The GOP’s Abandonment Issues

RUSH:  You know, you’re right, I haven’t.  Well, I played hardly any sound bites today ’cause had a lot of stuff to catch up on, but I just told the broadcast engineer to keep sound bites 52, 53.  It’s Trump on American exceptionalism.  Somebody’s gotta talk to him about this.  And Snerdley says, “You said there’s a lot of sound bites even mentioning you when you were gone, you haven’t played those.”  I’m going through them.  I tell you what, it’s people like Haley Barbour saying that all this anger at the Republican Party’s my fault. (imitating Barbour) “I used to be a big time supporter. When he ran the RNC and I was on the radio it was great going, it was great guns. Rush was conservative and the party, but the last three or four years something’s gone wrong and Rush is off the reservation.”  Blaming me and the Rush Limbaughs. 

And then Mitch McConnell: “Talk show hosts have misled the GOP base.”  And NPR media analyst:  “Trump learned how to manipulate media by studying Rush Limbaugh.”  Journalism professor:  “Rush Limbaugh’s right media attacks have no impact on Trump because his supporters have been yearning for somebody who fights back.”  “Obama insulted us,” a vet here, “when he said all we do is sit around in VFW halls and listen to Rush Limbaugh, watching Fox News.”  And then there’s the one Carl Bernstein saying that what Trump is saying is literally abhorrent, but it’s effective.  That’s the problem. 

So, yeah, I guess we’ll save all those.  ‘Cause I’m not gonna have time to get to those today.  Look, I didn’t listen to these, so I don’t know how big the knife Haley had.  I know what he’s talking about.  I ran into Haley one night. I was at 21 with Roger Ailes and Haley Barbour walked in and came over, “Hey, Rush, hey, what’s happening, I just got in from Yazoo City,” and he had an idea that we could do a joint thing with RNC or sharing data, website subscription lists or some such thing.  But he was always a nice. He came by my house once when he was thinking about running for president and said, “Rush, we can’t oppose Obama, gotta oppose his policies, but not him.”  Fine, fine, fine. He’s a nice guy. 

I understand all this.  If I were these guys I’d be concerned about it, too.  What they don’t understand is — well, I’ll save all this ’til tomorrow.  But don’t even expect me to go banshee on Haley Barbour.  That’s not what’s gonna happen.  I don’t go banshee on these guys.  I don’t go banshee on anybody. (interruption) Well, I mean everybody needs a scapegoat.  Look, they relied on us for how many years to spread their message when they didn’t want to say it themselves, and then they lose it, I can understand feeling abandoned.  Everybody has abandonment issues.  Whenever you’re abandoned, I mean, you blame the people that abandon you.  You don’t blame yourself. 

Anyway, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  I’m not gonna try to prejudge anything.  I haven’t even heard the sound bites.  I’m just reading the transcript, summary of them to share with you.