It’s hard to believe it’s been that long ago; even harder to imagine Rush Limbaugh is gone. Not since Paul Harvey had anyone dominated AM radio the way he did. One of my great honors in broadcasting was sitting in the EIB Attila the Hun chair as guest host once in a while.
I moved on to politics from radio but found my way back to EIB when Rush was kind enough to reference a piece I wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It was about the 40 GOP House seats lost in the 2018 midterm wave, one of which was mine.
What got me thinking about it again was, ironically enough, a new WSJ poll that found Donald Trump’s lead widening among Republicans since the unprecedented legal assault on the former President.1
Recall, after the 2018 midterm blowout, recriminations were everywhere. Like today, the vast media majority blaming the President.
I knew better so I penned a piece in the WSJ that put the blame squarely on the never-Trumpers themselves—specifically John McCain (you can read it here) for torpedoing our repeal and replacement of Obamacare—a major issue at the time.
As I write in Party Animal, the Truth About President Trump, Power Politics & the Partisan Press:
The reaction from the Bush-McCain crowd was instantaneous, if not predictable. The reaction from the rest of America—evidenced by the uniformity of the ‘letters to the editor,’ was obvious agreement with what I wrote.
In fact, rarely have I received so many private accolades for stating in public what so many on the Hill thought was true in private. The defeat of our health care reform bill took away a major talking point that we had all run on in 2016.
“The late Arizona senator’s grievance with all things Trump was well known,” I wrote in the Journal, “but this obsession on the part of ‘Never Trump’ Republicans has to end. Disapprove of the president’s style if you like, but don’t sacrifice sound policy to pettiness.”
It was true then and it’s true today. Only more so.
As Rush says, the biggest problem with the GOP comes from within. Reprobate never-Trumpers, many of them disgraced former consultants at the Lincoln Project, who incredibly claim “higher moral ground in an effort to purge Trump from the GOP.”2 They stand for nothing except their fees.
The question now is what the rest of Republicans stand for? So enjoy the audio (and transcript) and take our poll on whether you still think Rush is right!
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-is-top-choice-for-nearly-60-of-gop-voters-wsj-poll-shows-877252b6?st=8x8cqh9pjit9kav&reflink=article_copyURL_share
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/02/11/lincoln_project_founders_raked_in_cash_while_protecting_john_weaver_145228.html
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