Host, Interrupted: Joe Scarborough Snarks Back At Rush Limbaugh

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Today, Joe Scarborough continued his feud with Rush Limbaugh, insinuating that the talk radio legend is not a true conservative.

For the second time today, I’m looking ‘round the office, wondering whether I’m being punked.

Hot on the heels of Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize – won for the stellar achievements (?) of the first ten days of his presidency –  we find out that Joe Scarborough believes himself to be the only true heir to the mantle of Reagan and Buckley – at least, among the radio talker set.  

On this morning’s edition of Morning Joe, Scarborough and the Brew Crew had the following exchange:

JOE SCARBOROUGH, “Morning Joe” host: Kathleen, let's – let’s also talk about the Republican party.

KATHLEEN PARKER, syndicated columnist: Let's do. Joe, you are running for President, right?

SCARBOROUGH: Well, apparently if I do I don't have Rush Limbaugh's vote, he questioned my manhood.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, MSNBC political analyst: He is a little late in the game on questioning your manhood, by the way.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, I think it’s ironic.  I was just saying, I think it’s fascinating, you’ve got all these people that sat there and said nothing while Republicans darted recklessly left with their spending, and suddenly they are the arbiters of who’s conservative.  And you can only be conservative by being intolerant, by waving your arms around, by screaming, by calling the President a racist or a Nazi or a communist.  Come on!

For those of you who are not veterans of the “Morning Joe” shtick, this is Joe’s normal way of attacking conservative pundits who disagree with him.  Rather than attack the substance of their arguments, he denigrates their style.

Irony, thy name is Scarborough.

One wonders if Scarborough realizes that the natural, logical end of his sarcasm is the implication that one can only be conservative by being as unnaturally calm as he is.  This is the problem with making broad generalizations about one’s opponents, and an irony that Scarborough misses.  Consider the substance of what Scarborough said:

“all these people…sat there and said nothing.”

Scarborough would have us believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, et al, sat behind their microphones and said absolutely nothing against the expansion in government spending under George W. Bush.  Not one word against the expansion of Medicare.  Not a single breath against No Child Left Behind.  Nary an opposing word to anything that George W. Bush proposed. This is patently false.

And now the mask is cracked.  Joe Scarborough, who (in case you were unaware) has a radio show from 10AM-12PM on WABC New York, and is attempting to achieve national syndication.  He is competing with the kings of talk radio for air time.  

Is it any wonder that he’s running (what amounts to) a negative political campaign against his main competitors?