Limbaugh on McCain: It's Better to Be Right All the Time

"In defending McCain on the grounds that he's a very strong conservative on some issues, I got a lot of flak," Bennett said. "I went an hour and 40 minutes before I got one person who was supportive. I have a center-right audience. A lot of it was very unreasonable. . . . There are more centers of influence now because the party is fractured."

Michael Harrison, a longtime Limbaugh-watcher who edits the industry magazine Talkers, said, "Now that the Bush era is over and the conservative movement has to regroup, Rush has to reposition himself. He's in the game -- that's all that matters." But, Harrison added, "Rush Limbaugh cannot get someone nominated if a critical mass of the public and the tide of history is going in a different direction."

Limbaugh challenged the Republican establishment once before. In the 1992 primaries he helped boost conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan against the incumbent, George H.W. Bush. But after Bush secured the nomination, the president mended fences by inviting the talk-show host for an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom.

During the 1994 midterm campaign, Limbaugh and other conservative hosts launched a crusade that helped the Republicans take control of Capitol Hill. When Newt Gingrich became House speaker, he made Limbaugh an honorary member of the 104th Congress.

After 15 years at the top of his game, Limbaugh ran into a series of personal problems. Deafness nearly ended his career until his hearing was restored by a cochlear implant, and in 2003 he went into rehab after admitting an addiction to prescription painkillers.

Politically, Limbaugh remained loyal for much of President Bush's tenure, but after the GOP lost both houses of Congress in 2006, he declared himself "liberated," saying the Republicans had "let us down" and that "I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried."

After McCain won the New Hampshire primary last month, Limbaugh served notice that if either McCain or former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee got the nomination, "it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever."

As McCain has kept winning, Limbaugh told listeners that the liberal media were boosting the senator and "predicting my demise." It was pointless, he said, "to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit-poll data from every primary state show just the opposite." In Florida, for example, voters calling themselves "very conservative" favored Romney 2 to 1 over McCain.

Yesterday Limbaugh took on conservative Beltway pundits, such as the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, who have written sympathetically about McCain, saying that for them "it's not about conservatism at all, it's about their own personal desire to matter, to have some influence."

Despite this daily barrage, Limbaugh insisted in the interview that he is not leading a political movement.

"I am not a candidate for president," he said. "It is up to Romney and Huckabee to defeat McCain. My objective is to explain and defend the things in which I believe and inform people. What they do with their knowledge and information is their business. . . .

"If a candidate who is asking me and the American people for his vote isn't particularly conservative on a wide array of issues, I'm going to talk about it. It's not my job to get him elected. . . . I'm in the free speech business. I am not a campaign spokesman. I believe it would be a setback for the Republican Party to attract liberals and independents by being like them in order to attract them."

Limbaugh's role is generating plenty of media chatter. CBS's Bob Schieffer told McCain on "Face the Nation" Sunday that "Rush Limbaugh says you're an impostor." Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer predicted that a Limbaugh-led drive to stop McCain would fail. MSNBC host Tucker Carlson offered McCain this advice: "Wouldn't it just be easier to fly down to Palm Beach and take Rush Limbaugh out to dinner and slobber all over him? Why not suck up to Rush Limbaugh?"

McCain, for his part, has refused to engage with Limbaugh, telling reporters: "I don't listen to him. There's a certain trace of masochism in my family, but not that deep."