A bit of a recap: Late last week, the news broke that Rush was a part of a group looking to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. Like clockwork, the left went into full assault mode. Many of the usual suspects (think Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for starters) came out front and center to oppose Rush’s bid and pressure the NFL to prevent him from owning the team.  More importantly, though, a number of media people began parroting quotes attributed to Rush. One problem: The quotes are totally unsubstantiated and Rush flatly denies making them. 

Here are the quotes:

• “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
• ‘slavery built the South, and I’m not saying that we should bring it back.. I’m just saying that it had it’s merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

And here is what Rush had to say on this yesterday, including the threat of legal action.

This evening word came out that Rush was being dropped from the group leading the effort to buy the Rams.

This situation leaves us with two issues to contemplate. First, as Americans, is this the kind of society we want? One in which a person – merely for exercising their freedom of speech – can be shunned or even blacklisted from endeavoring to purchase a company? Is everyone to have every utterance they have ever made scrutinized and their freedom to engage in industry destroyed for having the gall to speak their mind? If we are provocative is that now going to be a litmus test of sorts; that if we *offend* someone or some group we are immediately disqualified from ownership? Frankly, I find that prospect quite chilling.

The second issue to contemplate is, what should Rush now do? In the clip above he hinted at legal action. Not only has he been smeared with false quotes, but now he clearly has been damaged. Personally, I think Rush should pursue a defamation law suitand hold those who started and perpetuated the quotes accountable. If he does not, it will just invite the left to continue these tactics. If he does not, people will continue to attribute these quotes to him and permeate the myth that Rush is a racist. I think the time has come to no longer allow the left to get away with these lowball tactics. They need to pay a price for their malicious attacks. And I believe Rush now has that opportunity. He shouldn’t let it slide.

What do you think? Should Rush sue or not? Vote here and, as always, discuss in the comment section.

And for more on this, check out Gateway Pundit’s coverage.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

Let’s make no mistake. Colin Powell is an American hero and success story. His accomplishments serving his country are beyond admirable. Unfortunately, his credibility as a Republican is little. He has never run for office and compiled a record of legislative or executive accomplishments. He has not done anything to help the party win elections as far as I can recall. When he was Secretary of State under ‘W’ he was known more for being a voice of opposition in the administration. But now somehow we should listen to him when it comes to rebuilding our party?

For argument’s sake, let’s accept Powell’s premise. RINOs like Powell like to use rhetoric about expanding the party’s base and being a big tent. Shouldn’t they then be asked to provide us with a plan on how to do so? However, they NEVER say what they mean by that. They never lay out a road map for it.

Shouldn’t RINOs also then be asked to provide evidence that moderating the party’s stances will actually be effective and also be able to point to the successes of moderates in the party? This, too, never occurs.

Powell points to his previous votes for Republican candidates over the years. That may be well and good. But as in the world of sports, one has to ask “what have you done for me lately?” Last time I checked, Colin Powell was endorsing and voting for a Democrat for President. Can someone please tell me how this helps build the Republican Party? Couple this with Powell’s unfounded criticism of the party moving too far right and, in my mind, he has undermined any credibility he has as a Republican.

John McCain represented the EXACT kind of candidate Powell suggests the party needs and he publicly shunned him in favor of the most left-wing candidate in the nation’s history. Party building indeed.

RINOs, of course, also love to castigate conservatives and marginalize them as being divisive. Former Homeland Security chief and Pennsylvania Governor, Tom Ridge, took this page out of the RINO playbook today saying about Rush Limbaugh: 

“I think Rush articulates his point of view in ways that offend very many,” Ridge said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“It’s a matter of language and a matter of how you use words. It does get the base all fired up and he’s got a strong following. But personally, if he would listen to me and I doubt if he would, the notion is express yourselves but let’s respect others opinions and let’s not be divisive.”

You see, it also helps to build the party by attacking the base. Yet, on the other hand, RINOs never seem to have a bad word for their liberal opponents, do they?

As a result, it is hard for conservatives to see the message coming from the moderate wing of the party that we need to “reach out” to really mean that we should “sell out.” What they really mean is that Republicans should act more like Democrats – NOT that we need to do a better job of explaining why Republican principles and ideas are better. If Powell were a real Republican, he would have stood up and said last fall that Barack Obama was smart and articulate but just had the wrong ideas for America; then threw his support behind John McCain. But that he did not do.

