Andrew Breitbart of the Washington Times welcomes the new Messiah, and no, it's not Obama.
The mood at the Omni Shoreham Hotel late Saturday afternoon was off the electrical meter when Rush Limbaughtook center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
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Fox News joined C-SPAN in carrying the nearly hour-and-a-half experience, while CNN broke ranks with the "mainstream media" and aired most of the speech as well.
It was an address that could have altered the election had it been delivered early last fall by any Republican presidential candidate.
About midway through Mr. Limbaugh's clear-headed, timely and sometimes rambunctious call to ideological arms, my BlackBerry began buzzing with elated text messages from across the Omni and across the nation.
A friend in Los Angeles e-mailed a one-liner: "Best speech I have ever seen."
My urbane father-in-law, the first person I knew who copped to listening to Mr. Limbaugh and who has been witness to most of the big events of the modern age, called it the "most thrilling thing [he's] seen on TV."
Hugh Hewitt simply titled his post-speech blog post "The Speech, 2009" and wrote: "Rush gave a speech … that will be talked about for years and even decades."
Spokespeople for CPAC said it was the best-received speech in the conference's 36 years. And that included Ronald Reagan, who, by the way, was no rhetorical slouch.
By any measure, Mr. Limbaugh hit the ball out of the park. He may have done so for the team that, these days, many people are rooting against. But the ball did land over the fence.
Breitbart then took a Rush-like swing at the MSM media:
With newspapers long ago judged as far gone on the left and television networks turned off for good by enraged customers, the media has good reason to hate Mr. Limbaugh.
Mr. Limbaugh is the man who is most to blame for their demise. No wonder they bad-mouth him every chance they get.
I'm not sure how much more delusional a pundit can get. The so-called demise of newspapers has absolutely nothing to do with Liimbaugh, and everything to do with the Internet. Is there any sane person who disagrees with that?