Steele: Right The First Time

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele had it right the first time.

Appearing on the DL Hughley show on CNN, Steele quipped that Rush Limbaugh was not the leader of the Republican party – Steele was.

Then Steele used the words “ugly” and “incendiary” to describe either Limbaugh’s program or Limbaugh’s speech to CPAC. (Cross-talk makes it difficult to be sure exactly which.)

This comment prompted a harsh response from Limbaugh on his show today.

Michael Steele has been around long enough to know that the liberal media will use him by twisting what I say or what others say. He took the bait, he bit down hard on the bait, he launched an attack on me even though the premise of what was said to him was false. He took the bait and he went for it. Now, Mr. Steele, if it is your position as the chairman of the Republican National Committee that you want a left wing Democrat president and a left wing Democrat Congress to succeed in advancing their agenda, if it's your position that you want President Obama and Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid to succeed with their massive spending and taxing and nationalization plans, I think you have some explaining to do. Why are you running the Republican Party? Why do you claim you lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it that President Obama succeeds? I frankly am stunned that the chairman of the Republican National Committee endorses such an agenda. I have to conclude that he does because he attacks me for wanting it to fail.

Rush’s chastisement prompted Steele to issue a semi-apology via Politico’s Mike Allen – adding that “There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

It was a misstep for Steele to be drawn into a direct spat with Rush. But on the substance: Steele was right. Limbaugh is not the leader of the Republican Party, and this weekend he again demonstrated why not.

Limbaugh mocked Steele for appearing on television and “trying to be some talking head media star, which you're having a tough time pulling off.” Oh? As compared to whom? Nothing Steele said will be 1/1000 as harmful to Republicans and conservatives as Rush Limbaugh’s now multiply repeated statement that he hopes President Obama fails.

I cannot believe – I mean I really cannot believe – that a communicator as skilled as Limbaugh fails to comprehend the lethality of this remark. When Limbaugh says he hopes Obama fails, almost everybody listening will hear that as a wish for a longer and more severe recession. I appreciate that Limbaugh has a personal and ideological meaning behind his statement. He means that he wants the President’s program to be rejected in favor of some other emergency package. But that’s not what he said, and that’s not what the big voting public will remember.

At CPAC, Limbaugh claimed that congressional Democrats wanted the Iraq war to fail. Um, okay, that no doubt explains why more than one-third of House Democrats (82 out of 209) and a majority of Senate Democrats (29 out of 50) voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution. How very cunning of them to vote in favor of a war they wished to lose! But now imagine: What if one of those Democrats actually had said aloud what none of them did in fact say: “I hope President Bush fails in Iraq.” The sky would have fallen upon that Democrat, and rightly so. It would not have done any good for that Democrat to say, “I was hoping for the failure of George Bush’s unilateral approach to international relations.” Everybody would have interpreted that Democrat to have wished for the nation’s defeat on the battlefield – and the damage done by such a remark to the offending Democrat’s party would have resonated for years.

The same applies to Rush’s yearning for a domestic failure for President Obama. His wish sounds (and will certainly be made to sound) like a wish for more economic hardship, more bankruptcies, more layoffs, more foreclosures. Nor is Limbaugh content to offer that wish for disaster only in his own name. He added in a broadcast last Friday, “The dirty little secret …is that every Republican in the country wants Obama to fail, but none of them have the guts to say so.” Those words too will be tossed into the teeth of every Republican in an economically hard-pressed district. “You won’t admit you want the recession to be worse – but Rush Limbaugh admitted it for you.”

Limbaugh explained at CPAC that he has some reserved private meaning to his words. He means only that he wishes the president’s harmful program to be rejected in Congress – or in some other way prevented from going into effect. But that’s not what the listener of the Limbaugh radio program hears, and frankly, I don’t think that Limbaugh's CPAC explanation is precisely accurate. When Rush goes on to say that the only reason Republicans refrain from openly wishing for disaster is their fear of challenging a black-skinned president, as he again and again does, he is revealing that there is something more going on here than a mere call for more economic individualism. Limbaugh's wishes for Obama's failure are saturated with race consciousness – a race consciousness that Limbaugh (again falsely) attributes to the whole Republican Party. And he’ll be believed on this too.

Rush told one of his callers Friday, “We all agree I’m not an idiot.” OK, stipulated. Which means, Limbaugh must have some intuition, some perception, of the way his words will sound on the ears of his non-core audience - of how they will be used against his fellow Republicans and conservatives. He knows, but does not care. His words may be deadly politics, but they sure make for lively radio. And look: We are all discussing him! Mission accomplished - that is, assuming your mission is to aggrandize yourself rather than to serve your professed cause. And that's why Limbaugh, whatever else he may be, will never be a conservative leader. Leaders subordinate themselves to serve others. Subordinating others to serve yourself? There are many words to describe that- but leadership is not one of them.