MSNBC anchor Joy Reid on Wednesday’s broadcast of her show “The ReidOut,” gave her take on the legacy of late conservatives talker Rush Limbaugh.
Reid said, “Rush Limbaugh died today at the age of 70 from the complications of lung cancer. And I would argue that he is among the three people in recent American history who had the most influence in building the modern Republican Party. None of whom are named Reagan or Bush. This is a party that was built by right-wing media, by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh. They influenced the way Republicanism and conservatism sound and the way it attacks its opponents, and what generations of self-described conservatives think.”
She continued, “The idea of injecting chaos and sexism, manipulation, racism, and dirty tricks directly into the artery of the Republican Party, bloodying people up, rather than faking compassionate conservatism and trying to get crossover votes, that ultimately would become the defining feature of Republican politics. Rush ultimately got his way. Rush Limbaugh reached millions of listeners via his golden microphone with his shows airing in small stations out in rural America that even Fox News couldn’t reach. Hardening rural white listeners and weaponizing white male grievance. It was the perfect inheritance for a president who would take Rush-style politics right to the White House and ultimately pin a Presidential Medal of Freedom on one of the GOP’s real architects.”
She added, “I would listen to him, and his show and what I heard was a guy who took white Americans out there in the hinterlands and fed them a narrative of, ‘You’re the victim, no, no, you’re the victim. Don’t feel like there’s any privileges coming to you. You’re the victim, the black people, the brown people, the women, the feminazi. They’re taking things from you.’ And it kept people so hyper and amped up. He was able to turn that into politics.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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