Rush Can’t Keep Quiet

Last night Rush Limbaugh phoned into Fox News to make sure he was able to get his spin out on the TV airwaves.  The caucus results in Iowa were momentous, particularly if you’re a Huckabee supporter.  I’ve blogged at length about Rush’s fixation on being one of the anti-Huckabee pundits despite the evidence that proves Rush wrong.  Well, Michelle Malkin live blogged Rush’s call in:

Rush Limbaugh calls in to Fox News.

Huckabee won’t have the same base in New Hampshire. He’s not going to be critical of McCain. I think the Republican race is long, long to be decided.

Who’s his candidate? Haven’t picked one. I’m a rock-ribbed Republican conservative…Huckabee doesn’t have Reagan credentials.

Wrong, Rush, wrong!  Compare Huckabee’s gubernatorial experience with that of Reagan and one finds striking parallels.  Plus, one can find even stronger Reagan tendencies in the fact that Huckabee has been a life-long supporter of the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  It is terribly dishonest for Limbaugh to try to distinguish Huckabee from conservatism.  Mike Huckabee is, despite Limbaugh’s handwringing, a genuine conservative.  If one examines the Huckabee campaign planks, one can’t help but realize that he is the real deal in this race.

Question: What if Huckabee calls to try and make up with you?

RL: It’s not going to happen…wouldn’t expect him to try and make peace.

Uhh, Rush, Gov. Huckabee attempted to contact you by email and you decided to not respond to his email.  You, Rush, are the one who needs to contact Gov. Huckabee and make amends for the blatant distortions of his record that you have parroted from the talking heads who failed to do even a modicum of research before trotting out their anti-Huckabee rhetoric.  Time to face reality, Rush, this election cycle the GOP electorate are not taking their talking points from you.  The more you rail against Gov. Huckabee and his supporters, the more you prove you’re increasingly becoming irrelevant as a conservative voice.

Rush Limbaugh Misses the Boat…and Why I’m No Longer a Dittohead

Unfortunately, Rush didn’t take his time away from the airwaves during the holiday break to thoroughly research Gov. Huckabee’s record. Rush came back from his break repeating the same tired accusations that already have been disproven. One wonders why Rush would over-commit to such a disturbing action as saying that Gov. Huckabee is not a conservative while seemingly embracing the “johnny-come-lately” to the cause, Mitt Romney.

Yesterday, Rush made some very strange comments, especially when viewed in the light of truth rather than propaganda. I’ll discuss some of Rush’s statements and provide objective background for you.

RUSH: Let me deal with the latest here involving Governor Huckabee that happened on the break. When we were last together on Friday, December whatever it was, I had finally decided to react to a statement made by an alleged Huckabee campaign advisor in Washington.

If you’ve read my previous post on this subject you know that this wasn’t a campaign advisor it was a supporter of Gov. Huckabee’s campaign. This is a crucial difference that Rush refuses to acknowledge. It just doesn’t play as well in trying to do damage to Huckabee’s campaign if the person who allegedly makes the anti-Limbaugh comments is just a supporter rather than an official part of the campaign.

Then on Christmas Eve — by the way, I did not reply to Governor Huckabee’s e-mail — I thought long and hard about it, and I’ll tell you why I didn’t reply.

I didn’t reply because I wanted to avoid the possibility that any little phrase that I used in the e-mail — because I’m a polite, nice person — could be taken out of context and waved around the by the governor and somebody on his staff and say, “Okay, it’s over. We’ve made peace with Limbaugh,” when there was no need to make peace, which was my first point. I don’t need to talk to Governor Huckabee. This is not beanbag here. This is the big leagues. I don’t need to talk to him. My feelings are not hurt. I’m not taking any of this personally. So I wanted to avoid any chance the campaign could wave some piece of paper around claiming it was an e-mail from me that he had said, “I’ve made peace with Limbaugh. Everything is cool now.”

Huckabee personally reached out to Rush to clarify and make amends about this situation and Rush refused to respond for fear that it could somehow benefit or boost the Gov.’s campaign. Rush has proved to be childish and petulant.

