Explains Sarah Palin speech....

Rush Limbaugh explains Sarah Palin's Trump endorsement speech

By Nick Gass

Donald Trump’s decision to accept an endorsement from the likes of Sarah Palin underscores how the “Washington establishment” overestimated the extent to which conservatism is motivated by ideology, rather than attitude, Rush Limbaugh opined during a recent segment on his radio show.

“Trump picking Sarah Palin, or Palin deciding to endorse Trump, just exacerbates it,” the conservative pundit continued, according to a transcript of his remarks on Wednesday. “And, by the way, Sarah Palin is gonna help me make my points today, because I read the transcript for her speech that she made, and it’s actually — the speech that Palin made yesterday for Trump, I saw people pan it, say she looked like she lost her place, she was reading cue cards, she didn’t seem to be all there.”

Though Limbaugh said he did not see the speech in its entirety and had just read the transcript, he hastened to add, “I don’t want to overdo it and say brilliant, but I’ll tell you, she’s got substantive, logical reasons for doing what she’s doing. And she explained it yesterday for anybody who really wanted to pay attention to listen to it. So I’m gonna explain that.”

For Limbaugh, Palin’s endorsement signifies “a serious awakening that is taking place within the Republican Party and the so-called conservative movement.”

“When I talk about the conservative movement, to me I’m talking about Washington. I’m not talking about you in the grass roots. I'm talking about the establishment, conservative media, the brainiacs, the think tanks, the professors,” he explained. “I think what’s actually being revealed here is that the Republican Party itself and even some of the conservative intelligentsia has misjudged and overestimated the conservatism of the base, negatively. They have a negative connotation of conservatism. They don’t like it, obviously.”

But, Limbaugh, said, “The way the Republican establishment defines conservatism is not what it is. To them it’s hayseed hicks, pro-lifers running around in pickup trucks with shotguns in the back, bitter clingers.” And Obama wasn’t the only one who thought that way, Limbaugh said: “There are a lot of people in Washington in both parties who have that opinion of conservatives, and the Republicans might even look at their own base in that regard.”

What actually united conservatives, according to Limbaugh, wasn’t ideology. “If that’s what defined people as conservative and was the glue that made the conservative movement a big movement, then Trump would have no chance,” he said. Instead, Limbaugh explained, the “glue” sticking conservatives together is “virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat Party and Barack Obama. And I, for the life of me, don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.”

Conservative writer David Frum, writing in The Atlantic on Tuesday, made a similar point about how Palin’s support of Trump represents an “alliance of the aggrieved.”

“Talk radio uses those feelings, too, of course, and has used them for years. But the more ideological stars of conservative talk — the Limbaughs, the Levins — try to use those feelings in service of a more-or-less coherent set of political ideas,” Frum noted. “Speaking to the feelings of persecution is only a means; some vision of a revitalized free-enterprise system is the end. For Palin, though, her personal grievances were always what the whole commotion was all about. She was effective, to the extent she was, because millions of people agreed that her personal grievances sometimes also represented theirs.”

At the same time, Limbaugh said in another segment of Wednesday’s show, Trump’s decision to accept Palin’s endorsement “somewhat puzzled” him.

“I just have to be honest. I look at Trump as a genuine outsider, as somebody who doesn’t do anything by the book in politics,“ he said. “And yesterday he did two things by the book that, frankly, surprised me. One is accepting an endorsement. I did not see Sarah’s speech, but I saw sound bites of it. And I saw Trump standing aside while she was at the podium, and he’s not the kind of guy that stands aside. He just isn’t. He's that dominant. He is that huge to give up the podium even to somebody endorsing him, sponsoring him. I’m not criticizing it. Don’t anybody misunderstand. I’m just telling you what I think here. Do with it what you want.”

He also said he was surprised by Trump’s shift to go all-in on supporting ethanol subsidies in Iowa, where he is engaged in close political combat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“On the other hand, I understand it’s the Hawkeye Cauci," he remarked. “It’s the first in this whole series of caucuses and primaries, and he’s nip and tuck there with Cruz and wants to win it, and this is what you have to do. But see, that’s the point. This is how insiders look at it. You have to go buy votes. And that’s what supporting king corn in Iowa is all about.”