Obama team take gloves off for fight with radio host Rush Limbaugh

A ploy by the Obama White House to depict the inflammatory conservative talkshow host Rush Limbaugh as head of the Republican Party has triggered a furious partisan battle – just the style of bareknuckle politics the new President promised to end.

The increasingly bitter feud between the Obama team and the bombastic Mr Limbaugh, who enjoys the largest talk-radio audience in America, has delighted Democrats and dismayed many Republicans. Yet it has also brought accusations that the White House has cynically created a bête noir to distract attention from the debate over its economic policies.

The thrice-married Mr Limbaugh is a hero to the Republican base but a deeply partisan figure. The effort to portray him as the driving force behind the post-Bush Republican Party reflects the power void and identity crisis inside it, but it also risks dragging Mr Obama into a political street brawl with one of America's most powerful and outspoken anti-liberal forces.

Mr Limbaugh, a longtime and fierce critic of Mr Obama, laid the ground for the fight when he declared on air recently that “I hope he fails”. He repeated the sentiment on Saturday, during a speech to a conservative conference where, significantly overweight and wearing a black open-neck shirt, he was given a hero's reception.

The next day Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama's Chief of Staff and a veteran Chicago politician, called Mr Limbaugh the leader of the Republican Party, adding that he was “the voice and the intellectual force and the energy behind the Republican Party”.

Mr Limbaugh has had a tangled private life. He was investigated for illegal use of prescription painkillers – he later admitted to an addiction – and was detained in 2006 after getting off a plane from the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra, the prescription not in his name. He sparked outrage when he accused the actor Michael J. Fox of exaggerating the effects of his Parkinson's disease.

His audience is huge – and has nearly doubled from 14.2 million to about 25 million since his feud with the White House erupted – but he is deeply unpopular with Democrats and independents. Mr Obama's strategists believe that they have struck gold by elevating him to leader of the opposition, and some Republicans agree.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush, lamented: “With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party.”

Mr Limbaugh, 58, challenged Mr Obama to a live, on-air debate. Reflecting what a powerful figure he is on the Right, even the head of the Republican National Committee was forced to apologise to him this week after saying that his show could be “incendiary” and “ugly”.

Mr Limbaugh said on air this week that the Obama team were targeting him because “they need a demon to distract and divert from what their agenda is”. He said that their tactics were reminiscent of Richard Nixon's “enemies list”.

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker, said that the focus on Mr Limbaugh was “a cynical ploy by people who can't defend any of their policies”.

THE RIGHT STUFF

On Democrats “I know these people like I know every square inch of my glorious naked body”

On Hillary Clinton “She sounds like a screeching ex-wife”

On the White House “Did you know that the White House drug test is multiple choice?”

On the President When he was asked by a national newspaper to provide 400 words on the Obama presidency he responded “I don't need 400, I need four. I hope he fails”

[link to www.timesonline.co.uk]