ended up doing is creating one of the greatest political disasters I’ve ever seen in my lifetime…I was pondering if I could ever remember…a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist, for all intents and purposes.”

Limbaugh is patently wrong on all accounts. He’s actually as wrong as the disingenuous left-leaning media who have not ceased showering each other with champagne since the deal was struck around noon.

The measure passed to re-open the government isn’t a Republican defeat just because Obamacare will go on unscathed. It’s actually part of a long-term conservative win, at least for this political cycle, which curbs excessive spending and reigns in entitlements.

Still with me? I’ll explain.

The deal developed will re-open the government until Jan. 15, extend the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, and includes backpay for furloughed federal workers. It also doesn’t touch Obamacare. This sounds like a GOP loss, doesn’t it?

Not quite.

Part of the deal struck includes a requirement that keeps Democrats to sequestration levels of spending. Remember that the left hasn’t significantly succeeded in raising taxes throughout the Obama administration, and the sequester forced them into $1.2 trillion in “arbitrary” cuts over 10 years.

This seems to be all that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ever wanted. He boasted that by “signing a CR at sequester levels, the President would be endorsing a level of spending that wipes away all the increases he and Congressional Democrats made while they were in charge and returns us to a pre-2008 level of discretionary spending.”

Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed these sentiments after the deal was struck today, saying that keeping Democratic spending at sequestration levels was “a top priority for me and my Republican colleagues throughout this debate.”

“And it’s been worth the effort,” he said.

Even House Speaker John Boehner didn’t seem that broken up about losing the Obamacare battle when he conceded defeat today. He fought a losing battle for his constituents, and surprise, he lost. Now he has Democrats working for him to help him keep his job. Pretty cushy, if you ask me.

For Daily Beast, Peter Beinart also ridiculed the idea that a GOP loss on Obamacare amounted to a complete, bass-ackwards surrender.

“That’s like saying that the neighborhood bully has caved because after demanding your shoes and bike, he’s once again willing to accept merely your lunch money,” he wrote.

So take heart, Limbaugh! Obamacare has a few challenges yet to face (namely, onerous public support), but the whole ridiculous-spending-into-our-children’s-future thing is finally tilting in the right direction.