Frank Luntz Calls Rush Limbaugh 'Problematic' In Secret Tape

From the Huffington Post:

Frank Luntz, a top Republican strategist and pollster, called conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh "problematic" in a talk with college students this week that was secretly taped.

And

"If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here?" Luntz said. "We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him."

More here, with video. 

Problematic, indeed.  More like apocalyptic.  

And the fact that Luntz is so under-emphasizing the problem bodes ill for the Republican Party.  That is, the GOP has courted the American lunatic fringe for a very long time, depending on them to be shock troops on election day.  Meanwhile, conservative talk radio and Fox News have become serious self-perpetuating institutions that make their bread and butter by pandering to these conservative psychos.  But now, a decade into the twenty first century, the ranks of the shock troops have thinned, and Americans are no longer swayed so much by their fear-mongering, xenophobia, and down home fantasy folk economics.  These people are now a detriment to the party's survival.

So how do you get rid of Rush Limbaugh and the like?  The GOP cannot adapt when massive for-profit ideology sales firms take the lead in telling Republicans what they are to believe about the way the world works.  There will be no Republican renaissance until they get this figured out.  It's pretty clear that the party's intelligentsia are not yet aware of how big of a problem they're facing.

Personally, I'm loving it.

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