Russ Limbaugh is fortunately a closed book to us here, but I recognise the type. We have them too, though here they tend to be confined mostly within the crappier papers.

But John Hardly's point about "In public discourse it has become too easy to attack 'conservatism' by association with Rush" set me thinking.

Surely the moral of that is that, whatever your politics, or whatever kind of activity you are involved in, if you don't want to be dragged down in that way by people "on your side" who are poison, you make a point of standing up against them in good time, and challenging their right to speak for you. You don't wait till they are down and struggling to distance yourself from them, you lead the charge against them while they are strong.

"He might be a bastard, but he's our bastard" is as false and deadly a fallacy as that other one "My enemy's enemy is my friend". The first gives you people like Ross Limbaugh. The second gives you Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.