Posted on 03/02/2009 3:20:29 PM PST by Dan Nunn
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”
The dust-up comes at a time when top Democrats are trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican Party, in part by using ads funded by labor. Americans United for Change sent a fund-raising e-mail Monday that begins: “The Republican Party has turned into the Rush Limbaugh Party.”
Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it's ugly.”
Steele, who won a hard-fought chairman's race on Jan. 30, told Politico he telephoned Limbaugh after his show on Monday afternoon and hoped that they would connect soon.
“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not."
“I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh,” Steele added. “No such thing is going to happen. … I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.”
On Monday’s show, Limbaugh reacted both to the comment and to the assertion on CBS’s “Face the Nation” by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that the radio host is “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”
Limbaugh said: “I'm not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don't want to be. I would be embarrassed to say that I'm in charge of the Republican Party in the sad-sack state that it's in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it's in, I would quit. I might get out the hari-kari knife because I would have presided over a failure that is embarrassing to the Republicans and conservatives who have supported it and invested in it all these years.”
On the RushLimbaugh.com home page, the transcript is labeled: “A Few Words for Michael Steele.”
In the interview with Politico, Steele called Limbaugh “a very valuable conservative voice for our party.”
“He brings a very important message to the American people to wake up and pay attention to what the administration is doing," Steele said. "Number two, there are those out there who want to look at what he’s saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t come out that way. … He does what he does best, which is provoke: He provokes thought, he provokes the left. And they’re clearly the ones who are most excited about him.”
Asked if he planned to apologize, Steele said: “I wasn’t trying to offend anybody. So, yeah, if he’s offended, I’d say: Look, I’m not in the business of hurting people’s feelings here. … My job is to try to bring us all together.”
Most RINOS and DIMS do.
I’m inserting this notice here since it is about talk radio and other media.
The liberal media would have you believe that the gag order against conservative talk has been once and for all lifted.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
The Durbin amendment requires the FCC to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership.”
Upon closer look, this “stealth” attack on Free Speech Rights is far more insidious because it empowers the government to censor and control the airwaves through backdoor policies that would almost certainly be expanded to include television, newspapers and the Internet!
In other words, the Durbin amendment actually expands the threat beyond Talk Radio to include other stages of free speech!
There is little doubt in my mind that we are headed for a showdown over our Free Speech Rights. Over the next 36 hours, I am urging EVERY member of our MRC Action Team to take fast action by alerting friends and family to the real truth about our Free Speech Rights coming under assault. Urge them to join with you in defending your First Amendment rights by going to the petition here.
Time is short. Through this Durbin Amendment, liberal members of Congress now have a way to muzzle conservative voices in the media, and we believe will waste little time moving forward.
We have to stay on top of this. I don’t know how much it helps but I signed this... Petition here:
http://www.mrcaction.org/517/petition.asp?Ref_ID=2222&PID=18778082
Before I even read one other response, I, for one, do NOT forgive.
First, Rush speaks at CPAC. He does a wonderful job, gives great joy and hope to the base, gets the attention of the Lamestream media...
...and the CHAIR OF THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE calls him an “entertainer”, “ugly”, and “incendiary”...the FREAKING DAY AFTER!!
Talk about raining on our parade.
I hope Steele did not sleep a wink last night. I hope he tosses and turns and asks God why on earth he said such a thing. I hope he suffers the fleas of a thousand camels in his armpits for giving such a knee-jerk answer to a dumbass liberal not worth anyone’s time or breath.
The libs love to throw around Rush’s comment about wanting Obama to fail because they like the sound byte. Rush has explained this beautifully time and again. Sean Hannity had a rash of sound bytes by liberals all saying they wanted Bush to fail.
But instead of Steele coming back with a response like...”didn’t the Dems want Bush to lose in Iraq” or use an example about wanting the team you DON’T root for to win, Steele does the GOP thing, the perfectly suntanned, all head hairs in their appointed places, polished nails, DC cocktail party thing and responds by calling Rush a name, using the LIBS own damn talking point about Rush being an entertainer. But he doesn’t stop there, Mr. Foot in Mouth, damn the ignorant base, your mussing my head hairs and the cocktail party invitations may dwindle....no he goes on to call Rush “ugly”. Incindiery I could live with maybe but UGLY?
I will be mad for a long time.
The pubs with their suntans, their head hairs that never budge from their appointed places, their polished nails, their friends across the aisle, their need to be loved....they are alive and every damn one of them arerepresented by Michael Steele.
I am ashamed I am from Merryland.
What a disappointment.
Jenny, I respect that, but I think a lot of us are very angry that the GOP has been run into the ground by RINOs without any respect for core conservative values. Heck, our PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE for 2008 was the biggest RINO of all! We LOST because of the RINOs!
We should be talking about these issues. It’s a shame that we can’t do it in a friendly way amongst ourselves. But the RINOs in power don’t want the discussion at all. They just want to kiss Dim butt as long as they get a place at the trough. Rush upsets the apple cart on this cozy arrangement, that’s part of why he has such a large following.
Bottom line, and it is a sad one: We can’t have unity yet because we have some SERIOUS questions to settle on where the Republican party really is. Conservative? Dim Lite? These are questions that need to be answered. And it’s a power struggle. Power does not concede gently, so wear a hardhat.
Steele has been a RINO ever since he came down on the wrong side of gun control and capital punishment, although he would have been a better senator than that bozo Cardin.
Follow-up to earlier ping...
Gemini -- "the twins." June 2, 1955.
There are a lot of independents that voted for Obama that I'm guessing have big time buyers’ remorse right now. If not now, they will very soon. We all know how he ran during the general election. Nothing more than a strategy. He governs....well, we see how he's doing that. That is not how he got those independent voters. Steele seems to be taking their strategy to just get enough votes to win. He's using their playbook. That's not our style.
I just want the guy to be clear so I know what he “really” means when he speaks. If he was principled, this shouldn't be a problem. The fact that it's not clear gives me great concern.
Our Republican “Leadership” lacks the political fortitude to oppose Obama and call him what he is; a Marxist. What they don’t understand is their political future depends on this very thing.
The RNC has been so entertaining lately that I wouldn’t pay them five cents to drop dead.
That was one of the salient points of LImbaugh's speech at CPAC:
"We are what is. The people who want control regard us as the enemy."
Some even went as far as to vote for Hussein, and encourage others to do so also, claiming their hand was forced because the Republicans had white trash on the ticket, and at the rallies.
Everyday in the papers or on TV, was a “Republican” saying our party must give up on the old fashioned ideas of Reagan, and move towards the middle, and give the people what they want.
Any so-called “love-in” for Rush is simply saying no to those who want to usher in a new Europe, a new sophistication, a new coolness.
Leni
I agree. I want to see ALL Republicans laugh at those stupid nazi comments, and call them exactly what they are and why! They are projection, from start to finish. The first Republican who calls them that, and laughs, has donations coming from me! I am sick of them playing all nicey nice with these vicious hateful people.
It is racist to call whites nazis but the left has been doing it for years. Blacks like Hugley are allowed to spew racism and they are militant about it. It’s a hard road that black conservatives have to hoe but this anti-white racism must stop. It’s apparent that a group has to be formed with financial backing and grassroots support to specifically combat anti-white racism without being racist towards another other group. It is imperative now.
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