On her Thursday program, conservative talker Laura Ingraham struck back at MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough and others who want to blame talk radio for 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s presidential election loss, suggesting that Scarborough’s anger may be linked to his radio show getting cancelled in 2010.
“You got to have leaders that will turn out against the crazies in your own party,” Scarborough said Thursday morning, “and if you do — you start winning those middle, those swing voters.”
Scarborough, along with others on his program Thursday, attacked certain elements in the conservative movement, including talk radio. That has been a constant theme of his MSNBC program dating back to President Barack Obama’s re-election victory last November, including earlier this week when Scarborough tied conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to a string of lost presidential elections.
“Beware the false prophets,” Ingraham said at the opening of her show. “We got a lot of people out there diagnosing what’s wrong with the GOP and it’s playing out exactly as I told you it would. This was about, maybe 18 months ago. I warned you all that if the Republicans did not win — if they did not nominate a solid conservative, they didn’t win — the same people who ensured that someone who wasn’t all that conservative won the nomination, those same people would then be blaming the talk radio audience. They would be blaming talk radio hosts. They would be saying, ‘It’s the fault of the conservative entertainment complex.’”
“Now most of these people want to be part of the conservative entertainment complex,” she continued. “Most of the people who berate, or coin this phrase, ‘entertainment complex’ — they never use that to refer to Hollywood by the way, which actually is an entertainment complex. It’s only the few shows that actually have some influence and have been quite successful in garnering listeners, advertisers, etc., etc. But the people who urge moderation on the Republican Party got their wish, for the most part: they got Mitt Romney. I’m not out here blaming — berating — Mitt Romney. That’s over. They’ll learn now, right? But I told you the tea party would be blamed, or those that have sympathy with the tea party would be blamed for Mitt Romney’s loss.”
Ingraham explained that Romney’s appearances on her show were sparse and said that suggested that his campaign had attempted to distance itself from talk radio, as opposed to embracing it.
Ingraham suggested that Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski’s, disdain for talk radio centered on the two’s 2010 departure from their WABC 770 AM New York City talk radio show. At the time, it was reportedly only going to be a “brief hiatus,” although his fellow WABC host Don Imus had said it was more of a cancellation of their program. Nearly three years later, their show has yet to resurface.
“For us to sit back here and say, ‘Well, gosh it’s those conservative radio hosts — they’re the problem’? It’s hilarious,” Ingraham said. “And no offense to Joe Scarborough, but what happened to the retooling of that show? Wasn’t Scarborough and Mika — weren’t they supposed to do a retooling? They were just leaving temporarily to retool. What happened to the retooling, WABC? Retooled themselves right into the permanent, I guess, MSNBC, and they decided not to come back to it, which is fine. No problem.”
“But other people are actually doing quite well in this industry and we don’t really take much stock in the rantings of people who — maybe a little sour grapes, maybe just a little of the pot calling the kettle black situation,” Ingraham continued. “I don’t know. Maybe you just have to get on with your friends at MSNBC. I don’t know what it is, but all I can tell you is this: ‘Traditional conservatism, smartly articulated wins and consistently has shown itself. Moderate Republican blather continues to lose.”