Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Republican king-maker; talk-radio host without parallel; canny, original, and razor-sharp thinker; middle-America’s heart and voice; and the daily companion of hundreds of millions of people scorned and ignored by the chatterati, died of lung cancer on Wednesday morning at the age of 70.

I was an early adopter of Rush, recommending him to people in the beginning of the Clinton years, long before he became the mainstream phenomenon he is today.  In many ways those early years were his best days.  There was his musical mockery of the Paula Jones scandal [“Me and Mrs. Jones…we’ve gotta thing going on…”];  the chipmunk routine [“algore! algore! algore!”], scores of skits and parodies that indelibly changed our view of people and politics.

Dozens of words and phrases he coined entered the lexicon, from feminazis to drive-by media and camp-eye [supposedly the plural of campus, a jab at ivory- towered intellectuals].

Those whom he scorned he destroyed with well turned monikers….Chuck-u Schumer comes to mind. He, on the other hand, was the Maha-rushi…

But the humor never became bitter or poisonous …or vulgar… which was one of the secrets of his broad appeal. There was always that strong undercurrent of decency and humanity and a genuine love of people that enabled him to answer even the most inane caller with a patience that could not be faked.

One of the greatest failures of mainstream political analysts has been their complete misunderstanding of the phenomenon of talk radio itself, of which Rush was the greatest avatar. Though “the people” are the pretext for the leftist’s schemes and theories, the actual living people before him he dismisses with contempt and derision.

So it was with Rush and his ditto-head supporters.

The intellectual class wrote him off as a crude semi-literate  demagogue with an audience of hicks and rubes. In fact, he was one of the sharpest minds in politics, with a wonkish interest in the details of policy-making, argumentative skills that would have made his lawyer father proud, and an ability to articulate the deepest sentiments and unspoken thoughts of his contemporaries with a penetration that ripped off the mask of political correctness forever.

I listened to Rush nearly every day except when I went abroad. His show was the background for lunch, work, and hanging out. I never met the guy, or called in, though I liked to tell myself that a few things from this humble blog had somehow drifted up to his ken. I devoutly hope so.

I listened even when I was furious at him for many things that he did not get right….that he got spectacularly wrong.

After he shot up in the ranks of right-wing stars, his views began to converge with those of the neoconservatives whose toxic influence derailed the right from its roots in non- interventionism.  This was the Rush who excused Abu Ghraib as college-hazing. He was wrong then and he was wrong on many other issues where he ended up a gate-keeper for the neoconservatives and globalists. That was unfortunate, because it delayed the awakening of middle America by more than a decade.   A decade in which much was lost.

But even when I loathed what he said, I was never really turned off by the guy himself. He was too big, too likeable, too real. I knew instinctively that he was much more than a radio host.  He was a buddy, the leader of the band, the big brother always ready to drop by and punch the bully media in the kisser.

I knew instinctively also that if I ended up hating him, I would be hating America itself.. and I would be hating the part of myself that was American, because there was no one who embodied heartland America with all its flaws and virtues better than this big cigar-smoking emperor of the airwaves, who bragged endearingly of being a “talent on loan from God.”

Well, God took back his loan on Wednesday.

Mega Dittos, Rush. Rest In Peace.