"Admittedly, just because the Republican strategy has been irrational doesn't make it inexplicable," he continued. "The trends that brought us to this point are clear enough: the discrediting of the Republican establishment during the Bush era; the rise of a populist right that often sees opposition as an end unto itself; the willingness of too many media figures, activists and politicians to stoke that wing's worst impulses; and the current Republican leadership's desire both to prevent an intraparty civil war and avoid a true national disaster like default."

As summaries go, that's stellar.

There is, however, an important caveat. Yes, Tea Party supporters regard the Republican establishment as having been thoroughly discredited during the Bush years. Yet they've continued to vest extraordinary trust in the cable-news and talk-radio personalities who spent the aughts slavishly supporting the GOP establishment. They get their information from erstwhile purveyors of pro-Bush propaganda, taking their cues come from the same people who enabled George W.

If the White House staffers, Washington think tanks, and establishment-media figures who enabled Bush-era excesses have all lost credibility, why not the movement-conservative talkers who carried water for the same flawed governance?

There is no better example than Rush Limbaugh.

Since so many Tea Partiers spent the Bush years nodding along to his daily radio program, they find it difficult to recall that he spent most of the aughts supporting the very Republican Party establishment that Tea Partiers now vilify. That doesn't change the fact that it happened.

Yes, he criticized the GOP here and there, but don't take my word for it when I say that he mostly carried water for them--it's actually the formulation that Limbaugh used himself in a rare moment of candor after Democrats made gains in the 2006 midterms. "I feel liberated, and I'm just going to tell you as plainly as I can why," he told listeners. "I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried." The GOP had been behaving badly, but rather than level with his listeners, Limbaugh covered for them.

How thoroughly was he co-opted? How obsequious was his behavior toward the GOP? After an ego-stroking invite to the White House, here's how he characterized Karl Rove, the embodiment of Washington establishment Republicans:

I got an e-mail from Karl Rove who invited us all to the White House for lunch in the White House mess after the "24" forum at the Heritage Foundation on Friday morning, and that was a hoot, too, by the way, and let me say something about that, folks ... Now, I've been in Karl's presence not a lot, three or four times, but never for this length of time. I can't tell you how brilliant and educated and informed the guy is. At lunch, he gave a veritable history lesson of the White House, of the White House mess, some of the characters that have worked there, some of the people that have been there 35 years in various jobs, and I notice this about people because I'm not able to do this and it's something I've always strived to be able to do. Not one stutter. I mean, he would speak for 20 minutes uninterrupted and not lose anybody's attention. Not one stutter, not one loss of his train of thought and at the same time totally captivating ... it was just indescribable to listen to Karl Rove go on and on about the influences that these various presidents and campaigns have had on him and his explanation of history ... A bunch of people were telling me this about Karl Rove. He is brilliant, and he has this brain that's just oozing with knowledge, and he's able to share his knowledge and his passions in a way that just keeps you spellbound without raising his voice, doesn't pound the table, doesn't get all that emotive. You're just in awe of the facts, the detail that he knows and possesses and is able to impart, again with no stutter and with no loss of his train of thought at all. So I just want to take some time here to thank Ginni and Clarence Thomas for the use of the justices dining room at the US Supreme Court. The Heritage Foundation could not have been better. It was a thrill to meet Secretary Chertoff and everybody, we ran into all kinds of people at the White House, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, Andrew Card was there. It was just a great, great time.

In November 2006, just before the midterms and long after most of the country had concluded that there were serious flaws in the Bush Administration's egregiously shortsighted foreign policy, Limbaugh had POTUS on the line, listened to his standard boilerplate about Iraq, the Middle East, and terrorism, and absurdly said, "Well, that is extremely visionary. One of the things, if I may make this personal, one of the many things I've admired about you is that you see down the road 20 or 30 years. You just illustrated that with your comment. What if down the road 20 years we look back to this time and with 20-20 hindsight realize we blew it. You're not, as far as it sounds to me, you're not going to let that happen. You're going to do whatever it takes to secure victory."