Word War: Rush Limbaugh Fires Back At Colin Powell

This past week, an interesting Republican spat has erupted between the party's conservative and moderate flanks. The leader of the former is none other than Rush Limbaugh, the talk show host who has never held public office. The latter group is represented by retired Gen. Colin Powell, our former Secretary of State. The feud began when, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Powell singled Limbaugh out as an example of all that is wrong with the modern-day GOP:



Limbaugh circled his wagons in response to Powell's attack, telling his listening audience:

Colin Powell, ladies and gentlemen, insists that conservatives and Republicans support candidates who appeal to minorities like I guess McCain who led the effort for amnesty. He insists that conservatives and Republicans move to the center like McCain, who calls himself a maverick for doing so. General Powell insists that conservatives and Republicans provide an open tent to different ideas and views, like I guess McCain, who repeatedly trashed Republicans and made nice with Democrats. I mean, their tent's big, they just don't want us in it. John McCain is and was Colin Powell's ideal candidate. All these moderates, Bill Weld, all these moderates that crossed the aisle and voted for Obama, they got their ideal candidate, and they got their ideal campaign in McCain. Once McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate, largely by independents and Democrats voting in Republican primaries, Colin Powell waited 'til the last minute, when it would do the most damage to McCain and the Republicans and endorsed Obama. And when I said it was largely about race, that's what set 'em all off, you're not supposed to say these kinds of things. This is supposed to go unspoken.

That's classic Limbaugh. A dizzying string of willful inaccuracies, half-truths, and revisionism all proving the central point that Rush, once again, is the victim of a liberal conspiracy. To claim that Democratic crossover votes were responsible for McCain's victory is more than a little disingenuous, and not supported by hard evidence. After all, Mitt Romney won Michigan, the state where all those Democratic votes were supposed to help McCain. Moreover, McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate to appeal directly to the more conservative elements of the party. That was no "move to the center."

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More interesting than psychoanalyzing Rush's perpetually open microphone, however, is the larger question of what the future holds for the Republican Party. And both men do have legitimate points to make. Powell is right that if the GOP continues to double-down on its ever-insular, white, rural, Southern hand, it is doomed. But Limbaugh has a point when he states that the abandonment of requisite hot-button Republican issues that appeal to its increasingly homogeneous base would signal an identity crisis from which the party might not survive.

Of course, the GOP, and conservatism in general, is more diverse than Limbaugh would have his listeners believe. Ironically, by attempting to define the movement with such lines in the sand as "amnesty", abortion, religion, guns, and all those other Palin highlights, the Limbaugh-inspired wing of the party will continue to turn off prospective converts.

What really rankles Limbaugh and his fans is the notion that they need to be more like their Democratic adversaries if they want a shot at victory in 2012. That's what Powell sounds like he's saying, is it not? In this way, both Powell and Limbaugh are right. Go figure.



SEE ALSO:
Re: Rush Vs. Powell


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