Missouri Republicans honor Limbaugh, reject Cronkite

The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives made its own contribution to the Trump Party’s cancel culture and racist acceptance doctrine by voting to make January 12 “Rush Limbaugh Day” in the state. Limbaugh was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and died in February from cancer. The Trump Party has elevated Limbaugh to political sainthood. Trump added to Limbaugh’s right-wing deification by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 and giving him a seat of honor at the 2020 State of the Union address.

In a May 8 editorial, the St. Louis Post Dispatch castigated the GOP-led House for honoring a “radio hatemonger.” The paper also called out the Missouri House for rejecting a Democratic-sponsored measure that would have designated January 13 as “Walter Cronkite Day.” Longtime CBS News anchor Cronkite, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, died in 2009 at the age of 92. The Limbaugh Day bill was sent to the Missouri Senate, where its chances of passage are good, but not assured.

The Post Dispatch wrote the following about the House’s actions: “While Cronkite was known for his signature sign-off—“that’s the way it is,” followed by the day’s date—Limbaugh was known for calling a college activist a ‘slut,’ calling then-13-year-old first daughter Chelsea Clinton ‘the White House dog,’ and comparing NFL games to a fight ‘between the Bloods and the Crips.’ As a parting gift, he likely contributed to the pandemic’s death toll by dismissing the coronavirus as ‘the common cold.’”

Every Nazi and fascist movement needs their outrageous propagandists. For Adolf Hitler and his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, their venal race monger-of-choice was newspaper and magazine publisher Julius Streicher, a person who knew no bounds in his attacks on Jews, Roma, Sinti, Slavs, and blacks, as well as what he referred to as “mulattoes” and “Finn-Asian barbarians.” For Trump and his cult-like followers, Limbaugh helped provide the drumbeat propaganda that constantly whipped the Trump faithful into a state of frenzy against all who opposed Trump. Limbaugh has been replaced by dozens of political facsimiles found on AM and FM radio bands around the country.

The Post Dispatch also wrote: “It’s outrageous that the House rejected naming a day in honor of Cronkite while approving one for Limbaugh—outrageous but not surprising. The Legislature’s ruling Republicans these days show zero interest in unifying this divided state and view the Democratic enclaves in St. Louis and Kansas City as enemy territory. As with the long, shameful display of Limbaugh’s bust in the state Capitol, the Limbaugh Day declaration is less about honoring Limbaugh than about jabbing a thumb in the eye of Missourians who don’t buy into the right’s radical agenda.”

The Republican Party has become indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazis, Francisco Franco’s Falangists, Benito Mussolini’s “Fascisti,” and Chairman Mao’s Red Guards. U.S. House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney is about the reap the whirlwind of Trump’s fanatical supporters this week when her colleagues look likely to strip her of her number three position in their caucus.

The Post Dispatch concluded its editorial with the following: “To borrow Cronkite’s phrase, that’s the way it is in Missouri in 2021.”

And that, unfortunately, is also the way it is across the United States. Republican state legislators, in doing everything except banning motherhood and apple pie, have sanctioned Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Amazon, Twitter, and, in the case of Georgia, Delta Air Lines, over their stances on voting rights and racial equality. At the same time, key Republican office holders have praised slavery, the Confederacy, and systematic voter suppression while also writing truly Orwellian legislation banning “intellectual diversity.” There is a move in the Republican Committee of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to ban “all elected officials and government employees” from membership in the committee. Citing Trump’s call to “drain the swamp,” there is a proposal that “committee members who earn the majority of their income from the taxpayers as elected officials or as staff of elected officials shall not serve.” Under Trump’s control, the Republicans are trying to purge an entire political class, deemed not to be loyal enough to their modern-day Führer, from party ranks.

The Republican Party has become a constitutional, cultural, and terroristic existential threat to the United States. It must be “canceled” as assuredly as the Nazi Party was banned in Germany and other fascist vanity parties were proscribed in Italy, Slovakia, Belgium, France, Norway, Greece, Netherlands, Romania, and Yugoslavia following World War II.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2021 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

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