I've written about this as comments on a couple of diaries and supportive Kossacks have encouraged me to offer this as a diary. So here goes.
I'm surprised we haven't heard from Lakoff on the Rush Limbaugh-as-GOP-leader controversy (have we?). It would seem that from a Lakoff (Lakovian?) perspective, the question "who is the GOP leader?" is even more corrosive to the modern conservative movement than the proposition that the answer is Limbaugh.
As an authoritarian cult that long ago abandoned even the pretense of commitment to ideas and values, today's so-called "conservatives" are unusually dependent upon a single leader and a recognized chain of command. How else to know which principles to abandon today, which rationalizations to adopt, which former friends to turn on as "traitors" or "not true conservatives"?
Follow me after the jump for a fuller statement of my thesis.
The longer this question lingers in the air, the more it destroys the most fundamental promise of the GOP --- the strong, definitive leader who will provide a coherent strategy for avoiding reflection, responsibility, and scary change, who will clearly define enemies and provide easy-to-understand narratives for explaining how all of our problems are the result of those enemies.
In other words, in Lakoff terms, the very question "who is the GOP leader?" is the deepest-frame attack of all, because it goes right to the "strong father" logic of the so-called conservatives. They can forgive any sin, any excess, any hypocrisy, any abandonment of principle as long as the form of severe authority is preserved.
Modern authoritarian politics is always a kind of meta-politics, a politics-as-theater where deep framing does virtually all the work. Thus, keeping alive the "Who is the leader?" problem provokes the greatest anxiety of all.
Setting up Limbaugh as the standard for true leader also ensures that the standards for measuring leadership will be impossible to translate into the sphere of real, as opposed to virtual, politics.
Update: Given what I've said above, stories about "The GOP in Disarray" have the potential to cause much more damage than the proverbial "Dems in Disarray" stories. Those latter ones are considered normal---an expression of the Democratic Party's pluralistic nature. We may not have liked it, but deep down most of us felt at least some degree of pride in the idea that leadership on the left has to be earned and must come as the result of bringing together a coalition of interest groups who have pride in and dedication to their own constituents. With the GOP, it's the opposite: organization, authority, clear chain of command are considered natural, inevitable. Deviation from this, even temporarily is weakness, pathology, potentially disaster.
Update II: I would argue that Obama IS doing more than just attacking the conservative frame. He's offering his own new Obama-branded frame, which is more than just a recapitulation of old liberal frames and much more genuine and courageous than Clintonian triangulation: Good government, smart leadership, an attempt at consensus, post-partisanship (where possible), new ideas, openness, civic virtue, a maturity and respect in talking to citizens about sacrifice and obligations, etc.
Update III: More thoughts---Progressives believe in politics as a process, so we can afford to actually put our faith in it. But when Republicans today talk about their faith in the process itself, in its ability to produce a legitimate leader, it sounds weak and unconvincing. Conservatives don't believe in leadership as a result of process; their model is divine right, grace, "election" in the old Calvinist sense. St. Ronnie Reagan is not viewed as a politician who went through a process. He was a gift from God who appeared during the darkest days of Carterian malaise with the message of "morning in America." They have really become imprisoned by this model because it's indistinguishable from marketing gimmickry. Thus the attempts during the past election to produce a new GOP superstar -- Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin, etc. All of them come suddenly from nowhere and get a full press rollout, like a new product. But it's not 1980 anymore. Our media-saturated world has produced a much more cynical type of information-consumer. Leaders are picked apart endless by cable news, talk shows, blogs, YouTube, etc. The Bush presidency really accelerated this as well: he basically came out of nowhere and look where that got us! Thus, for Obama to get through that process with his reputation for integrity and honor basically intact is an amazing testament to him.
On the other hand, the GOP recognize in Obama the true marks of "natural leadership" and it drives them crazy. Deep down, I think, many of them respond to his charisma, his calm self-possession, his command of language and thought. They respond, they recognize him as a true leader and its drives them crazy.
That's why the question "who is the GOP leader?" is really a kind of taunt to them.