Did you say "mole"?
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.”
Maybe a couple million eff you e mails in 12 hours caused some concern?
What the hell is this Steele guy thinking? Either show some balls or don’t not this crap. This guy had two good articles about this, even if it is a bit lefty. www.runninglocal.wordpress.com. I think you have to scroll past some article on spies or something to get to the two about Steele and Rush.
DakotaObserver
Steele’s ass must be stinging.
Barakapolis?
where “da masses” had to go to obama’s sermon on the mount?
where obama was alone?
the acceptance where he was watching us watching him?
the creepy lone leader?
You're absolutely right. Steele should have jumped out his chair at that comment and responded immediately. Jindal would have. Huckabee would have.
McCain let Whoopi Goldberg on the View insinuate that Republicans would reenslave black people. McCain let that slide instead of responding, "No, Whoopi. The very first Republican President, fought a war where hundreds of thousands of Americans died to ensure your freedom and then they put in place the 13th Amendment to guarantee that freedom secured by the shedding of their blood." Instead, McCain let it go. I was pissed at J-Mac for not responding directly and forcefully to Whoopi's comments. His silence let her and others like her continue to perpetuate the great lie.
So, yes, Republicans need to learn to respond to such ridiculous comments by acting outraged and dispensing the cold, hard truth.
When Obama gets on his high horse about education, remind Americans that he spends $60k a year to educate his own kids at an uber elite private school. $60k a year is nearly $29/hour and that's after taxes. How many "living wage" Democrats can afford that kind of education for their children? Nobody can make that point better than Michael Steele. That's what he should be talking about rather than getting sucked into pointless conversations about Limbaugh and whether skin colors at the GOP convention match D.L. Hughley's definition of America.
Talk about ideas, values, morals and stop all the B.S. identity politics and diversion tactics. Divide and conquer is the Democrats' game. Conservatives must always stand on principles. When we fail, it is because we've betrayed our principles. Even D.L. Hughley admitted our principles sound great.
More of the mealy mouthed pablum that got us where we are now. Steele should actually watch Rush’s monumental cpac speech and learn how one articulates and promotes philosophical conservatism.
Rule #1 is know what you believe and make the conscious decision to defend it without exception, at all times, everywhere.
Rule #2 is stop apologizing to media types for ideas you say you believe in.
Good post.
TO STEELE:
Too little.
Too late.
Too pathetic.
Too insincere.
Go away.
You’re not the head of the GOP.
Steele allowed media hacks to intimidate him. THAT has to stop, and it goes for all media on the left as well as the pols.
SCRAP Steele!
Mr. Steele is messin’ with the wrong guy.
Steele is a “good man” only if you are a leftist pro-abort. I was one of those who was willing to give him a chance despite his leftist associations and comments. (Says he is pro-life but supports Roe v. Wade? WTF?)
No more. He is done. Over. He voluntarily identified himself as a traitor to conservatism and the Republican party. Agrees that we are “Nazis.”
No sober person could ever trust him again.
Steele is a worthless liberal puke!
Pro queer agenda, pro abortion, and anti gun.
Sure it is easier. All you have to do is wait for the party in power to fall out of favor, then your party wins 50%+1 at least.
Holding an audience for as long as possible as to charge confiscatory commercial rates, now that takes talent.
“Pro queer agenda, pro abortion, and anti gun.”
Oh bull. Show me that and I would agree. You are as nuts as most liberals!
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