Garden State Patriot

My latest from Conservatives with Attitude!

With threats of the (UN)Fairness Doctrine being reinstated by anti-free speech liberals like Chuck Schumer and others in Congress, conservative talk radio has been prepping for a battle for some time now. Well, it looks like the battle is already underway, if not at least indirectly.

Just a week into the Obama Administration, the nation’s top conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has found himself immediately in the sights of Obama himself and Congressional Democrats. Last week Obama said this during a meeting with GOP Congressional leaders:

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done”

The administration has defended the comment by saying it was an attempt to forge bi-partisanship, but make no mistake this was the first attempt to try to marginalize Limbaugh and make him a target.

Now, in a second salvo, the DCCC has actually launched a petition against Limbaugh for, as they frame it, having said on air that he wanted Obama to fail. Good to see the Democrats in Congress have listened to Obama’s words to ‘put aside childish things’ and focus on the people’s business.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched an online petition for readers to express their outrage at conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for saying last week that he wanted President Barack Obama to fail.
 
The petition includes a 19-second sound byte of Limbaugh, saying, “If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid down. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to this guy, say ‘okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.’”

Not surprisingly, the DCCC has completely taken Limbaugh’s comments out of context. Limbaugh was merely saying he wanted Obama’s policies to fail because he feels they are extreme and socialistic. (To see Limbaugh’s comments click here.)

Digressing for a moment, I find it funny how the same people in Congress are so quick to condemn a talk radio host for his opinions, but fail to reprimand people in their own ranks such as Rep. John Murtha for far worse comments. Murtha essentially called his own constituents racist during last year’s campaign. Worse yet, Murtha smeared several U.S. Marines for having killed innocents ‘in cold blood’ during the Haditha incident. Those troops have since been vindicated, yet Murtha never even apologized.

These actions on the part of Obama and the Democrats are an effort, in my opinion, to lay the groundwork for reinstating the (UN)Fairness Doctrine. By marginalizing Limbaugh and trying to make him seem extreme, they will use these incidents as examples to support their position and likely will search for more wherever they can.

To make matters worse, however, we have Republicans like Rep. Phil Gingrey taking offense to Limbaugh’s criticism of the GOP leadership’s weak-kneed approach to opposing Obama’s agenda.

Responding to President Obama’s recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaugh’s lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is “obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He’s more frightened of me, than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.”

Rep. Gingrey might mean well, but Limbaugh’s comments regarding the Republican leadership are representative of the feelings of many conservatives and others in the party. We do expect our party’s leadership to stand up for its principles and steadfastly oppose the most left-wing agenda we have ever seen. If they don’t have the backbone for that then we might as well fold up the ‘big tent’ and all just go home.