Joe Scarborough Is Right, and Rush Is Lying

Today, Rush attacked Joe Scarborough for daring to say, “We all are rooting for the president. If Rush Limbaugh is still rooting against the President, then he's also rooting for America to be in a fast decline, rooting for his stocks to collapse.”

Rush claimed, "I was rooting for the country when I said, 'I hope he fails.' But it's too late, Joe. He's succeeded."

Rush is lying.

In fact, Limbaugh had made it clear that he wanted the country to fail. Limbaugh said: "Of course I want Obama to fail. And after this stimulus bill package passes, I want it to fail."

On February 13, 2009, Limbaugh told his listeners about the stimulus plan: “I hope it prolongs the failure. I hope it prolongs the recession. Because people are going to have to figure out here that this is not how economies recover. Government is not the central planner.”

Back in 1993, Limbaugh had a very different approach to Democratic failure when writing his second book, See, I Told You So: “I sincerely don’t want Bill Clinton to fail, unless failure is defined as the defeat of his current economic policies.” Now, openly hoping for the recession to be prolonged—and then lying about this fact over and over again—is considered the norm for the conservative movement.

Scarborough is one of the rare Republicans who has the freedom to criticize Rush Limbaugh, because he doesn't need to win a primary or keep a job on Fox News.

Crossposted at DailyKos.