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.”
Conservatives (especially on this site) were in part responsible for the Republican selection of the weakest of a weak field rather than the strongest of a weak field. That said, the primary system IS broken.
But this little tiff... damnit, Steele should have been smart enough to not get roped into that.
Sadly, conservatives are being betrayed by the very people who want us to support them and give them our money, time and talents to help their guys get elected or reelected.
This is the problem with people who are afraid to say what they believe. Steele wants to be liked, so he sucks up to whoever he is talking to and puts his foot in his mouth. Then he lies and gives a fake apology. I generally believe an apology under pressure is phony. I’m no longer a Republican. I’m tired of being associated with that bunch of sad sack elite liberals.
It’s ok. I’m just a little upset at being protected from terrorism then being shoved into a communist coup at the end of his two terms. With wide open borders and nationalized banks.
That post may just redeem you... a little bit anyway.
Not that it should matter much anyhow.
Well then you need to step down. Sucking up to liberals is NOT going to bring us all together.
Michael Steele=Obama 2012. Disgusting.
Steele says it’s all a silly little oopsie AFTER he gets his ass handed to him. Too late, Mikey, you can’t unring that bell.
Rush to Steele: suck it.
No one defines me. I listened to the "crap" once and, admittedly was surprised by it, but it only took the one time. I will, though, also admit that the first time it happened I was taken aback and not prepared for what was thrown my way. It happened once. Not again. I hope that is the same for Steele. Working in a male dominated world has nothing to do with it.
For the record, my dad and my three brothers helped raise me while my mom worked the third shift at the factory and my dad got home from the factory at 3:00 to take over taking us to all our baseball, basketball, football games and practices. And yes, there were scholarships that followed. Waaaaaay back in the '70's.
Why didn’t Steele just say, “Well, whatever you think of Rush, what do you think of his comment that the longest war in America is the War on Poverty, and the same people that have been receiving aid for 50 years are still claiming they need help?” Would that not have been a better response the basically agreeing with a brutha? it would put it back on the questioner and change the focus to a substantive issue, rather than a personality.
Even a drunken sot could come up with an argument like this in a bar, why can’t Steele when he’s sober?
Exactly right, mom. He is a politician without principles.
That is why he claims he is pro-life to some and says R. v W. should stand to others.
I was very proud of Rush standing up for his principles. That is something I don't believe Steele will ever understand.
You are exactly right. Steele has to go. I’m embarrassed today. We need to speak with one voice and today’s shenanigaNS make us look like idiots.
Well, I can think of one. Steve King in the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa. Ann Coulter has spoken very, VERY highly of him. There has been talk of his running in 2010 against Chet Culver in the Iowa governor’s race. A successful race in 2010 and he would be a great presidential candidate in 2016, IMO.
Ah hell,you aint alone.The republicans are almost as bad as the rats.There are a bunch of nanny staters in the republican party as well.I dont see a way clear to save the party because we just cant,wont,dont trust them.Time for a conservative party in spite of what the naysayers bleep on about.
“Michael Steele has been around long enough to know that the liberal media will use him by twisting what I say or what others say. He took the bait, he bit down hard on the bait, he launched an attack on me even though the premise of what was said to him was false.”
Michael Steele should have answered the question correctly. He should have said, I want the country to succeed but the Obama Administration's policies need to be defeated. Obama’s massive spending and taxing and nationalization plans, will destroy this nation and they need to be opposed. Mr Steele should have seen the truth in Rush's words and spoke up for Rush.
This strategy to tie Rush around the neck of the Republican Party could have been easily countered by reestablishing the context that the DemonRATs omitted.
Finally, Rush really nailed it today:
“I'm going further and telling you today it's not that I want Obama to fail; that's not it anymore. The president is presiding over economic failure. The president is watching it, doing nothing about it. He's watching unemployment grow; he's watching the stock market plummet; he is watching people sign up for unemployment. The president of the United States is doing nothing to stop the downward spiral of this economy. He has no economic recovery plan. The truth is, the president of the United States and Rahm Emanuel, who, remember, said, “Crisis is too great a thing to waste.” What does that mean? They want you suffering, they want you miserable, they want it worse, they want you rejecting conservatism. They want you rejecting capitalism. They want you turning to them in fear and desperation and angst for an immediate fix to the problem. They want you thinking you have no ability to fix your own problems. They think you have and they want you to have no ability to take care of yourself. So as the stock market now approaches minus 2,800 since Obama was elected, the statement today is to speed up the economic recovery, we're going to focus on health care. Ask yourself how that is going to get you your next job?”
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