Rove Backs Off O’Donnell Criticism After Limbaugh Declares He’s ‘In Charge’ Of Saying Who’s Electable

By Ben Armbruster

In the early days of the Obama presidency, the Republican Party was so bereft of a leading voice that hate radio host Rush Limbaugh had to fill the vacuum. His reign was so powerful that Republicans dared not cross him, and if they did, they would inevitably beg for forgiveness shortly thereafter.

Karl Rove — who recently guest-hosted Limbaugh’s radio show — appears to be the latest GOPer to bow down before Rush. Rove has taken considerable heat from the right for attacking Delaware’s newly-minted GOP U.S. Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell, saying she’s a bad candidate who has “serious character problems.” Yesterday, Limbaugh joined in:

“This is about conservatives taking back the Republican Party. … Who the hell are they, anyway, to anoint or disanoint somebody as electable or not electable?” Rush Limbaugh asked Wednesday. “I’m in charge of that! … That’s always been my purview and nothing’s changed.” [...]

“Look at the petulant attitude. ‘Screw you – Christine O’Donnell wins, she’s on her own. You’re on your own,’” Limbaugh said. [...]

“We’re going to throw in the towel here?” Limbaugh rhetorically asked his close ally, who spent a day filling in on his program this summer. “Why not fight for it?”

Rove, who just last night criticized O’Donnell for her tax troubles, today tried to paint himself as an O’Donnell supporter. First, Rove bemoaned being called an “establishment Republican,” pleading, “I’m a huge Tea Party fan!” He then reversed course on O’Donnell. “She’s got a shot to win!” Rove said, claiming that he “endorsed her the other night.” Watch it:

Perhaps Limbaugh is again taking up the mantle as the GOP’s de facto leader, considering the Party still has no ideas, and it appears he no longer thinks highly of its “architect.”

Obama bumper sticker fuels violent political road rage in Tennessee.

By Faiz Shakir After picking up his 10-year old daughter from school yesterday afternoon, Nashville resident Mark Duren was driving home when he was suddenly and intentionally rammed from behind by Harry Weisiger. Enraged at the sight of Duren’s Obama bumper sticker, Weisiger gave Duren “the bird” and then hit him from behind, leading to a violent series of events. Nashville’s WKRN reports:

“He pointed at the back of my car,” Duren said, “the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute.”

But it didn’t end there.

Duren told News 2 that Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign.

Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, “I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me.”

Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car.

He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV.

Duren said, “He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk.”

Watch a video of the report:

Weisiger has been charged with felony reckless endangerment.

GOP congressional candidates say Obama and his voters are the biggest threats to national security.

By Zaid Jilani One of the right’s biggest electoral targets for 2010 is Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), who recently condemned the Senate as “spineless” for being too hesitant in passing clean energy legislation and has been threatened with being burned in effigy by the local tea party movement. This weekend, seven Republicans vying for the GOP congressional nomination to run against Perriello debated a variety of issues at a forum sponsored by the Lynchburg Tea Party. At one point, the candidates were all asked what they viewed as the primary national security threat to the United States. One candidate, Jim McKelvey, said it was the Obama administration; another candidate, Laurence Verga, said it was the voters who elected Obama, who he described as motivated by “political correctness run awry“:

Earlier, in response to a question about the No. 1 threat to national security, McKelvey got a round of cheers by saying, “The present administration is the biggest threat.”

Verga said the biggest threat is the Americans who voted the Obama administration into office. “That was political correctness gone awry,” Verga said. “There is a global jihad against the United States,” Verga said, “and we need to stand up to Iran with our allies and stop what they are doing.”

Reflecting on the debate, blogger Waldo Jaquith, who lives in Perriello’s district, writes, “Let’s just take a moment to consider that Verga meant by that. ‘Political correctness’ is conservative-speak for ’supporting minorities.’ There are many types of minorities, of course, but President Obama is only one kind: black. So what Laurence Verga is saying is that Obama is only president because he’s black. 69,456,897 Americans—52.9% of us—tossed national security aside because we supported President Obama over Sen. John McCain merely because Obama is a black man and, therefore, not a real American, so he can be known to be secretly undermining national security. Obama lacks other qualifications, but 48.29% of Fifth District voters are such morons that we voted for the man because we are, at heart, racists. Verga is not a racist, of course, he’s just keeping it real.”

GOP Senate candidate compares embryonic stem cell research to ‘what the Nazis did to the Jews.’

By Zaid Jilani In March 2009, President Obama issued an executive order that removed President Bush’s limitations on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, ending the tragic politicization of the issue that existed under the former president. GOP Senate candidate Curtis Coleman (R-AR), who is running against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), blasted Obama’s decision in an interview yesterday, comparing embryonic stem cell research to “what the Nazis did to the Jews“:

On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order, removing barriers to responsible research involving human stem cells.

Coleman, however, has different view on things.

“Embryonic stem cell research is taking the concept of taking a life and using it to conduct experiments so we can temporarily extend somebody else’s life. Let me tell you what I just described. I just described what the Nazis did to the Jews in the death camps of WWII,” says Coleman.