RUSH: It’s the big leagues. I don’t know who you’re talking about parsing Huckabee’s words. While he was in the lead, the Drive-By Media was promoting this guy left and right. Now they’ve moved off of Huckabee. They wanted Huckabee to win Iowa. They want Huckabee (or wanted Huckabee) to get the nomination, for reasons not in any way related to the fact that they love Huckabee. The reason that the Drive-Bys and Democrats are so excited about Huckabee is because — and I’m telling you this from their perspective, folks. This is not my opinion. It is my opinion of what liberals think and the Drive-By Media. But they hate the religious right. They despise activist evangelical Christians, because activist evangelical Christians frighten the bejeezus out of liberals — and, of course, there’s no bejeezus in liberals, and so they’re empty after they’re frightened. So here comes Huckabee, and they’ve been looking for ways, folks, to get rid of the influence of the Christian right for years in the Democrat Party and in the Drive-By Media. So here comes Huckabee. He’s running as an evangelical. He is running using identity politics.

Identity politics is: “Vote for me, I’m an evangelical! Forget everything else you know about me. Forget what my issue stands are. Forget my record. Forget my past. I’m a Christian!” That’s identity politics, and usually the left does that: “Vote for me, I’m the black guy!” “Vote for me, I’m the gay guy!” “Vote for me, I’m the lesbo!” “Vote for me, I’m the woman!” Mrs. Clinton has tried identity politics in playing the gender card, for example. Now, we Republicans and conservatives generally don’t do that, but Huckabee did. So the Drive-Bys, the media said, “Whoa! Here’s a chance. We build this guy up; we get him the nomination, and then in the general election we destroy him, and in the process of destroying Huckabee…” See, they were not parsing his words. They were ignoring his words, Rick. They weren’t paying attention to his record or anything. They were helping him along with the identity politics business. Their intention was to destroy him — and, in their minds, the entire Christian right once and for all if they could get him the nomination. Now they’re promoting McCain.

Rush fails to separate fact from fiction yet again. Gov. Huckabee is not engaged in “identity politics.” He has brought together a varied coalition of individuals who are interested in social causes, Fair Tax, winning the global war on terror, economic opportunity and a host of other traditional GOP and conservative principles. Yes, Huckabee is demonstrably evangelical and that does attract other evangelicals. Not exclusively because he is “one of them” but because by virtue of their shared worldview, they embrace the same philosophy and have similar priorities. This is not identity politics but rather philosophical kindredness.

RUSH: I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of what I think was a Clintonesque performance, Governor Huckabee, at a press conference, unveiling an attack ad against Mitt Romney and then pledging not to run this attack ad, hoping to appeal to the voters in Iowa who are sick and tired of negative ads.

After protracted mischaracterizations of Gov. Huckabee, Rush then launches an ad hominem attack by comparing Huckabee with Clinton. Gov. Huckabee has adequately explained the way in which he pulled the attack ad from the air, yet Rush can’t help but try to buttress his fading credibility on the Huckabee issue by calling Huckabee Clintonesque.

All of this leads to why I can longer in good conscience consider myself a ‘dittohead.’ Rush has veered away from conservative orthodoxy by attacking the one true conservative in the race. He has distorted Gov. Huckabee’s record, repeated discredited arguments, overlooked the faults of the other candidates, directly attacked Gov. Huckabee and those of us who support Gov. Huckabee, and shown a disinterest in the truth. Rush is carrying water for someone. I’ll leave it to you to decide for whom, but there is no way that an independent thinker could possibly embrace these false ideas about Huckabee and parrot them for millions of listeners to hear when there is a plethora of information available which dispels each and every one of them.

If Rush is so willing to do this to one of our own, and those of us who support Huckabee, how can I possibly align myself with someone who is so intellectually lazy (or obstinate) as to continue using false allegations and disproved charges in attacking a candidate who is truly conservative. Rush Limbaugh is not the arbiter of genuine conservatism. I know that may come as a shock to him, but it is true. Conservatism existed prior to Limbaugh and it will exist long after Limbaugh’s star goes supernova and implodes upon itself. Limbaugh has shown such a callous disregard for truth in this instance that I can not bring myself to trust him on subsequent issues. Time will tell whether I am an exception or whether Limbaugh has permanently damaged his credibility with social conservatives.

