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.”
Who cares? Rush certainly is more familiar with the Constitution, and where this country needs to be headed, than the RNC or Steele.
Well said.
There are far too many so-called repubs who fit that description.
No! He is OUT. RINO behavior will not be tolerate as well as breaking the 11th Commandment. This is too important and vital to the success of the country.
The last thing the GOP needs right now is to have a radio guy who open states he'll never run for office deemed to be the head of the party.
Prescription for electoral disaster.
Michael Steele is sorry. Sorry as in pitiful. It is interesting that he made his criticism of Rush on the D.L. Hughley show. Hughley s the latet comedian who would have had no material if it were not for George W. Bush. I have never found him to be funny and was always surprised at the audience reaction to his lame patter.
Now he follows Olberman and the other nit wit, I forget his name, who have been moved into news slots by the degenerated MSM and cable TV outlets.
It is saddening to see candidates in major elections appearing on these shows, no matter how many idiots watch them. Steele is a politician in the pejorative sense of the word. He is in fact a greasy politician.
There was always that not so subtle expression of the need to respect the victim status of blacks in Steele’s presentations. he is in fact a RINO who will say anything to advance his own agenda. That his agenda has nothing to do with conservative values is sad, but it is a sign of the times.
I don’t think it was a verbal flub—I think it’s what he thinks and he did a couple more flubs/goofs in that interview. He better be 100% from now on because he’s run out of slack. We have few very prominent people that are seeing this Obama presidency for what it is—a disaster and championing the conservative cause. You can’t take pot shots at those people when you are supposedly on the same side. Who’s he trying to impress? D.L. Hughley? Where’s his head? Sorry, but I don’t trust him now. Normally, I’m pretty forgiving and I’m not even a regular Rush listener—this just really cheesed me off.
Yeah, I know. He’s got a week to do a total turnabout.
Sequoyah101 to Steele...
Go pack sand, you traitor.
Useless, spineless, politically correct SOB.
If you fight, win.
Simple rule idiot!
Steele is sorry because of the flack he and the RNC got after Rush exposed his remarks. Steele is the theif who isn’t sorry he stole, but he’s terribly sorry he got caught.
I left the GOP today and I’ll be damned if I go back. I’ve had it. Perhaps one day with God’s Grace the Grand Old Party will learn how to treat Conservatives who fight the hardest, vote in droves and give freely pf time, talent and cold hard cash.
This is exactly what happened. Steele was making nice to liberals while with liberals and now we are supposed to believe he really didn't mean it. We're supposed to swallow that it was merely a brain fart of Steele's as we write out our RNC checks. Screw him. Screw most of the Republicans in Washington.
I can probably count on two hands the real conservatives in congress who really represent my views and have the balls to voice it and vote it.
Obama will run this country into ground because only
Rush and a handful of like minded congressmen aren't enough to protect America from Obama, the MSM, Soros, Islamists, Democrats, Global warmists, and half the F'N Republican Party.
True, but you know facts don’t always matter in the world of politics. The RNC is in the business of getting Republicans elected, and it doesn’t help if the public starts believing that Rush is giving marching orders to Republicans. This is straight out of Alinky’s Rules for Radicals; look up Rule #13.
Did you even watch and listen to Rush’s CPAC speech? It wasn’t “running his mouth” that got him 17 standing ovations, pompousgunner.
Wow! That inspires confidence.
That right there shows he has’nt a clue what conservatism is all about.The fact he would make a statement like that just shows complete stupidity.The hiphop crowd?lmao
When I heard this on Rush this afternoon, I am sure I turned purple.
Steele is not the man I thought he was.
Not a bit.
Hey A-hole: You're the Chairman of The Republican National Committee. You can't afford to be "maybe a little bit inarticulate." You know, don't you, that media whores from CNN to CNBC to god knows where are quoting you and using your "little bit inarticulate" stupidity to hang racism around your party's neck? You do know that, right?
Why are we cursed with dumb f*ckwads for "leaders." I give up.
Yep, he’s over they yucking it up with the hip hop crowd and he ain’t convinced them of anything, but they sure got what they wanted out of him!
oops meant “over there”
Actually, what he thinks about those issues doesn't mean squat unless he runs for office. What he says in public about the most visible conservative in the land makes a helluva lot more difference.
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