The Ravel Code

40 years ago, many of us around back then listened to Beatles songs in search of clues. We even believed, at one point, that Paul was dead and the clues were in Beatles songs, LP covers, and the like. Now, in 2009 along comes another theory.

We’ve heard the hypnotic Bolero, the masterpiece composed by Maurice Ravel. In another work, detectives are suggesting he encoded the name of a woman inside a piece of work entitled La Valse. Could it be? Anything’s possible. Here’s the story from the BBC…

The French composer, Maurice Ravel may have left a hidden message – a woman’s name – inside his work.

A sequence of three notes occurring repeatedly through his work spell out the name of a famous Parisian socialite says Professor of Music, David Lamaze.

He argues that the notes, E, B, A in musical notation, or “Mi-Si-La” in the French doh-re-mi scale, refer to Misia Sert, a close friend of Ravel’s.

Well known in art circles, she was painted by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Ravel never married, but Misia was married three times. Ravel composed some of his work while staying on a boat belonging to Misia and her second husband.

“It has never been done before. To take one person and to place them at the centre of a life-long work,” says Lamaze, who is working on a book about Ravel and Misia.

Lamaze believes Ravel was romantically inspired by Misia. “To put the feeling of love at the very central point of the creation without us knowing it. That is typical of Ravel, I think.”

Secretive

Ravel was notoriously secretive about all aspects of his life, from his compositional process to his private life.

The Mi-Si-La motif appears, in particular, at crucial phases of Ravel’s work La Valse, says Lamaze.

At the beginning, in depicting a man and woman dancing a Viennese Waltz, he entwines Mi-Si-La with A and E – thought to denote Ravel.

Initially planned in 1906 as a tribute to the waltzes of Johann Strauss, La Valse became a much darker work when he completed it in 1920, following his experiences serving in the World War I and the death of his mother.

BBC Radio 3 features Ravel’s The Waltz on Saturday at 1215 GMT or catch up later at BBC iPlayer .

Millionaires’ Audit Chances Less Likely

Nobody wants an audit. No one. Even if you have nothing to hide, the idea of the IRS getting up close and personal make us all cringe a little. Sure, we file our taxes year in and year out, keep copious records for 12 months and then duly report our earnings and wealth by the 15^th of April. Duly noted. But it seems the more we make, the less likely the IRS will probe… Here’s proof from USA Today…

By Sandra Block, USA TODAY

IRS audits of taxpayers with income of $1 million or more declined by more than a third last year, despite the agency’s claims that it stepped up scrutiny of wealthy taxpayers, a new study says.

Audits of wealthy taxpayers dropped at least 36% in fiscal 2008 from 2007, according to a report released today by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. TRAC is a research group affiliated with Syracuse University.

The drop in audits affected returns filed by taxpayers who earned income at the height of the real estate boom, before the economy turned sour, the report said.

In December, the IRS acknowledged that audits of wealthy taxpayers fell in 2008 but said the decline was much lower. In fiscal 2008, the IRS said, wealthy taxpayers had a 5.6% chance of being audited, down from 6.8% a year earlier. The IRS attributed the 19% decline to a drop in enforcement staff from the year before. Also, the IRS said, it had to divert staff to handle billions of dollars in stimulus checks.

TRAC said recently published IRS data suggest that wealthy taxpayers had just a 4.4% chance of being audited in fiscal 2008.

“In the face of growing federal deficits and public calls to lower the tax gap — the amount of taxes due but not reported and paid — the drop in millionaire audits is surprising,” the report said.

The IRS disagrees with TRAC’s analysis and stands by its earlier report, IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said.

Several studies have shown that wealthy taxpayers are more likely to hide income from the IRS. Taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $500,000 to $1 million fail to report 21% of their income on average, vs. 7% for those earning $40,000 to $50,000, according to a 2008 analysis by Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan economics professor, and IRS economist Andrew Johns.

The TRAC report also found that face-to-face audits of wealthy taxpayers have plummeted even more than overall audits. Only 3.1% of wealthy taxpayers were subjected to a face-to-face audit in 2008, the same level as five years ago, the report found. The remaining wealthy taxpayers were subjected to less-intensive correspondence audits, which are conducted by mail.

Lemons said TRAC discounts the value of correspondence audits, which the IRS believes are a cost-effective way to recover unpaid taxes.

