Barack Obama vs. Rush Limbaugh

Stamping out partisan bickering is easier said than done, said Tim Shipman in Britain's Sunday Telegraph. President Barack Obama has only been in office a week, and he's already "risking a new culture war" by telling Republicans that they should stop listening to conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh if they want to get anything done on the stimulus package and other big issues.

Obama is just trying to get Americans to rise above the anger of "clowns" like Limbaugh, said Leonard Pitts Jr. in The Miami Herald. After all, it was Limbaugh who watched Obama's inauguration and said, "I hope he fails." Limbaugh must really be scared, because if Obama manages to give Americans in both parties a sense of shared mission, peddlers of phony outrage are in for "tough sledding."

It's hard to see what Obama thinks attacking Rush Limbaugh will accomplish, said Allahpundit in Hot Air. Maybe he's trying to assure progressives he's with them, or, as Limbaugh himself told Rich Lowry of the National Review Online, the president is trying to distract critics of his economic stimulus package. Either way, he's making his task of selling his version of bipartisanship a lot harder.

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