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Out here in the Pacific Northwest, we're well acquainted by experience with Bill O'Reilly's utter cluelessness about the cultural and political geography and climate of our region. But last night on The O'Reilly Factor, he really reached comedic heights.

His big scoop, warranting a full Team O'Reilly Investigation, was the news that the University of Oregon in Eugene is a boiling, roiling hotbed of liberalism -- so much so that only eight people out of the 186 professors surveyed identified as Republicans.

Actually, the survey is a somewhat peculiar clumping that only includes the schools of political science, law, economics, sociology and journalism -- which have a tendency towards liberal-arts profs anyway. Excluded from the survey were profs in the business, engineering, chemistry or math fields. One assumes the numbers would look somewhat different with their inclusion. So this is what has outraged O'Reilly?

Calling it an "appalling situation," O'Reilly sicced his ambush camera teams on the hapless provost of the school while he was en route to his car in a parking garage. Then he spent the next several minutes bashing Eugene and the UofO, with the help of Portland radio host Lars Larson, who was happy to bash his fellow Oregonians.

That's because, of course, Eugene has for many years been one of those cultural meccas for the hippie/Deadhead/peace/love/understanding crowd. The UofO campus has long attracted liberals and liberal-minded people, and the cultural climate is the kind that tends not to be very attractive to conservatives.

But then, that's just the way the Northwest is; there's a diverse array of people and cultures out here, and they each have their niches. The gamut runs from Eugene to Hayden Lake.

One wonders what O'Reilly might find if he were to do a similarly selective survey of the business and engineering schools at Washington State University in Pullman, where the cultural climate runs decidedly in the other direction. Bet we won't see Jesse Watters out there anytime soon.

In other words, O'Reilly is not breaking any news here. Nor is it anything to get particularly worked up about. But it is amusing to watch O'Reilly make a complete fool of himself, anyway.

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On Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor, Mike Gallagher -- sold that home yet, Mike? -- and Lars Larson were on to talk about why right-wingers like Newt Gingrich just can't help talking about Rush Limbaugh and drawing his ire and thus feeding into the evil liberals' devious plan to draw attention away from the serious issue of the economy. It was a hoot.

The wankafoolery started really rolling when Gallagher came up with this gem:

Gallagher: Well, I think Newt doesn't like being part of a phony debate that's been set up by the left as to whether or not Rush Limbaugh is the face of the Republican Party. Newt has always been great at defining what Republicans are about, what Republicans are for, and putting Democrats on the defensive. And I think Newt is probably mildly annoyed that a radio host, even one as prominent as Rush, has created so many headlines over all this. And I think both of these men acknowledge that it's a disingenuous debate. It's just something that's been ginned up by the Left to try to fracture the Republican Party even further, and that's just not what Newt is about.

Even O'Reilly seemed skeptical about all this, but all were in eventual agreement that the whole thing was a ridiculous plot by liberals and the Obama administration to distract attention from the economy, which O'Reilly assures us is going to backfire, blah blah blah blah blah.

They're all conveniently forgetting one thing: Limbaugh is precisely relevant to the matter of the economy because he has made himself a major player -- and certainly its most visible one -- in the fight over President Obama's legislative package for getting the economy back on its feet.

Does anyone doubt for a minute that Republicans in both the House and the Senate would have been as significantly lockstep, completely uniformly obstructionist, in voting against the stimulus bill had it not been for Limbaugh, with this troops manning the phone lines to deal rapidly and harshly with any hapless Republicans who might even hint toward straying? Is there any doubt their leverage helped Blue Dogs water the bill down enough to make it potentially short of what's needed?

Trying to pretend Limbaugh is just a sideshow, when in fact he's been a key player in how the economic fix has proceeded -- and particularly in how it's been discussed and shaped -- is a good meme for Republicans. But it also runs aground on the sharp rocks of reality.

Limbaugh has become the most important means of Republicans maintaining their ideological rigidity through hardline party discipline, especially on economic matters. So when liberals go after Limbaugh as the face of the GOP, that's because -- by default -- that's what he is right now. And it's not looking like it will change anytime soon, either; do you see any real potential winners among that crop of Republican politicians right now? (I for one am waiting for them to recruit Glenn Beck to run on the Sarah Palin ticket ...)

