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.”
Sooner or later, folks will be forced to acknowledge reality..
1. Clean, neat, articulate folks in suits with Ivy League Degrees - aren’t necessarily competent for the job they seek.
Lawyers, Community Organizers and Racists ESPECIALLY fall into this category.
2. It is far more important to look at a person’s past accomplishments, achievements and behavior than to accept that person’s promise of future performance.
3. With some folks, “blood” IS thinker than an oath or handshake.
I appreciate your comment. He certainly needs to raise the bar. To see the way the CNN host was manipulating Steele so easy was just horrible. Hughley heaps praise on him and speaks about his new level of respect for Steele. Steele's response was a pie eyed nod in agreement. Hughley could have had him agreeing to recreational drug use in the Whitehouse if he wanted.
OK now that I got that out. I'll take your advice and put him on notice....agreed?
All that and he is sorry for the trip to the woodshed that Rush verbally took him to.
“Hey Steele, what were you doing on that loopy show in the first place? Ya lay down with dogs.... “
Just helping out a brutha. I’m telling you, unless blacks start seeing themselves as men, and not blacks, then nothing will change.
BOY! WE ARE SO SCREWED! WHAT part of UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED we FALL doesn’t he UNDERSTAND....UGHHHH...sorry for the rant, but I’ve HAD IT!!! Steele fell right into the mediapukeSNAKES trap with both feet in first!!
>>>>> Lesson for everyone in the RNC: you don’t attack your base! <<<<<<
First, with all due respect please don’t use the word “base” when “voters”, “supporters”, “members”, “constituents”, or even “other Republicans” will work just as well.
The term “base” is a highly insulting marketing term designed to reduce fellow Republicans and conservatives into some kind of amorphous statistical abstraction, which is exactly and precisely the problem the RNC has been having for many years now. When we are “the base”, we’re no longer thinking and autonomous fellow conservatives. (You don’t want to hear my theories of anthropology, linguistics, and mass communications.)
In any case....
For the last decade or two the RNC has had an increasingly difficult time being responsive to standard unhyphenated normal conservatives.
I don’t know what the solution to that is, but insulting Rush goes in the exact and precise opposite direction of “success”.
Obama WH Secret Phone Conferences Bear Fruit With TV Media’s Limbaugh Attack
NewsBusters | March 2, 2009 | Warner Todd Huston
Posted on 03/02/2009 5:26:46 AM PST by Delacon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2197178/posts
Rush Limbaugh is addressing the Michael Steele comments now
EIB | 03/02/2009 | Rush Limbaugh
Posted on 03/02/2009 11:23:23 AM PST by RushingWater
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2197437/posts
You need to direct that to Steele, not the Freepers.
I think that any “caucasion” that has Native American heritage has more of a right to be pissed of than AAs. That’s just me, though.
It was a mistake for him to apologize for that very reason.
Watch the next wave of attack by the Dems/Soros/DBM.
This is a very bad sign. It betrays a lack of conservative principals common among Republican "moderates" who like to go along to get along e.g.: Dole, McCain, etc. The kind who are actually embarrassed by Reagan conservatives and so stab them in the back when they can.
Rush has not been a GOP soldier, lately.
As a card carrying member of the Citizen Band Potawatomi Nation, I can rightfully be pissed. :->
“I was maybe a little bit inarticulate”
Isn’t one of the primary functions of his job to be articulate with the message of the party?
MS is a joke, apology or not.
This is merely damage control.
Steele just man up. You got with one of the brothers and put down the rich white guy. It is over for you. Resign now and you will not be banished from the land. DIRT BAG!
I think base is appropiate, maybe you understand some different than I do... “base” are for me the average conservative citizens who are the backbone and fundament of the society and the Conservative movement. We work, we fight, we pay. “Base” because we are different from the Country club Pubbies, the Washington hacks and pseudo-intellectual RINOs. It’s simple semantics... base is for me synoymous with backbone, bedrock, fundament... Rush listeners are the base of Conservatism...
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