So, the burden is on the RINOs and moderates to show the rest of us evidence that they are right because, quite frankly, up until now I have not seen it. However, what I have seen is that when the Republican Party has had its greatest successes, it has been boldly conservative; like it was under Ronald Reagan and, again, in 1994 with the Contract with America. Being boldly conservative, Mr. Powell and Mr. Ridge, is what the Republican Party needs to do to win elections; not watering the party down and turning it into a bad replica of the Democrat’s.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

OK, I know I’ve been tooting my own horn over my post on Dems wanting Bush to fail (if I don’t, who will? ). But you have to admit it’s amazing how one little blogger just futzing around on the Internet could cause a tremor that reached the biggest media outfits in the country.

Now, the latest ramification of my little post is this little ditty from Bill Sammon of Fox News:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just minutes before learning of the terrorist attacks on America, Democratic strategist James Carville was hoping for President Bush to fail, telling a group of Washington reporters: “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

Carville was joined by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who seemed encouraged by a survey he had just completed that revealed public misgivings about the newly minted president.

“We rush into these focus groups with these doubts that people have about him, and I’m wanting them to turn against him,” Greenberg admitted.

The pollster added with a chuckle of disbelief: “They don’t want him to fail. I mean, they think it matters if the president of the United States fails.”

“The most influential Republican in the United States today, Mr. Rush Limbaugh, said he did not want President Obama to succeed,” Carville railed on CNN recently. “He is the daddy of this Republican Congress.”

Rush responded today himself:

“The difference between Carville and his ilk and me is that I care about what happens to my country,” Limbaugh told Fox on Wednesday. “I am not saying what I say for political advantage. I oppose actions, such as Obama’s socialist agenda, that hurt my country.

“I deal in principles, not polls,” Limbaugh added. “Carville and people like him live and breathe political exploitation. This is all a game to them. It’s not a game to me. I am concerned about the well-being and survival of our nation. When has Carville ever advocated anything that would benefit the country at the expense of his party?”

Just classic. More liberal hypocrisy. I really think these people think we’re all stupid.

A recent Fox News poll gets at the disturbing truth: A majority of Democrats say they want to see the president fail. Such deep hatred is bad news for the country at a time when America needs to bridge the partisan divide. It’s also bad news for the Democrats, who risk repeating the Republicans’ mistakes of a decade ago, driving away the centrists they need to regain power or going too far if they do manage to win.

Fox’s question was revealing: “Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?” Democrats said “not,” 51 percent to 40 percent – where the public at large wanted success by almost two to one. [See page 4 of this document for the poll in question.--ST]

In other words, the rage extends way beyond the lip-pierced Deaniacs, aging hippies and other fringes of the Democratic Party. Lots of otherwise sensible people – suburban moms, hospital orderlies, schoolteachers, big-hatted church ladies – detest George W. Bush.

When these Democrats say they want Bush to fail, might this mean that they simply reject what they see as his far-right religious and corporate agenda? If so, it’s hard to see why independents – hardly right-wing zealots – hope he succeeds by 63 percent to 34 percent. Sadly, much of the Democratic Party wants to see this president crash and burn.

In fact, the fury against to Bush has reached unprecedented levels, even compared to the animosity among Republicans to his predecessor. Not long ago, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that “strong disapproval” of Bush was 10 points higher than that recorded for Bill Clinton at any point during his presidency, including his impeachment. (That wasn’t during a war, either.)

[CORRECTION] Following quote from Betsy Newmark’s blog post.

Remember, for better or for worse, George W. Bush will be our president for more than two years. Hoping that he’ll fail is really hoping that America will fail. These people detest Bush so much that they don’t mind America getting a setback across the globe if it will weaken Bush.

Of course, there’s a key difference between then and now. Wishing Bush would fail meant wishing the country lost in Iraq. Wishing Obama fails means rooting against socialistic policies that threaten everything the country was founded on and our future prosperity.

