Posted on 01/27/2009 1:42:56 PM PST by Sub-Driver
House GOP leader to Rush: Back off By: Jonathan Martin January 27, 2009 04:32 PM EST
Rush Limbaugh may command a large following, but his caustic comments Monday about the GOP’s congressional leadership have one of the House’s leading conservatives defending his colleagues and offering an unusually candid critique of the talk radio powerhouse and his fellow commentators.
Responding to President Obama’s recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaugh’s lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is “obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He's more frightened of me, than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn't say much about our party."
Rep. Tom Price, who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee, did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.
“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Price said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Congressman Price,
Here's the deal. We elected you guys. We gave money, some of us gave more than we could afford. We argued with our friends. We had our cars keyed because we had Republican bumper stickers.
In large part because of Rush's help, the Republicans took Congress in 1994. With the usual Republican ham-handedness, we nominated Senator Dole who ran a doomed campaign.
But in 2000 we had Congress and we had the White House. For reasons we don't quite understand, YOU in Congress, NOT us out here paying our taxes, YOU started acting like idiots (and worse, like Democrats) and dished out pork like there was no tomorrow.
Instead of having the wits to realize that the mainstream media were always going to hate you and developing a plan to deal with them, you let them jerk you and the President around.
Instead of realizing that the Democrats were going to hold the war effort hostage to their political desires and responding accordingly, you let them corner you into bartering whatever came to hand in exchange for support for our troops.
Instead of realizing that bureaucrats will almost always act not in the nation's interest but in the interests of their own job security, you let them bamboozle you into supporting their programs.
Instead of making a united effort to lead this country away from what Lincoln called "the Democracy" with their fatal plans for financing home ownership and taking all power unto themselves, you all lost whatever vision you had and went along to get along, telling yourselves that, after all, you were the ones saddled with real leadership while we, the voters, who couldn't possibly appreciate the great strain under which you were, really had no clue what truly needed to be done.
Well, Congressman, I think last November we found out how much of a clue you guys had. And it sounds like, while we heard and understood the election of 2008, you all are still thinking that the way to wrest the nation back from the Democrats is to make nice with them.
WHY do you listen to the liars and ideologues in the news media? WHY do you take your cues from the Democrats? WHY do you trade away the very principles which make you Republicans? Why, when you're done running as conservatives, do you legislate like liberals?
The disaster of Obama's election need not be one from which we cannot recover. But it is up to you, and unless the leadership of this party start leading, unless you show that you have learned something from your squandering of the mandates of 1994, 2000, and 2004, unless you find your courage and your honor again, you and the party will deservedly be remembered as poltroons and failures.
Do not think to treat us with the smiling contempt and the fulminant demagoguery of the Democrats. Do not tell us that WE do not have skin in the game and cannot understand what is at stake -- no, do not do that to the voters and taxpayers who pay your wage. After all, we cannot retire from our electoral defeat with a pension.
Do not come before us with an air of wounded feelings and ask us to trust you.
Stand up! Stand up like men! Remember what has made this country the last, best hope of man on earth. Commit yourself to those truths. Then, even should you lose, you will win. But you will not lose because if you and the Republicans speak and act on the truths of freedom, whatever the jackals in the media may say or write, their will be an army of free men and women behind you.
Make your case. NO, not your case, make OUR case, and we will prevail and freedom will be restored.
The times, Congressman, call for greatness. Is there anyone in Congress who can answer that call?
That has to be the most juvenile and funniest thing I have seen all day!!! Bwaaaaaaahahaha
They don’t have a copyright on the acronym. How about...
NRA = (New Conservatives Alliance)?
Please see my post 115.
His office is denying it.
Amen. That nails it. If is see or hear "Rino" one more time I'm going to vomit. The Republican party gets smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker while the Dems tighten their death grip on the country's political levers.
I'll have to hand it to the people behind the DNC curtain. They, and their MSM co-conspirators, did what Clinton et.al. could never do - Divide and Conquer.
Rush needs take down the spineless, gutless, liberal republicans in Congress at the same time he’s exposing Obama.
Mr. Price. I called the RNC and Corker, Tn. Sen., and advised both that I wanted my name removed from the Republican roll. The tax dodger vote was the final straw. Now you convince me even more, I made the right decision. This is from a 53 year voter - not age, a 53 year voter!
Media lie.
The article doesnt back up the headline. Price never told Rush to ‘back off’ just said they have different roles.
Let the GOP start opposing the Obama stimulus bill and filibuster it and we will see if they have a spine.
Rep. Tom Price, who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee, did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.
Price quote:
“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Price said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.
I agree, they’re both jokes !! When the Republicans took over the house in 1994 they couldn’t say enough nice things about Rush and how he had such a positive influence on them taking over..Now that they have screwed it up its somehow Rush’s fault. What a bunch of limp-wristed b@$t@rd$.
This one sentence explains, in a nutshell, why Rush is so effective and those in Congress are so ineffective. They, who are blind, deaf and dumb with regards to their constituents, will never be able to lead them. And man do these guys fit that description.
His office is denying he said it.
I don’t know, perhaps they’re thinking that if they become victims, they can win elections too!
Yes, but where was the outrage? Please, R’s did nothing they made no real stink, did not make a big deal, just let it go. Yes they could not stop it from happening, but they should have been screaming from the mountain tops!
The country deserves better than a tax cheat leading the IRS.... but Wall Street wanted him, and Fauxbama wanted him, so we’ll just meekly vote against without doing anything else.
COWARDS, pure and simple COWARDS.
Er ... sure you aren't blaming the messenger for the message?
The divide is real, and Politico didn't cause it. I can't tell you how much I regret voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger; if I had it to do over again, I'd have let the liberal win. At the time, a truly great California conservative Republican, Tom McClintock, would have lost even if every Republican in the state had voted for him, so a vote for McClintock would have been a vote for Cruz Bustamonte, a very liberal Democrat, so I voted for Arnold. Some AT THE TIME fell for the same ruse you do here -- that it was mere emotional "divisiveness" through media manipulation that threatened the GOP. So Arnold, the Republican, won, and has done MORE damage, short-term and long-term to the state, the nation, and the GOP, than Bustamonte could ever have done.
I LEARNED MY LESSON. There is a divide between conservatives and Republicans, and if the Republican running is a big-government Republican such as a Mitt Romney, MY VOTE GOES ELSEWHERE, even if it means causing the Democrat to win. America and the GOP <]u>lose big time when liberal, big-government, roll-over, reach-across-the-aisle appeaser Republicans win.
Not Politico nor any other media caused this divide; RINOs and idiots who think a RINO is better than a Democrat DID.
I hope, but am not confident that a similar effort can be launched against the coming Obama tide of Leftist/union pork spending.
The productive thing is to write and call Congress and tell every Republican Senator to FILIBUSTER the Obama stimulus bill. Not a single Republican should vote for that trillion dollar boondoggle.
BTW, Boehner is doing the right thing:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2172669/posts?page=58
It is also the only thing that has worked in the past, and even as recently as the year 2003 (Iraq War). But I don't think the American people are quite that destitute, miserable and desperate....yet.
Divide what?...seems like everything is all hands together in DC...it’s the rest of us that are divided from all of them. DC keeps voting together no matter what the public wants.
EASY?! Hey Congressman Price, when Newt was in the minority he was the ultimate backbench bomb thrower and that eventually paid off. Either grow some conjones, or STFU!
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