Rush Limbaugh polling: he's not popular with the electorate

In this post I mentioned I should get some data on Rush's unpopularity outside the right-wing base. Here it is:

Gallup at the end of January: Republicans like him 60/23, but independents don't 25/45 and Democrats really don't 6/63.

Max Blumenthal:

An October 24, 2008, poll conducted by the Democratic research firm Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner has Rush Limbaugh enjoying a public-approval rating of just 21 percent among likely voters, while 58 percent have “cold” feelings toward the right-wing radio-talk-show host. Limbaugh’s cold rating was higher than that of all the political figures the firm polled. It was seven points higher than Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright and eight points higher than former Weather Underground domestic terrorist William Ayers. (As the firm points out in an email, it’s true that Wright and Ayers both had lower “warm” ratings than Limbaugh—as you’d expect for men who have virtually no constituencies.)

Rasmussen from back in March 2007 puts Limbaugh's favorable/unfavorable at 26/62.

More on Limbaugh from Open Left.

I think it is frickin' hilarious that absolutely no one in the Republican party can criticize

Limbaugh. They really have locked themselves to him. His fans adore him. But nobody else likes him.

The one thing I worry about is that the economic hard times (and all the news I read is bad, bad, bad) are going to drive a lot of ugly political energy. The Republican rump will try to convince people that its Obama's fault, so Obama really needs to be on the people's side (and yo Obama, your coddling of AIG and the banks isn't helping: receivership for those screw-ups, please). I don't think they're going to have enough of a message to convince a majority of the country that they could do a better job. But it's something to watch out for.