After Obama outted Republicans as being afraid of Rush Limbaugh, the right wing talker was too dumb to understand that the president was mocking the GOP’s fear of him.
On CNN, the president let it be known that the Republicans are afraid of a talk show host, “Nobody thinks that’s good for the middle class. So the question is ultimately, if you are putting the American people first, if you are prioritizing them, then this shouldn’t be that difficult. And I’ve made this argument to my Republican friends privately, and, by the way, sometimes they say to me privately, “I agree with you, but I’m worried about a primary from, you know, somebody in the Tea Party back in my district,” or, “I’m worried about what Rush Limbaugh is going to say about me on the radio. And so you got to understand, I’m — it’s really difficult.”
Limbaugh tried to spin these comments as Obama blaming him for the gridlock in D.C.:
I am the reason he can’t move his agenda forward, which of course is silly because he’s getting everything he wants. He blamed me again. I mean, it’s like a broken record. You know what I think is happening? I think that nobody’s listening to Obama anymore. I don’t think he commands nearly the attention or the interest that he did. So what he’s doing is going back to the greatest hits, kind of like if you’re at a radio station and losing audience, play the hits, you know, stop the New Age stuff and go play the hits. Well, he’s going back and he recycled this idea that the Republicans are not cooperating with him because they’re afraid of what I’m gonna say about them.
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The Republicans are not listening to me! The true irony here is the Republicans are not listening to me. I don’t know who the Republicans are listening to outside of their consultants, but they’re not listening to me, but he’s gotta blame somebody.
This is the opposite of what the president was suggesting. Obama wasn’t blaming Limbaugh for gridlock, but simply stating the fact that Republicans are afraid of talk show host whose only power is the fear that he creates in them. The president was mocking the sorry state of the Republican Party.
Limbaugh doesn’t want to admit it, but Republicans are afraid to cross him. They don’t want him trashing them to his listeners. Limbaugh isn’t guiding the agenda of the Republican Party, you will rarely hear a single peep of criticism of Rush from any elected Republican.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t get it. President Obama was saying that the Republican fear of Limbaugh is one of the reasons why the GOP refuses to work with him. Limbaugh’s inflation of himself as blamed for the gridlock was nothing more than a giant ego stroke on his part. It is the Republican fear of the Limbaugh monster under their beds that is the problem. Limbaugh doesn’t have the power to block Obama’s agenda. In fact, what Republicans can’t understand is that he doesn’t have any power at all.
What Obama revealed demonstrated how pathetic the Republican Party has become, but Rush Limbaugh and the GOP are too dumb to know when they are being mocked.
Rush may be obsessed with the president, but Obama is too busy being the leader of the free world to waste a second of his time thinking about a non-entity like Limbaugh. It’s just too bad that Republicans can’t learn to treat Limbaugh the exact same way.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