“Any suggestion that we’re somehow going soft on taxpayers because we’re doing correspondence audits is wrong,” he says.

Even with the decline, the IRS remains focused on targeting wealthy individuals, Lemons said.

“If you’re in this million-dollar category,” he said, “you’re more likely to be audited now than three, four or five years ago.”

Prepaid Wireless is Here to Stay

For years, we’ve worked our budgets carefully so we could accommodate the wireless phone costs. We signed the obligatory contracts, and each month we’d shell out our dollars to the phone companies, month in—month out.

The phone companies loved it, all was right with the world, and consumers quietly marched in step.

2009 arrives and we’re gradually looking at a trend heading away from the contract. A number of companies 5 years ago who began offering contract-free service were often laughed at. Pay-As-You-Go? You’ve got to be kidding….

Here’s an article from BusinessWeek that shows how this once laughable concept is taking root across our nation…

Consumers are abandoning traditional subscription plans, which may curb growth for AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile

By Olga Kharif

It looked, for a while, like the wireless industry might shrug off the worst of the recession. AT&T (T), the biggest U.S. phone company, in January reported a respectable 13.2% increase in fourth-quarter wireless sales, fueled by strong subscriber gains. Things were looking up this year, too. Surveys showed consumers would rather reduce purchases even of food and clothing before ditching cell phones.

It was nice while it lasted. Fresh survey data show that U.S. consumers are rapidly switching to cheaper calling plans, often choosing so-called prepaid packages that give carriers smaller, less predictable revenue streams.

On Mar. 19, Washington think tank New Millennium Research Council (NMRC) released results of a survey showing that 17% of Americans have already switched from contract-based plans to cheaper prepaid services in the past six months due to concerns about their jobs and the recession. Those sticking with contracts are migrating to cheaper plans and cutting such extras as texting and e-mail. “Millions of Americans are on the verge of discontinuing expensive cell-phone plans,” says Graham Hueber, a senior researcher at the Opinion Research Center, which conducted the study commissioned by the NMRC.

Fewer Minutes, Less Texting

Other evidence also suggests consumers are taking a closer look at their wireless bills. Of 2,151 U.S. cell-phone users surveyed online by JupiterResearch in November, one-third were considering cutting back on wireless spending and the number of minutes and texts they use. In February, Sprint Nextel (S) indicated that “economic uncertainty” was partly to blame for a sales decline and customer losses in the fourth quarter.

One maker of air cards, Sierra Wireless (SW), announced on Jan. 29 it would lay off 10% of its workforce amid a drop in fourth-quarter revenue. “We are going to see more and more of this in the U.S. and the rest of the world,” says Carrie Pawsey, senior analyst at researcher Ovum.

Of course, some carriers are faring better than others. “Despite the economic environment, we grew revenues in 2008, and I expect 2009 will be another year of overall revenue growth and solid progress for our company,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said during the company’s January earnings call. AT&T wouldn’t say whether it’s seeing an impact from the worsening economy now.

And Fewer Data Cards, Too

But consumer cutbacks are sure to catch up with carriers in the coming months, and those reductions could result in slower revenue and customer growth. Of U.S. consumers who have wireless contracts, almost 40%, or 60.3 million, are likely to curtail cell-phone spending to save money if the economy worsens in the next six months, according to the NMRC survey. Some 41% of survey respondents are considering paring back on extras like text messaging. Many already are scaling back on data cards for computers, which, according to wireless industry consultant Chetan Sharma, contribute about 12% of carriers’ data revenue.

Even smartphone users, typically among the most profitable customers, may soon trim usage. As professionals in finance and other industries continue to lose jobs, Sharma estimates that 10% to 20% of the people who own these souped-up, Web-surfing phones may downsize plans this year. Smartphone users typically pay $70 to $200 a month for wireless service. As they reduce spending, U.S. wireless data revenue may grow only 15% this year, vs. 38% in 2008, Sharma estimates.

Carriers that specialize in prepaid calling may be among the few beneficiaries of cutbacks. Now, only about 15% of Americans use prepaid wireless plans, which can cost 50% to 75% less than contract-based plans. In contrast, 68% of Britons already use prepaid plans. “There’s clearly a lot of additional movement that could take place,” says Allen Hepner, a scholar at the NMRC. “Thanks to the recession, the U.S. marketplace is undergoing fundamental changes.” Indeed, prepaid may grow to 20% of the market by yearend, Sharma estimates. In the fourth quarter, prepaid customers accounted for 57% of new subscribers at T-Mobile USA, up from 23% a year earlier.

