Finally quit watching myself. Between 07 and now slowly started seeing him change and take on a more rino and leftist approach. As the years wore on he did nothing to stop anything that is coming. He sat around and let Obama win and bloviated hot air. He went from a Culture Warrior to a sham and a fake. I finally quit caring about him after his bashing of Michele Bachmann on his show when she was a guest.
I stopped watching regularly some years ago; he had a segment that purportedly was going to help an American woman reunite with her daughters, who were kidnapped by her Muslim husband 20-odd years prior.... He treated this woman like shiite, essentially claimed the daughters were “happy as could be” with their arranged Muslim marriages and were “given every opportunity” to leave with the O’Reilly crew and didn’t; therefore, they must be loving their lives and it was “their fault” if they were subjected to mistreatment. I was embarrased and infuriated not only at his rude, condescending treatment of the American mother but his utter stupidity regarding the type of society the daughters had been forced to accept.
After that, I watched with a much more critical eye, and as you say, he took on a definite RINO persona. The first Obama interview (or shall I say, ass kissing session) was pretty much the final straw.