McCain was the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, but his candidacy was engendering strong resistance from the Limbaugh right. His long-standing policy was to refrain from endorsing a primary candidate, but he let his opinions be known. In early January, for example, after a strong showing by Mike Huckabee in Iowa, Limbaugh dismissed him as a populist, not a conservative. Limbaugh didn’t love any of the remaining candidates, either, but Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani all had one great virtue in his eyes: they were not John McCain. He had been in trouble with his party’s right for years. His maverick image was, after all, a repudiation of much of the GOP orthodoxy. It had made him popular with reporters and liberal colleagues in the Senate, but not with the Republican base. He knew he had to mend some fences, and he did, most famously by going down to Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 2006, to ask for the blessing of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the man he had called “an agent of intolerance”
What do You think about Rush Limbaugh: An Army Of One?