Widespread Defections

Some consumers are leaving the four largest carriers—AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile—for smaller, prepaid carriers. In the fourth quarter, MetroPCS (PCS) saw net subscriber additions surge 74%, to 519,519, from a year earlier. In the same quarter, Sprint Nextel lost 1.3 million customers, most of them postpaid. Sprint executives are hopeful that the industry will nevertheless fare better than other areas of the economy. “We believe wireless has become so important in people’s lives, we won’t see as much impact as other industries.”

Providers of prepaid calling, typically considered the domain of younger callers or those with bad credit, are taking steps to make their plans more alluring by adding features and better phones. Such services as MetroPCS and Leap (LEAP) are available in more markets. On Mar. 9, Leap expanded into Philadelphia. Nowadays, users can purchase not only voice but also data plans that permit texting and e-mail.

And prepaid phones have turned from clunky to cool. On Mar. 10, MetroPCS introduced Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone, which features a Qwerty keyboard and rich multimedia capabilities, in many of its markets. For only $50 a month, without a contract, users of the device can talk, text, browse the Web, and send multimedia messages and e-mail. Steps like that are helping foster loyalty. Leap’s monthly subscriber turnover declined to 3.8% in the fourth quarter, from 4.2% a year earlier.

Developing War in Price Cutting?

Contract carriers are responding by updating and rolling out new prepaid plans and lowering prices. This year, T-Mobile USA began offering a $50-a-month unlimited voice plan to longtime subscribers to prevent them from leaving.

But the recent flurry of cheaper, unlimited plans from T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, Alltel, and Zer01 Mobile raises a red flag for Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. “As growth slows, pricing [war] risk rises,” he wrote in a recent report. As more carriers start offering unlimited voice calling and data plans, they increasingly will have to compete on price.

The hope for some within the industry is that when economic prospects improve, “people will go back to postpaid” calling plans, Sharma says. But the more attractive prepaid plans become, the harder they will be to shake.

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.

US home construction accelerates

The numbers for housing starts are in for the month of February—and surprisingly—they’re not half bad!

Here’s an assessment of those numbers from the BBC…

The rate of construction of new homes in the US soared by almost a quarter in February compared with the previous month, official figures have shown.

The US Commerce Department said the construction of new homes and apartments rose to an annual rate of 583,000 in the month.

In January, the annual rate to fell to 477,000 homes, the fewest in 50 years.

The jump, driven by an increase in apartments, came as a surprise to analysts, who had expected a drop.

But even with February’s big jump in building activity, housing construction is still down by almost a half compared with the same month a year ago.

Sign of recovery?

The January rate was the lowest since the US Commerce Department started keeping records in 1959.

Some analysts were at a loss to explain the rise seen in February.

“We see no specific factor that might explain this jump,” said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.

“ This is an encouraging sign for the US economy. It is good signal of what is to come ”
Matt Esteve, Tempus Consulting

“Multi-family starts are always noisy, but this is exceptional. With new home sales still falling and the [recent] months’ supply at a record there is no reason for homebuilding to rise.”

Applications for building permits, which are seen as a reliable indicator of future building activity, were also up by 3% to an annual rate of 547,000.

Wider impact

The collapse of the US housing market was a key factor in the global economic downturn.

And some analysts believe these housing figures are a sign that the economy may be on its way to recovery.

“This is an encouraging sign for the US economy. It is good signal of what is to come,” said Matt Esteve at Tempus Consulting.

“With the rally in equities, we hopefully have seen a bottom for the economy here.”

Others, however, were rather more circumspect.

“This is a temporary rebound, not a recovery,” said Mr Shepherdson.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Gun Runners

As the escalation of the Mexican Drug War continues,one has to look at just where the guns are coming from.  Arms dealers here in the U.S. are being scrutinized more and more as a possible source for the arsenal flowing south of the border… Here’s a report from CBS News…

 

CBS)  In Phoenix Monday, a gun dealer went on trial for supplying assault rifles to Mexican drug gangs who are locked in a bloody war with authorities — and each other. CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports on a case that’s being watched closely in both the United States, and in Mexico.