Do you think the MSM, considering their whining about Limbaugh’s comments, would think to look something like this up now and then report on it? Nope, that would actually mean really reporting on something and adding some context. That would mean they couldn’t marginalize and demonize him.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

[UPDATED 3/9/09]

Quite a day! I had no idea this would ever happen. I actually e-mailed the story to Rush last week, but it wasn’t until Gateway Pundit and Little Green Footballs picked up on it that it got out there.

Amazingly, even Fox News picked up on this and ran a story flashing back to the poll.

Again, I didn’t do anything special here. A little light bulb went off and said let me check around and see what I can find. Any reporter for any media outfit could have done the same. The fact that they didn’t says alot about the mainstream media and their agenda.

Here’s the transcript from Rush’s show.

Bret Baier – Political Grapevine!

O’Reilly’s Talking Points!

Here’s Sean Hannity running with it!

Sorry, I’m sick of these arrogant, condescending jerks in the MSM.

The speech ran over an hour so I am posting just the first installment. Links to the remaining parts can be found below.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

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.

RUSH: Time now, ladies and gentlemen, for The Real Story of Thanksgiving, as written by I — by me — in my second book, See, I Told You So. It’s page 70 in the hardcover version. “On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.”

Now, you know the usual story of Thanksgiving: They landed. They had no clue where they were, no idea how to feed themselves. The Indians came out, showed ‘em how to pop popcorn, fed ‘em turkey, saved ‘em basically — and then white European settlers after that basically wiped out the Indian population. It’s a horrible example. Not only is that not true, here is the part that’s been omitted from what is still today taught as the traditional Thanksgiving story in many schools. “The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store,’ when they got here, ‘and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

“They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. … [William] Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace. … Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism,’ and it had failed” miserably because when every put things in the common store, some people didn’t have to put things in for there to be, people that didn’t produce anything were taking things out, and it caused resentment just as it does today. So Bradford had to change it.

“What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering,” that happens today and will happen “in the future. ‘The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,’ Bradford wrote.

“‘For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without [being paid] that was thought injustice.’ … The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?”

Here’s what Bradford wrote, the governor of the Massachusetts colony. “‘This had very good success,’ wrote Bradford, ‘for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.’ Bradford doesn’t sound like much of a Clintonite, does he?” or an Obamaite, if I can update it. “Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? … Anyway, the pilgrims found “In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves. … So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.’”

Very few people have heard this story or have had it taught to them — and the “thanks” was to God for showing them the way. In later parts of the chapter, I quote John Adams and George Washington on their reminisces and their thoughts on the first Thanksgiving and the notion it was thanks to God. It was an entirely different story than is being taught in the schools. It’s been muddied down, watered down all these years — and now it’s been hijacked by the multicultural community — to the point that the story of Thanksgiving is the Pilgrims were a bunch of incompetents and were saved only by the goodness of the Indians, who then were wiped out. And that’s what kids are being taught today — ’cause, of course, you can’t mention the Bible in school, and that’s fundamental to the real story of Thanksgiving.

In the past year or so, numerous Democrats (including Speaker Pelosi) have publicly advocated reinstating the Fairness Doctrine - the archaic government policy forcing radio stations to “devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.”

Off the bat, this begs a number of questions: How do we determine what is fair? How many voices get to speak? How much time do they get? How will the government force people to listen to these “opposing views?” But most of all, does anyone actually believe that in today’s modern society, with the vast number of resources across the web and with 24/7 cable news stations, that citizens do not have access to “contrasting views” on matters of importance to the country? The whole idea is utterly ridiculous and the Left’s motivation is clear: silence the opposition. 

Talk radio is the main arena where conservative voices are heard. And liberal attempts to succeed in the format (see Air America) have failed miserably. So, since they can’t compete, they’ve decided to go for the nuclear option: a stealth effort to shut down the Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s under the guise of ‘fairness.’

If the Fairness Doctrine is reimposed, stations will begin dropping talk rather than face being fined by the FCC for failing to adhere to arbitrary regulations being dictated out of Washington. It’s as simple as that. AM radio will return to playing elevator music. 

This is un-American. It’s anti-freedom, anti-free speech and anti-free markets. If we want our government to control content on our airwaves, then we are no longer much different than the likes of Venezuela or Cuba.

And it also has to make you wonder, if the Democrats will go to these lengths to silence the opposition, then what else are they willing to do to take away your freedoms and quash dissent so that they can keep power?