Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party

By Thomas Schaller

March 1, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- Seizing the opportunity to speak to a national TV audience, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh told a packed house of cheering supporters at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Committee's annual meeting in Washington to resist President Barack Obama's plans to expand government and not "think like a minority."

As Fox, CNN and C-SPAN carried his speech live and commercial-free, Limbaugh closed CPAC's 37th national convention by rallying conservatives still smarting from the Democrats' 2008 sweep of all branches of the national government and expanded electoral reign in the states.

Limbaugh exhorted conservatives to stay upbeat, blasted the alleged socialist agenda of the "Democrat Party," and called out the new president, the one he hopes will fail. "President Obama: Your agenda is not new, it's not change, and it's not hope," Limbaugh thundered, to wild applause in the Omni Shoreham's packed Regency Ballroom, as overflow crowds in three of the hotel's other convention rooms watched by live feed. "Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion." Conservatism itself, preached Limbaugh, was the sole bulwark against the frightening possibility of Obama destroying the country and the Republican Party. "[Conservatism] is what it is and has been forever," he said. "It is not something you can bend or shape."..............