He’s spent only 431 days in Congress, has never seen any of his bills pass out of subcommittee and was best known for voting against major pieces of legislation because they weren’t liberal enough for him — at least until he was accused of sexually harassing a male staffer.

Meet Eric Massa, conservative media hero.

The New York Democrat’s weekend radio rant against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has his star rising on the right even as he resigns from Congress under an ethical cloud.

Rush Limbaugh vowed to make a “national story” out of Massa’s claims that Democrats orchestrated his downfall because he voted no on health care reform — adding that Massa is “going to have so much support from people.”

Matt Drudge led his site for much of the day Monday with all-caps links to POLITICO’s coverage of Massa’s statements: “RAHM ‘WOULD SELL HIS OWN MOTHER,’ ‘SON OF THE DEVIL’S SPAWN.’”

And Glenn Beck took to Twitter to announce that he’d have Massa on his show for “the full hour” Tuesday because “all Americans need to hear him.”

And remember, these are the “family values” guys.

If we’re going to ask why did he do it, knowing full well that he’s in the same mosque in 2001 with the radical preacher going nuts, we’re going to also [laughter] have to believe that the guy was just like Obama, and didn’t hear Rev. Wright’s words when he was in his church.

– GOP leader Rush Limbaugh, reacting to reports that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was spotted in a Virginia mosque with possible ties to al-Qaeda by comparing him to the President of the United States.

Deather, defined

Main entry: deather
Function: noun
Etymology: From birther, a related conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Inspired by the teabaggers of April 15, 2009.
Date: Mid-2009
Definition: One who believes or spreads the false conspiracy theory that the health care reform legislation before Congress would create “death panels” or force seniors and sick people into euthanasia.
Examples: Sarah Palin is a deather. Glenn Beck is a deather. Rush Limbaugh is a deather.

• Teabaggers are now threatening violence against the SEIU and other pro-healthcare reform groups for daring to show up at town halls. Let freedom ring! (The Plum Line)
• Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) is introducing legislation to give tax credits to pay for pet care. Healthcare for humans? Not so much. (Michigan Messenger)
• A GOP town hall turns ugly when Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) dares take the name of Glenn Beck in vain. It was only a matter of time before Republicans got a little taste of their own medicine. (Think Progress)
• Bill O’Reilly secretly wants to make out with Barack Obama, but it’s okay because the real wingnuts have all switched over to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh already. (Mediaite via Wonkette)

• Throw parties for dictators. (Michelle Malkin, conservative pundit)
• Use the constitutionally-mandated census to round up Americans and put them in internment camps, just like Japanese-Americans in World War II. (Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-MN)
• Threaten to kill old people for cash money. (Warner Todd Huston, RedState Contributor)
• Force Mark Sanford to leave the country and have an affair with an Argentian woman. (Rush Limbaugh, Supreme Leader)

And then they wonder why even other Republicans don’t like the Republican Party.

“She was called by somebody a racist once. That’s not right. I mean that’s not fair,” Bush said in an interview with CNN. “It doesn’t help the process. You’re out there name-calling. So let them decide who they want to vote for and get on with it.”

“I don’t know her that well, but I think she’s had a distinguished record on the bench and she should be entitled to fair hearings,” he said.

So now the question becomes whether a former President of the United States will apologize to Rush Limbaugh. Of course, if he’s like the rest of his party, then the real question is not whether he’ll do it but how long until he does.

• Sonia Sotomayor allowing personal feelings because of her heritage to influence her decision making: bad. Sonia Sotomayor allowing personal feelings because of her Catholicism to influence her decision making about abortion: good.

“I think it’s terrible,” Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NPR’s “All Things Considered” Thursday. “This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent.”
…
“We are all a product of our upbringing and who we are and I think it’s a fact people do have different backgrounds, but I don’t think those background ought to determine what the law is,” Cornyn said to NPR of Sotomayor’s Berkeley comments. 

How strange! Cornyn, who represents a state with a large Latino population and is also in charge of electing more Republican Senators, does not think all of these unelected Republicans should call the popular first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court a racist! Of course, the only question that remains now is, when will Cornyn apologize to Rush?

Update: Audio of Cornyn on NPR (now working):

First off was the head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh:

Here you have a racist — you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist. The libs, of course, say that minorities cannot be racists because they don’t have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone, because reverse racists certainly do have the power. … Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he’s appointed one.

Not to be outdone, the former GOP presidential candidate who once called Miami “a Third-World country” because of its Latino population, Tom Tancredo:

If, in fact, there was nothing to challenge her on I would suggest that they don’t challenge her on anything. Unfortunately, for her and fortunately for us, there are plenty of things that we haven’t talked about already that you keep ignoring. [Tancredo refers to an earlier segment where he used discredited GOP talking points alleging that Sotomayor claimed that Latina judges are better than their white male counterparts.]

I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that?

In just 140 characters or less, Newt Gingrich made his pronouncement:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Update: Oh dear holy God, it turns out Newt was at Auschwitz when he made this post.

And let us not forget Pat Buchanan (who is totally an expert on racism, having previously argued that slavery was good for black people):

NORAH O’DONNELL: Did it ever occur to you, Pat, that maybe there weren’t any white men who were qualified?

PAT BUCHANAN: Yes. No, it did not occur to me. You mean there are no white males qualified? That would be an act of bigotry to make a statement like that. [...]

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Well Pat, if it gets down to four, you’re suggesting it’s an absolute outrage if the final four are women. If got down to final four and they were all white men, would that bother you in the least?

PAT BUCHANAN: I don’t say it’s an outrage, I say it’s affirmative action. They were picked because she’s a woman and a Hispanic and you know it as well as I do.

Meanwhile, NRO contributor Mark Kirkorian bitched about the Hispanic pronunciation of Sotomayor’s name (because it’s not a good old-fashioned Amurican name like Scalia. Or Alito. Or Kirkorian), and let’s not even bother with the right-wing bloggers who just went straight to calling her a “spic” and cut out the fancy language altogether.

So there you have it, conclusive GOP evidence that the colored man (or woman, in this case) is yet again trying to keep the white man down. Thanks, Republicans, for never letting us forget just how tough it is to be a white guy.

That was a terrible thing to say. I mean, he’s the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn’t, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.

Answer after the jump.

And the winner is… Pat Robertson! I know, right?

Have fun taking orders from Rush Limbaugh for the next few years.

• The fact that Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate that Colin Powell has endorsed since he stopped working for the current President George W. Bush means that Powell’s endorsement is based on race.