Rush Limbaugh on Monday made it clear that he was unimpressed with the Republican National Committee’s post-mortem on the 2012 election, arguing on his radio show that the GOP is “bamboozled” and “entirely lacking in confidence.”
“They think they got landslided, and they didn’t, but they’re acting like they did, and they think they did,” Limbaugh said.
The conservative National Review echoed Limbaugh’s sentiment with a tough editorial published Tuesday directed at the RNC’s report, titled the “Growth and Opportunity Project.”
Limbaugh dismissed the report’s suggestion that Republicans should shift their tone to be more respectful and inclusive to certain voters.
“I’m sorry, but we’re not disrespectful to anybody,” Limbaugh said. “Look at what these focus groups have got these poor guys believing. Look at this. Our party’s narrow-minded. I know it’s the impression, but it’s the why that people think that, that is the secret to rebutting this. It’s not accepting that as true because it isn’t.”
The right-wing shock jock asserted that the GOP’s electoral failures can be attributed to a dearth of conservative candidates and ideas.
From an official show transcript:
I think what really is going on here, folks, at this moment policy is not the primary thing they’re concerned about, even though they’re not gonna admit that. They are concerned, and you will understand this the moment I say it, about their donor base. And so what Priebus is doing, they got this big plan. I got a copy of it last night. I got an embargoed copy. It was embargoed ’til like seven o’clock this morning, but it didn’t matter to me because I’m not gonna be talking about it in public by then so I could go ahead and look at it, and I didn’t. I waited for others to go through it and report on it ’cause I know what it’s gonna say, and I was right. They think they’ve gotta rebrand and it’s all predictable. They gotta reach out to minorities. They gotta moderate their tone here and moderate their tone there. And that’s not at all what they’ve gotta do.
The Republican Party lost because it’s not conservative. It didn’t get its base out in the 2012 election.