In the escalating drug war south of the border, Mexican cartels supply the drugs, but the guns largely come from the United States.

“Firearms trafficking to Mexico is a huge problem,” says Phoenix ATF agent William Newell. “Drugs go north, guns come south.”

George Iknadosian is accused of being a top gun-supplier. When government agents raided his Phoenix gun shop last May, they found hundreds of weapons allegedly destined for Mexico. He’s now on trial, accused of knowingly selling more than 700 guns to so-called straw buyers – U.S. citizens who buy the guns legally and then turn them over to a trafficker.

“They get $100 for their trouble, and the trafficker will take the gun down to Mexico and sell it for exponentially more than they pay here,” says ATF agent Peter Forcelli.

As many as 2,000 firearms are believed to cross the border into Mexico every day. And they are often assault weapons, Tracy reports.

The ATF says that 7,700 guns found in Mexico last year were traced to sellers in the United States.

“All the killing they are doing here are killing with guns that are selling in the United States,” said Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos.

Mexican law makes it nearly impossible to buy guns there legally. But less restrictive laws in the U.S. keep the firearms flowing over the border. Court papers in the Iknadosian case claim U.S. border states provide three-quarters of black market firearms to Mexico.

And with more than 2,000 people killed so far this year in drug-related violence in Mexico, cutting off the gun supply is now a top concern on this side of the border.

The Return of the Troubles?

It was on Good Friday in 1998 when a peace agreement was signed in Northern Ireland. The accord launched a new era of hope in that troubled land between Protestants and Catholics, who had been embroiled in sectarian violence for years, with lives lost on both sides.

Two British soldiers were killed over the weekend.What happened?  The NYT has a closer look…

By JOHN F. BURNS

LONDON — After years of sharply reduced political violence in Northern Ireland, the gunning down of a group of British soldiers by suspected Irish Republican Army
dissidents has shaken the Protestant and Catholic communities and
challenged the still fragile cohesion of the province’s power-sharing
government.

Politicians from both communities joined on Sunday in condemning the
attack on the British soldiers and two pizza delivery men outside a
British Army base in Antrim, 15 miles northwest of Belfast. The attack,
which took place late Saturday, killed two soldiers and seriously
wounded two other soldiers and the delivery men, who somehow survived
when the attackers aimed follow-up volleys of automatic fire at the men
as they lay sprawled on the road outside the base’s main gate.

It was the first deadly assault on the British military in Northern
Ireland since an I.R.A. sniper shot a soldier in 1997, a year before
the Good Friday peace agreement, brokered by the United States, that
set out a roadmap for ending sectarian violence in the province of 1.8
million people.

Politicians in the province said the shootings had the earmarks of a
bid by dissident republicans to destabilize the power-sharing
government that took office nearly two years ago after 30 years of
violence that killed 3,700 people.

A dissident faction that has rejected power-sharing, which calls
itself the Real I.R.A. , claimed responsibility for the attack in a
telephone call to the Sunday Tribune, a Belfast newspaper. The police
said the group, up until now, had undertaken a sporadic but mostly
marginal campaign of attacks, mainly against the province’s police
force.

Outrage across the province on Sunday was compounded by the
brutality of the attackers, who were said by the police to have tracked
the delivery men to the gates of the Massareene base on Antrim’s
outskirts, then advanced on the victims, still firing, after an initial
volley as the soldiers collected their pizzas.

The attack had echoes of the harsh tactics used during the
province’s most violent years by the I.R.A., which made a policy of
killing not only soldiers and policemen but civilians whose work
supported them. That violence, and attacks by Protestant
paramilitaries, killed as many as 300 people a year at the height of
the sectarian struggle, but the advent of power sharing has made
political killings a relative rarity. Last year, only three deaths were
attributed to sectarian attacks.

But fears had grown recently that attacks by dissident republicans
were mounting. The dissidents have wounded several police officers in
15 attacks over the past 17 months, and a 250-pound bomb was defused
last month outside another army base. Sir Hugh Orde, the province’s
police chief, announced last week that concern about the attacks had
caused him to ask for help from a “small number” of troops from the
army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment, an intelligence-gathering unit.

That decision ran counter to the reduction of army units under the
peace agreement, which has trimmed the pre-1998 British garrison from a
high of 25,000 troops to barely 4,000, concentrated on 10 bases that no
longer play any active part in the province’s security.

