Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly waxes incredulous at Rush Limbaugh’s latest piece of… well, treason is about the only word for it:

The right-wing host went on a similar tirade yesterday when talking about the economic recovery package: “I want everything he’s doing to fail… I want the stimulus package to fail…. I do not want this to succeed.”

Limbaugh is, without ambiguity, rooting for failure. In the midst of an economic crisis, Limbaugh quite openly admitted that if Obama’s economic policies are successful, it would undermine the talk-show host’s worldview. As such, Limbaugh wants desperately to see more Americans suffer, more workers unemployed, more businesses close up shop. […] Limbaugh would much prefer a suffering nation than a reevaluation of conservative ideas.

Keep in mind, of course, that such talk under Bush’s presidency would force someone from the airwaves. If a prominent progressive figure said, just as the president was sending troops into war in early 2003, “I want everything he’s doing to fail. I want the war in Iraq to fail. I do not want the president’s national security agenda to succeed,” he or she would lose all advertising revenue and be fired. In the midst of a crisis, Americans rooting against America, based on nothing but ideological rigidity, are pariahs.

Or, at least, they used to be.