Abu Wabu

Writing in the American Spectator, former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord has nailed the story behind last night's unmitigated slaughter of the Obama Democrats, a story that began with Rush Limbaugh's now famous four words: "I hope he fails."

With those words, Limbaugh drew the Obama White House into a two-year public battle in which they employed Saul Alinskey's infamous Rule Number 12 or 13 or whatever:

As Obama and his aides began relentlessly pushing exactly the far-left agenda that Limbaugh so publicly predicted would fail, they decided to bring the hardball of Chicago politics into play: they would intimidate their opponents by making an example of America's number one conservative talk radio star. .

Which is exactly the point where the path to the conservative victory of 2010 began.

A MERE THREE DAYS after Obama took office, Republican congressional leaders were ushered into the White House for their first formal meeting with the new president. Wary of Obama proposals for a massive stimulus bill, with a huge health care bill looming beyond that, they sat quietly as Obama's Limbaugh strategy began to unfold. Borrowing a tactic from Rules for Radicals, the handbook written by Obama's hero the late Chicago radical community activist Saul Alinsky, Obama the one-time community activist become president lectured the astonished GOP leadership, saying pointedly "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." The Republicans were barely out the door before the story leaked, causing a media feeding frenzy as the White House knew it would.

With that, the stage for the entire next two-years was set. The looming battle over the direction of America would be deliberately, willfully cast -- by the White House itself -- as a battle royal between the President of the United States and Rush Limbaugh. The specific tactic to be employed was Rule Number 12 of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Which reads this way:

RULE 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

The Rule 12 signal was flashed by the White House to every Democrat on Capitol Hill along with every Obama ally in the media: the President personally is going to lead the charge against Rush Limbaugh and he was inviting them to join the fray.

Whatever issue was being debated -- the stimulus, health care, immigration, the topic didn't matter -- Rush Limbaugh was to be the highly personalized target of the Obama White House and all of the American Left. They would freeze his image in the public mind in as unfavorable and polarizing a fashion as they could manage. Then Limbaugh would be assaulted repeatedly in the style of Rule 12 as the next two years unfolded.

With the liberal media, the Soros propaganda juggernaut and "sunshine conservatives" on their side, the Obama White House thought it had a winning strategy, but it was Limbaugh who held the upper hand, because he knew something that his attackers had failed to take into account: when you attack Rush Limbaugh, you also attack middle America.

In the drive to target Rush Limbaugh, millions of Americans -- from fellow talk radio stars to Fox News to the vast audience of average Americans -- listened and watched these White House-directed anti-Limbaugh screeds first with amazement, then a growing incredulity which finally gave way to outrage.

Why?

Because all knew at the end of the day that as sure as God made little green apples what began with Rush would end with everyday Americans. You. Your friends. Your neighbors. The barber, the housewife, the independent, the Catholic, Protestant, or Jew and, yes, the law-abiding everyday Muslim. The college student, the entrepreneur, the doctor, the plumber. Americans all -- every one dreaming dreams that somebody in Washington from the President on down was scheming to control, to limit, to regulate, to tax -- and ultimately control to the point of ruin. And sure enough, like clockwork, as the Tea Party burst into existence these average Americans were targeted just as was Rush. Now it wasn't just Rush who was being smeared, the Obama/Pelosi/Reid/liberal media attack machine had turned against these everyday Americans, savaging them as nothing more than a collection of racists, Nazis, and "teabaggers," for resisting their obsession with controlling Americans' every last movement in life while spending the country into trillions of debt as far as the next several generations could see. Americans who had heard Rush predict that the Obama-era would bring an all-out assault on American values realized just short of the nick-of-time not only that he was right, but that it was up to them to stop this assault in its tracks.

And so they did.

Obama, as Rush Limbaugh predicted, has in fact now failed. Nancy Pelosi is out of a job. And thanks to Rush Limbaugh, a new generation of Americans is learning that conservatism is not simply cool -- more importantly they are learning collectivism isn't smart.

Thankfully, last night's results are proof that the American people are taking those hard-won lessons to heart. The voters have in effect instructed their representatives in Washington and at the state level to put the brakes on Obama's destructive agenda with all haste and with every tool at their disposal. Obama and his remaining minions will fight them at their peril.

And Rush Limbaugh's four words insured that outcome before Obama was even immaculated.