The two men killed on Saturday, in their early 20s, were from an
engineering unit, and were days away from deploying to Afghanistan. The
army fortresses that were once a major target of I.R.A. attacks, in
urban areas that were centers of I.R.A. strength or along I.R.A.
infiltration routes from the Irish republic, have mostly been
dismantled.

On Sunday, as the police announced that they had recovered the
Antrim gunmen’s getaway vehicle at Randalstown, about five miles west
of Antrim, Protestant leaders said the attack had vindicated the police
decision to call on the army intelligence specialists. The move was
condemned last week by Martin McGuinness,
the former I.R.A. commander who is the province’s deputy first
minister, as “stupid and dangerous” for reviving memories of the role
played by army intelligence units in strikes against the I.R.A. in the
past.

But that disagreement was stilled as leaders on both sides of the
historic divide joined in condemning the attack, showing a common front
that many in Northern Ireland saw as a measure of how far the province
has come under the power-sharing accord. Mr. McGuinness and Peter
Robinson, the province’s first minister and head of the Democratic
Unionist Party, the most powerful of the mainly Protestant parties in
the province, announced they were postponing a joint
investment-promoting trip to the United States that was to have begun
on Sunday.

Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein,
the political wing of the I.R.A., described the Antrim gunmen as
“merchants of doom” and their attack as “wrong and counterproductive.”

“We support the police in the apprehension of those involved,” he said.

His tone was little different than the one adopted in London. “No
murderer will be able to derail a peace process that has the support of
the people of Northern Ireland,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown
of Britain said. Shaun Woodward, the minister responsible for Northern
Ireland, said the government would not allow anger at the Antrim
shootings to destabilize the power-sharing accord.

Despite lingering resentments and widely different prescriptions for
the province’s long-term future among leaders of the Protestant and
Catholic communities, the power-sharing arrangement has worked better
than pessimists feared when it began 22 months ago. That followed years
of delay, recrimination and back-pedaling, as well as continued
violence, that continued after the Good Friday pact was signed in 1998.

“What really matters is that we do not allow the very small number
of people who make up these groups to derail the peace process,” Mr.
Woodward said in a BBC
interview on Sunday, referring to the dissident republicans. He said
Mr. McGuinness and Mr. Robinson, with their parties, had “transformed
the politics of Northern Ireland,” and that it was up to the province’s
people, in the Catholic and Protestant communities, to help the police
by telling them anything they knew about the Antrim killers.

Mike Slater Speaks out on CNN

We are very proud of our co-worker Mike Slater! Mike appeared Thursday (March 5^th)  on CNN discussing the stimulus. Mike got a call from CNN asking for audio regarding the bus driver living in an 800 thousand dollar house. CNN heard the calls, and decided to do a follow-up on the Slater Raiders, and how they feel. Hats off to Mr. Slater.  All of us here at Forever Communications are proud to have him as a co-worker… Click here for the story…

Who is Calling the Shots?

 In one corner: Mike Seele.  Smooth, former Mayrland Lt.Governor.  In the other:  Rush Limbaugh. Talk show host with 20 million listeners.

Can the Repbblican Party maintain the balance between their elected leader and the De-Facto leader? Here’s Perry Bacon from The Washington Post…

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 4, 2009; A01

 For a man who expresses no desire to lead the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh has a knack for creating problems for those who do.

Still smarting from consecutive electoral drubbings, Republicans now find themselves caught in a crossfire between Democrats pressuring them to denounce the conservative talk radio host’s bombastic criticism of a popular new president and his own denunciations of their party as an embarrassment.

The ongoing controversy over Limbaugh’s statement in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday that he wants “Barack Obama to fail” and the aggressive Democratic pushback it drew has emerged as the latest challenge for a party struggling to find its voice and lacking an obvious national leader.

Few Republicans are eager to alienate Limbaugh’s millions of avid listeners. But as party officials work to expand their shrinking coalition, they are also vexed about how to contend with his more pointed commentaries on hot-button issues and a president whom most in the party have been reluctant to criticize.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele apologized to Limbaugh on Monday after referring to his show as “incendiary” and “ugly” over the weekend — statements that led Limbaugh to say the new chairman was “off to a shaky start.” Steele said yesterday that he and congressional leaders will be shaping the party’s strategy. But he also praised Limbaugh as a “strong conservative voice,” adding, “What ticks the left off is he is effective.”