The Non-Attack on Rush Limbaugh

Marc Ambinder, blogging at The Atlantic, sparked a firestorm when he reported that an “ally” of the Huckabee campaign in DC was accusing Rush Limbaugh of not thinking for himself and following the Wall Street-DC axis of power in their contempt of Gov. Huckabee. Anxious to turn this into a controversy, people such as Michelle Malkin jumped on the bandwagon and accused Gov. Huckabee of having his “Howard Dean” moment by taking on the king of talk radio. Unfortunately, even the Maha Rushy, perhaps disturbed that any of the GOP candidates would deign to say anything negative about him, said the following:

RUSH: Huckabee forces are attacking me, ladies and gentlemen. Yes siree, Bob, the Hucksters are on the warpath!

…Special circumstance. You had a two-man race, and what was happening in South Carolina, McCain was going so far off the conservative reservation, so far off of it, that it was necessary to step in. Huckabee is getting close, I’m going to have to tell you. Huckabee’s getting close to the same stuff. Huckabee is using his devout Christianity to mask some other things that are distinctively not conservative. He is against free trade. He’s really doesn’t believe in free market. Well, let me read what George Will wrote today. This is when I go along with “the DC-New York axis.” But I just want to read from George Will’s column, a paragraph today. “Huckabee’s campaign actually is what Rudy Giuliani’s candidacy is misdescribed as being — a comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs. Giuliani departs from recent Republican stances regarding two issues — abortion and the recognition by the law of same-sex couples. Huckabee’s radical candidacy broadly repudiates core Republican policies such as free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity. [C]onsider New Hampshire’s chapter of the National Education Association, the teachers union that is a crucial component of the Democratic Party’s base. In 2004, New Hampshire’s chapter endorsed Howard Dean in the Democratic primary and no one in the Republican primary. Last week it endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary — and Huckabee in the Republican primary.” It likes Huckabee on education.

So now, El Rushbo, sends a threat to the Huckabee campaign and the Huckabee forces. First of all, the person interviewed for The Atlantic blog post was not an official Huckabee campaign spokesman. Here’s what the blog author, Marc Ambinder, later wrote:

The person quoted was not a campaign spokesman.

…The truth is that Limbaugh does not want to see Huckabee nominated, and it’s not terribly surprising, or terribly newsworthy, that folks who think Huckabee should be nominated have developed a theory or theory to explain his opposition.

Notice an interesting trend? A supporter (not spokesman) of the Huckabee campaign says something that potentially can be viewed as negative against Rush Limbaugh and the GOP establishment immediately make this out to be a picture of Huckabee himself assaulting the supreme Limbaugh. Does anyone else view this as a ridiculous attempt to once again chip away at Gov. Huckabee’s increasing support among the GOP base?  To take a random quote from a supporter of Huckabee’s campaign and use it to smear Gov. Huckabee is absurd and shows the depth of the irrational hatred that these folks have against Huckabee and those of us supporting his campaign.

I am most disappointed in Rush.  I have followed his career since he was nationally syndicated.  I have subscribed to his newsletter, bought merchandise from his sponsors, bought merchandise from him and turned on a number of friends, family and colleagues to his show.  During his drug rehab I stood firmly behind him and decried the insensitive media manipulations of that story.  I pointed out the blind hypocrisy of the media in trashing Rush while making other painkiller addicts who went into recovery out to be heroes.  I did this because I believed in Rush.  Now, when the rubber meets the road and we have a candidate unlike any other since Reagan, Rush joins the anti-Huckabee crowd and irrationally attacks his campaign.  Those of us who support Huckabee have been called “Hucksters” by Limbaugh.  Really, Rush?  We, the folks who paved the way for your present level of success, influence, and prestige are now just a bunch of “Hucksters” because we won’t be quiet and just follow the Weekly Standard and National Review party line?  Perhaps you and the GOP don’t need us.  Neither of you would have gotten anywhere near where you are today without us.  You sent a not-so-veiled threat to Gov. Huckabee when you said you were getting close to treating him as you did John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.  Well, Rush, you don’t have to worry about social conservatives making baseless threats.  We show our resolve with our voice, our votes, our spending and our listening habits.  You, my friend, may be on the verge of the lost generation of Rush babies.