RUSH: To the audio sound bites. This afternoon, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington) breaking news. Sarah Palin sat down with Rush Limbaugh. She’s talking to Politico’s 
John Harris. She said, ‘Moments ago, Sarah Palin sat down with Rush Limbaugh to talk about her book tour and her political future.’
GOV. PALIN: You know another key to this, too, is to not hesitate duking it out within the party. This is what I appreciate about the Republican Party. We have contested, aggressive, competitive primaries. We’re not like this herd mentality like a bunch of sheep — with the fighting instincts of sheep, as Horowitz would say — like some in the Democrat Party; where, heaven forbid, you take a stand and you oppose somebody within your own party because it’s the right thing to do. I appreciate that in the Republican Party.
RUSH: Okay. What do you think she’s saying there? I didn’t think I had the need to translate this. But apparently for the State-Controlled Media I need to translate it. It sounds to me like she likes robust debate, that she likes the fact that the Republican Party has diverse views, that you’re not kicked out of the party if you have a certain view; whereas in the Democrat Party, you gotta be lock, stock, and barrel or they kick you out. You can’t be pro-life in the Democrat Party. You can’t be for tax cuts in the Democrat Party. If you are, you’re going to be marginalized. So I interpreted her as… Remember, the question oriented around third parties and reforming the Republican Party, and she clearly stated her desire to not go the third party route, but to take over and reform the Republican Party. And then she said what you just heard her say. So they hear the interview at MSNBC and they go with their template anyway. What Palin was espousing throughout this interview was Reaganism, but they didn’t want to hear that. Remember, Reagan ran against an incumbent Republican president in a primary. That would be Gerald Ford. And those are the kinds of things that she was talking about. So listen to this exchange.
MITCHELL: Whatever happened to Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment about not going after, uh, fellow Republicans in primaries?
HARRIS: Well, it’s a different party now, much more Conservative Party —
MITCHELL: I’ll say.
HARRIS: — than when Ronald Reagan, uh, uh, laid down his so-called Eleventh Commandment and she obviously has a different view (snicker).
MITCHELL: Mmph!
HARRIS: Her book makes it unmistakably clear she’s not afraid to duke it out. Uh, this was a score-settling memoir, and I guess that reflected her approach to politics, and probably the approach of a lot of the people, uh, who are her supporters and admirers.
RUSH: So the template: Whatever happened to Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment about not going after fellow Republicans in primaries? Reagan went after Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election on ideas. He narrowly lost, and he clearly emerged from the Republican convention that year in Kansas City as the clear emotional sentimental favorite. It’s just that Ford was the incumbent president, and party boss rules ruled the day back then, and Ford narrowly eked out a win! I’ve always been fascinated that the Democrats say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t criticize other Republicans.’ They do it all day long! They live and die, not just criticizing, but destroying or trying to, Republicans. So after this exchange, Andrea Mitchell then talked to Democrat strategerist Steve McMahon about the same pull quote from the interview. And Andrea Mitchell said, ‘What is the impact on the Democrat Party to have this much energy and excitement on the Republican side?’
MCMAHON: Sarah Palin demonstrates every single day why she was such a bad choice for vice president, why she would be such a bad choice for the nomination of her party. And I think this is really about selling books and selling out old friendships. Because if she can gin up the right, she can sell a lot of books and she can make a lot of money — and that’s, after all, what she did. She traded her friendships, she traded her loyalty, she took the shekels like Judas, and she’s selling everyone out along the way.
RUSH: Oooo!
MCMAHON: As a political professional, I gotta tell you, it’s pretty disheartening to see that these are the people who brought her to primetime, and this is the thanks they all get —
MITCHELL: Well!
MCMAHON: — including John McCain, who had to have a phone call to his aides today to apologize to them on behalf of Sarah Palin, since she doesn’t have the decency to apologize for getting rich by whacking them.
RUSH: Oh-ho! She ‘took the shekels like Judas,’ and she’s selling everyone out along the way. All I can say is read the book. It’s about 10 to 12 pages of the campaign, and after you finish it, you will not think that she is selling anyone out. She is setting the record straight. Man, these people are just obsessed with her. The hatred for her… I think they actually hate her more than they hate me, and I didn’t think that was possible. (interruption) You don’t think so? I’m wrong about that? My staff’s all saying I’m wrong about that, that they hate me more than her. I don’t… (interruption) That’s true, that’s true. (laughing) That’s true. They’ve hated me for 20 years and it’s still going strong, still ratcheting it up.
Anyway it’s fascinating. So this one little, five or six lines here about how she loves ‘duking it out’ in the Republican Party becomes, ‘She’s attacking Republicans! She’s ungrateful! She’s ungrateful to the people who made her famous, ungrateful to the people who put her on the national stage. She took the shekels like Judas; she’s selling them all out for money!’ The truth of the matter is that many people in the McCain campaign set her up, and they would not let her be who she is. She writes about it and it’s just… I don’t know. Read it for yourself. It’s a set-the-record-straight sort of memoir, if you will, and there is some substantive policy stuff in this book as well, even though they — that’s another thing. That quote of mine, that this is a very substantive book, ‘one of the most substantive policy books I’ve ready by a politician in a long time,’ that made all over the cable news networks yesterday as though, ‘Whoa! What kind of take is this? Why, this is outrageous! Look what Limbaugh is saying about this.’ They haven’t read book yet. It’s 415 pages. They were just stunned that anybody would say this. What are we supposed to say the quintessential political book is, Obama’s? Obama’s is a navel-gazing book! Obama’s book is all about me and all about him and all about the trials and tribulations and how tough was being there and being black and being this or that, and how tough it was and how tough it was and this. I mean, it’s all navel-gazing. He’s a narcissist. He focuses totally on himself. So her book’s on sale today. It’s been preordered at Amazon at #1 for all these weeks before it even came out.