Rush Limbaugh: Always Right

What does the radio host want, now and in 2012?

Rush Limbaugh top the first Newsweek Power List. That good enough to get the cover and an article:

People sometimes ask Rush Limbaugh if he has plans to run for public office, and his answer is always the same—he can’t afford the pay cut.

This is a rare understatement by El Rushbo. His annual income is greater than the combined salary of the entire U.S. Senate (and you can toss in a few dozen congressmen and cabinet secretaries for good measure).
Limbaugh, who lives like a pasha in an oceanside estate in Palm Beach, Fla., doesn’t need to go to Washington to be heard there. His voice carries to the nation’s capital and beyond, to every state and congressional district in the country. The Rush Limbaugh Show is on the air three hours a day, five days a week, carried by some 650 radio stations. Industry estimates put his weekly audience somewhere between 15 million and 20 million. Talkers Magazine recently named him the most important radio host of all time.

In a recent e-mail exchange, Limbaugh laid out his to-do list, which includes repeal of the health-care law and the financial-regulatory-reform bill; ending the ban on offshore drilling; the reprivatization of General Motors, Chrysler, and the student-loan program; a spike in the heart of cap-and-trade legislation (he regards global warming as a hoax); the elimination of the capital-gains tax; a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 20 percent; and replacement of the progressive income-tax code with a flat or “fair” tax.

Limbaugh is aware that it is very unlikely that there will be enough votes in Congress to achieve any of this. But that isn’t the point. He wants to use the next two years as an educational seminar on what he regards as the evils of Obama-style liberalism. “The mistake the GOP made in 1994 is that they stopped teaching after they won,” he says. What should the GOP do to make its point? “Send Obama a repeal bill every week and make him veto it,” he suggests. “My attitude is, who says we can’t override his vetoes? The Republicans are being sent to Washington to stop the Obama agenda. And it is not just Republicans sending them to D.C. Lots of independents and Democrats are going to vote for Republicans to stop this.”

Read more here.

For NEWSWEEK's full 50 power list, click here Newsweek.com.