"Well Rush must have a lot of acorns squirreled away not to share everyone else's hopes that the economy does come back."
According to Chris Matthews, and others, to oppose Obama is to hate one's country.

I am one of those who heard Rush Limbaugh say he hopes President Obama fails.

This is what Matthews quotes Rush as saying:

I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, "Well I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance." So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, okay I'll send you a response but I don't need 400 words. I need four. I hope he fails.

This is the quote in its context:

I got a request here from a major American print publication. "Dear Rush: For the Obama [Immaculate] Inauguration we are asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency. We would love to include you. If you could send us 400 words on your hope for the Obama presidency, we need it by Monday night, that would be ideal." Now, we're caught in this trap again. The premise is, what is your "hope." My hope, and please understand me when I say this. I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, "Well, I hope he succeeds. We've got to give him a chance." Why? They didn't give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I'm not talking about search-and-destroy, but I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed.

Well, I too hope Obama fails. I know who his heroes are: Lincoln and Roosevelt. Those heroes succeeded. They succeeded in making the un-federal government more powerful. First, Abraham Lincoln fought a war to ensure there could be no significant opposition to un-federal power. Consent of the governed? The heart of the American colonies' secession from the British Empire? "Consent?" said Lincoln. "I don't need no stinking consent." Second, Roosevelt "readjusted" our national life, giving us a centrally supervised, though not centrally-planned, economy. Democrats have consistently sought a more perfect democratic-socialist union; and Obama promises to do as much as possible to further that agenda.

Some of us don't want the socialism we have. We certainly don't want more. We think socialism, even the least tincture of it, is not good economics. We also think the lost liberty is too high a cost for the pay-off. It doesn't deliver; and it costs too much for what it doesn't deliver.

But, as far as Chris Matthews is concerned, to hope that Obama fails is to hate the country. Matthews and his ilk are the kind who, even if they did not say they hoped Bush would fail, certainly did as much as possible to him help fail, dogging him at every step of the way. We were told that their opposition to Bush, their hope for his failure and their work to bring it about, was an expression of their patriotism, their love of country. Indeed, Hillary Clinton once yelled at the top of her lungs:

I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.

All righty then. I'll say it. I'm an American and I have the right to debate and disagree with any administration. And why disagree with an administration but for the fact that you think the administration's policies are bad for the country. And if you think an administration's policies are bad for the country then -- whether or not you come right out and admit it -- you hope the administration fails in the implementation of those policies.

The difference between Rush Limbaugh and Chris Matthews is just this. Unlike Matthews and his ilk, Limbaugh doesn't pretend to be unbiased and nonpartisan.

Matthews asserts that the desire that Obama fail is a desire that the economy not improve. "Well Rush must have a lot of acorns squirreled away," he said, "not to share everyone else's hopes that the economy does come back."

That's the problem right there: to equate Obama with the economy in such a way that Obama's success is the economy's success and his failure, the economy's failure. Typical leftist hubris. Right up there with President Bush's you're-either-with-us-of-with-the-terrorists rhetoric.

For Matthews, the President of the United States is at the steering wheel of the economy: "But the bigger question to everybody is, if this guy fails, the only President we have, on the economy, taking office as it’s going down that’s killing everybody. How can you root for the failure of the only guy at, at the lever? At the steering wheel?"

It's not that we want him to fail at driving the economy. It's more that we don't think he is, or even should be, driving the economy. We don't want him, or anyone else, driving the economy. We don't think he really has the steering wheel. We want him to fail to get that wheel. We don't think any politician should have that wheel. We think it's bad in the long run and demonstrates refusal to accept how simple (but difficult) economics really is on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact that every attempt at government control fails and, when it fails, the irrational conviction that government can and should steer an economy results in a seizure by government of ever more control of the economy.

We think socialism is impossible; it's not that we don't like it. And we're not going to pretend otherwise, certainly not out of mis-placed deference to the man in the Imperial Office. For there is no giving these policies a chance. Over and over we have seen that once democratic-socialist policies are in place there is no going back, no getting rid of them. And every time they fail, that failure is used as justification for more democratic-socialist policies.

There is only one thing at which I hope His Beatitude succeeds, the defense of the country. That alone should keep him busy enough.