Steele’s gyrations reflected the delicate balance Republicans are attempting to find with Limbaugh. Party strategists say his listeners include a huge swath of the activist base, but some of his rhetoric leaves GOP elected officials forced either to defend views they may not support or to disagree with a popular conservative icon.

“The influence Rush has is 20 million listeners,” said Ron Bonjean, who was spokesman for former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), referring to what Limbaugh says is his weekly audience. “But to get back to the majority, we need to also connect to independents who may not be listeners of his show.” Democrats continued to mock Steele for buckling to Limbaugh yesterday, maintained their insistence that Limbaugh is the GOP’s de facto leader, and said they planned no letup in their attacks. The White House and the Democratic National Committee have been coordinating their response, and liberal interest groups are planning to expand their television ads highlighting Limbaugh’s comments in the days ahead.

“Rush is the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist who rose to prominence during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “Along with lots of others, I intend to continue to turn up the heat until every alleged Republican either endorses or renounces Rush’s statement that he hopes our president fails.”

Limbaugh, meanwhile, brushes aside the idea that he is the chief spokesman for the GOP. “I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be,” he said on his show Monday.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), said Democrats should focus less on attacking Limbaugh and more on working with congressional Republicans.

“If Robert Gibbs is worried about the policies Rush Limbaugh is talking about on his show, he should call into the show. I’m sure Rush would welcome it,” Dayspring said, referring to criticism from President Obama’s press secretary.

Several aides to congressional Republicans declined to comment yesterday about Limbaugh’s role in the GOP, saying they did not want to play into the Democratic strategy of pitting Limbaugh against some party leaders.

Washington has been dramatically reshaped since 1994, the last time the GOP did not control the White House, the House and the Senate, but Limbaugh has been a constant, remaining one of the most powerful voices among conservatives. He helped lead opposition to President Bill Clinton’s agenda, as well as parts of President George W. Bush’s, particularly his proposal to make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens.

In the early days of the Obama administration, while congressional Republicans have generally avoided directly attacking the popular new president and instead criticized their Democratic counterparts as not properly implementing Obama’s vision, Limbaugh dubbed the economic stimulus package “the Obama ‘porkulus’ bill” and was credited with playing a role in House Republicans’ unanimous opposition to the legislation. In a meeting with congressional leaders, the president complained about Limbaugh’s influence.

Some congressional Republicans have defended Limbaugh’s comments about wanting Obama to fail, which the talk radio host has explained by saying he wants the president’s policies to fail, not the country. (His full statement was, “So what is so strange about saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to reconstruct and reform this nation so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed.”)

“I know what Rush Limbaugh meant,” House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) said on CNN yesterday. “Look, everybody wants America to succeed, but everyone like me, Rush Limbaugh and others who believe in limited government, who believe in conservative values, wants the policies this administration is bringing forward . . . to fail.”

But other Republicans have argued that Limbaugh’s style is counter-productive. They say that in looking to woo moderate votes to regain control of Congress and the White House, Republicans must take positions that may annoy Limbaugh and his audience.

David Frum, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and helped coin the phrase the “axis of evil,” wrote on his Web site NewMajority.com that “nothing Steele said will be 1/1000 as harmful to Republicans and conservatives as Rush Limbaugh’s now multiply repeated statement that he hopes President Obama fails.”

In a recent interview, Frum said: “My main problem with talk radio is things you’re doing to excite a loyal audience are very different than things you do to try to win back the departed middle” of the electorate. “We can’t win elections by getting our core voters agitated. But if you’re a talk radio host and you have 5 million who listen and there are 50 million people who hate you, you can make a nice living. If you’re a Republican Party, you’re marginalized.”

One state GOP chairman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to criticize Limbaugh publicly, said “he is the leader of a niche of the Republican Party that simply opposes anything a Democrat ever comes up with.”

But most remain vocal defenders of the radio show host, saying he fires up the GOP base better than anyone else.

“He does far more good than harm,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “The people who listen to talk radio are more politically interested and politically active than people who are listening to ESPN. If you want to get the message out, that’s the way to go.”

Steele took on the delicate political calculation Republicans face more bluntly, saying yesterday: “I’m not here to tick off my base.”

Staff writer Chris Cillizza contributed to this report