Rush Limbaugh stole the show at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, in Washington, D.C., in February. Photo illustration by Darrow.

Also on VF.com: Rush Limbaugh’s 10 most moronic remarks.

Rush Limbaugh, it seemed to me, had to be in huge trouble. Beyond his history of drug problems—in liberal circles there remains a constant is-he-isn’t-he speculation about the status of his prescription-painkiller addiction—beyond even the fact that the mighty conservative tide which he’d ridden to such success had certainly peaked, there were the terrible problems in his core business. Radio advertising rates were falling—even before the recession—Internet competition was rising, and Rush’s much-vaunted audience of 14 million was down from its high of 20 to 25 million during the Clinton years to closer to cable-TV size. The view at MSNBC was that, on a minute-by-minute basis, Limbaugh’s audience was now no bigger than that of its liberal stars, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

So, when, in the beginning of February, Limbaugh said he hoped that the new president would fail in his efforts to deal with economic calamity, this seemed much more like a desperate bid to stay in the game than it did a stroke of master showmanship. By any logical assessment of behavior, it still seems as if the man may be imploding. And yet, within a month of his issuing his provocative or nihilistic view about an Obama-led recovery, the argument had become not whether he was hopelessly marginalized but whether he was the most significant figure in the Republican Party.

In a jaunty and rapid-fire manner, he’d dealt with Republican congressman Phil Gingrey, who had mildly suggested—to a reporter’s question about Limbaugh’s derogatory comments about the Republican leadership—that there were able gentlemen running the party. After a torrential news cycle, Gingrey offered Rush an abject apology, which had the added sweetener (a little carrot and stick) of getting him an appearance—to reiterate his apology—on Rush’s show. Then Limbaugh laid into Republicans who had expressed reservations about Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s response—lame by every estimation—to the president’s speech on February 24 before a joint session of Congress. No matter how lame, Jindal still hewed to the orthodox conservative small-government views; hence, according to Rush, Jindal was “brilliant. He’s the real deal.” And if anybody said otherwise, well, they’d have to deal with Rush. Then, the day after Limbaugh addressed the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (cpac), Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele gamely tried on CNN to face down D. L. Hughley’s assertion that Rush was the effective party leader. “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment,” Steele sputtered, only to find himself apologizing shortly thereafter when Rush had mauled him on the air. (The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put up a Web site—I’m Sorry, Rush—offering an automated form through which congressional Republicans could apologize to Limbaugh. Indeed, as I was writing this piece, a half-dozen Republican officials and operatives first committed to talk with me about Limbaugh and his effects on the party, and then, in a process of hand-wringing and revising their views, each decided, on better thought, not to risk even the smallest chance of waking up on the wrong side of Rush.)

The cpac speech was the Limbaugh topper. The meeting, an annual and usually uncommented-upon gathering of right-wing enthusiasts (Ana Marie Cox, the Washington gossip and political reporter, roaming the halls in her new job as a radio reporter for Air America, described it to me as “Woodstock for wing nuts”), was treated nearly as a third-party political convention because Rush was the main event. The entire three days of the conference, with Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich, was a buildup to Rush. Fox News, carrying the speech live, promoted it for several days before.