So when Obama brought Limbaugh up -- "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done" -- it was precisely in the context of solving the economic mess. And he's right: If Republicans are just listening to Rush and, like him, reflexively rejecting every proposal he offers, and moreover reflexively working for his failure for cold political calculations, then they're not going to be part of getting anything done in the next four years, especially not in terms of getting the economy back up and running.

The public doesn't want the standard old Conservative solutions to these problems -- which is all the GOP has to offer -- and Republicans are going to have to learn to deal with that fact. The only remaining question is whether they're going to be part of the solution, or part of the problem. With Rush, we already have our answer.

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Part of the panel discussion on Larry King Live March 3, 2009. I was really hoping I'd seen the last of former Koch Energy lobbyist and McCain campaign spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer when he lost the election, but sadly not. The discussion starts out with the topic du jour of whether it is effective or not for the Democrats to be tagging Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican party and Arianna Huffington says the important thing to remember is how we got to where we are rather than focusing on Rush Limbaugh.

Pfotenhauer and Larson have their GOP talking points down as usual but this particular statement hit me as one our side needs to be challenging whenever they say it and that didn't happen here.

Pfotenhauer: Clearly we can debate and I would love to how we got to where we are and actually let me answer one of Arianna's earlier points and say that the thing that George Bush did wrong and that Republicans as well as Democrats did wrong is they spent the taxpayers' money carelessly. They were, they were, it was a taxpayer funded party for eight years.

Now my problem is that President Obama is George Bush on steroids when it comes to spending. He has met him and raised him and he's added like I said tax increases into the mix. If he were advocating economic policies that were good for this country I would support him. I supported him when he's talked about things like entitlement reform. But when he advocates things that are bad for Americans it's people's duty to challenge him. That's patriotic.

When any of these talking heads says something like this they need to immediately be called out and asked what Social Security would look like right now if the GOP had had their way and privatized it. How's that stock market looking to you right now Nancy? And they need to be told that NO, the GOP does not want to support anything that the Democrats are trying to do right now whether they think it is good for the country or not. They want Democrats to adopt Republican ideas or they're going to obstruct. And the only new ideas they have are the same ones they've had for thirty years or more.

Stephanie Miller reminds Pfotenhauer just who the tax cuts under Obama's plan will be going to.

Miller: Nancy, Barack Obama's doing the exact same thing he said during the campaign. 95% of Americans are getting a tax cut under this plan. It is the top 1% that's finally paying their fair share. You Larry.

Pfotenhauer: How can they pay more than the 70% they already pay?

It sure sounds like she's trying to leave the impression that there is someone out there in a 70% tax bracket while leaving herself some wiggle room if she's challenged on it later.

From Larry King Live Oct. 24, 2008 the panel of Scott McClellan, Terry Holt, Lars Larson and Christopher Hitchens discussing the Presidential election ,McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate, Iraq, the surge and Palin's fruit fly comment.

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On Oct. 17, 2008 Larry King decides to give a couple of segments to the wing-nut fest of Crazy-Eyes Michelle Bachmann who apparently decided one horrid television appearance for the day wasn't enough, Kellyanne Conway and Lars Larson. After Larson calls Democrats Marxists he and King have this exchange:

KING: Does that make the right wing fascist?

LARSON: No.

KING: You can’t have it both ways.

LARSON: No, fascism is about celebrating the country. America has always been about the individual. And conservatives really are about the individual. But saying we want to spread everybody’s wealth around and giving tax rebates to the 40 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes, that’s Marxism.

Uugggghh. If they don't steal this one this is what we get to listen to for the next eight years.

(h/t Heather)

On Verdict with Dan Abrams, Newsweek reporter Jonathan Alter was fed up with the ridiculousness of the continued smear of Michelle Obama over her "proud of her country" statement and accuses conservative talk show host Lars Larson of promoting an agenda that tries to paint Michelle Obama as an angry, black woman, noting that there was no such outrage for John McCain's repeated statement that he "didn't love America until (he) was deprived of her company".

ALTER: Yeah, you're saying...you're just talking trash and nonsense. And it's a slur, and it's really, it's frankly kind of appalling that you and others would stoop to this level, because it's not true. You don't know Michelle Obama; you haven't spoken to her as I have. To many of her friends: black, white, many different people...let me just quickly try to dispense with this. You're taking her out of context intentionally. You're trying to twist her words for your own political purposes. It's low and it's borderline racist.