From The Plum Line, an email exchange between Limbaugh and Greg Sargant:

After I asked Rush a question about the Michael Steele fight, Rush replied:

[P]lease, Greg, try to stand out from the MSM chorus and NOT distort, as they all are, on behalf of the Obama Admin, my meaning on wanting him to fail. I want the country to SUCCEED, as I have said until I am blue in the face.

I answered:

Rush, if I could ask a follow-up question, if Obama’s policies are designed to help the economy, and those policies fail — as you’ve said you want — doesn’t the economy, and by extention [sic] the country, suffer as a result?

Rush replied:

Obama’s policies are NOT designed to help the economy, and they won’t. That is why I want them to fail. Take a look around, Greg. We have been stimulating and spending for a year now and wealth is vanishing from Wall Street, people are losing jobs and savings. His policies stimulate only government and attack wealth, producers and achievers. Obama’s policies are not new, they are not hope, they are not change. They are page 1 of the standard liberal playbook. Tax and spend. And they have not generated econ recovery or private sector growth in all of history.

I asked:

I understand that you don’t think Obama’s policies are destined to succeed. Reasonable people can disagree about that. However, putting aside the question of what the policies are destined to do, is it true that if they succeed in their stated goal of righting the economy — however far-fetched that may be to you and others — then would that be good for the country?

Or, alternatively put, putting aside the question of what the policies are in your view destined to do, is it true that if they fail in their stated goal of righting the economy, won’t the country suffer further as a result?

Rush answered:

I reject your premise, especially since you are rejecting my answers. I will not put aside the question of what the policies are destined to do because that IS THE POINT.

At that I thanked Rush for the time, since his noon show was approaching. The takeaway here seems clear: Rush won’t say that it would be good for the country if Obama’s policies do succeed in righting the economy.

And there you have it.

Look, when Bush invaded Iraq, I didn't think it would succeed.  I thought that it would destabilize that country and that region.  But did I want Bush to fail and have Iraq destabilized, etc.?  Did I want an expensive and protracted conflict?  Of course not.  That would be unpatriotic (as rightwingers like Rush were quick to point out at the time).

But I understood that Bush's war policies, wrong-headed as they were, were DESIGNED to bring peace and stability to the region.  I didn't proscribe to the belief (and nobody did) that Bush was intentionally trying to fuck up the Middle East.

Yet, this is exactly what Rush is claiming about Obama, i.e., that his economic and stimulus policies are "not designed to help the economy" (my emphasis).  He is proscribing evil intent to Obama, rather than simply thinking Obama's agenda lacks merit.

Very strange.  And stranger still that Rush is the de facto leader of the GOP at this moment.