President Barack Obama

With the Republican Party in disarray after its crushing defeat to Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates in the November 4 election, conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh has indeed “rushed” to fill the resulting vacuum. His weapon of choice: unrelenting attacks against President Obama.

While Obama soars in popularity, Limbaugh sought to take him down a peg by proclaiming his hope that Obama “will fail.” Even many Republicans were concerned with this attack, especially at a time of national crisis. It seemed to imply that Limbaugh doesn’t care if the American nation undergoes economic collapse resulting from Obama being a presidential failure.

Limbaugh is not concerned with criticism of his vociferous attacks against Barack Obama. He believes that Republican electoral failure is due to betraying the purity of conservative economic ideology and orthodoxy. One result of his attacks may be to compel Republicans in Congress to be less bipartisan towards President Barack Obama, or risk being tagged as “liberal” by the Republican base.

As President Obama moves forward to win support in Congress for his $825 billion stimulus package, Rush Limbaugh will undoubtedly continue to strengthen the vigor and tone of his attacks on Obama. Perhaps the next move by Limbaugh will be to throw his endorsement behind a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Likely pick by Limbaugh is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008. A sign that Palin is beginning to make her move in preparation for 2012 is her recent formation of her own political action committee.

Karl Rove offered praise for Barack Obama in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. This is the same Karl Rove who was said to be the “political brain” behind George W. Bush and the mastermind of his two victorious presidential campaigns. Rove wrote that President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a “first rate economic team that has provided surprisingly positive clarity.”

The selection by Barack Obama of New York Fed Chairman Timothy Geithner for Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers, the former Clinton-era Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard University, as chief of the National Economic Council was especially lauded by Rove in his op-ed piece.

Rove wrote that, “the announcement of Mr. Obama’s economic team was reassuring. He’s generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration’s economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.”

The choice by Obama of Berkley Economics Professor Christina Romer as his pick to head up his team of economics advisers also won Rovian praise.

If Barack Obama is already getting the thumbs of from Karl Rove, could Rush Limbaugh be next? Probably not a chance of that, but Karl Rove’s piece in the Wall Street Journal clearly shows that Barack Obama is moving forward in his transition in a politically skillful manner.