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Scroll for updates…Steele non-apologizes to Limbaugh…No word on the “Nazi Germany”/GOP convention slur…

I said positive things about RNC chairman Michael Steele this weekend on Washington Journal (link here) and have covered his rise extensively.

Now, a word of friendly advice:

There’s nothing wrong with criticizing Rush Limbaugh. But if you are going to go on Obamedia outlets like CNN and throw around words like “incendiary” and “ugly,” you better back them up. You should also think more broadly about how this distraction feeds the White House/Alinsky agenda — and how better to avoid their traps.

Also: There is nothing — nothing — conservative about echoing the class warfare-tainted rhetoric of the Left. Nothing.

Don’t go there.

Limbaugh is an “entertainer,” Steele scoffed — on a CNN political show hosted by a comedian, I might note.

Yeah, so? Rush makes a living selling his opinions and trying to reach as many as people as possible. You did the same as a fellow Fox News contributor. So do I. Does it make your commitment to the principles you espouse any less sincere?

We’ve had one too many Beltway Republicans bash conservatives because they happen to earn a living espousing their ideas.

Profit is not supposed to be a dirty word.

We need conservative spokespeople who condemn anti-capitalist claptrap, not spokespeople who parrot it.

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One more thing: When liberals sit there and accuse the GOP convention of looking like “Nazi Germany,” you might not want to sit there, nodding your head, and respond, “I agree.”

Update: With a hat tip to John Hawkins, I re-listened to the exchange. It’s even worse than I noted. After Hughley rants about “Nazi Germany,” Steele says…”You’re right.”

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More from Melissa Clouthier.

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Played right into the Left’s hands. Congratulations. This will do wonders for party fund-raising efforts…on the other side:

In an interview on CNN with D.L. Hughley, Steele assured that he, not Limbaugh, was in charge of the party before saying that he wanted to put the right-wing talker “into context.”
“Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer,” Steele said. “Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes it’s incendiary, yes it’s ugly.”

Steele’s comments, first noticed by NBC producer Chris Donovan, are sure to rankle Limbaugh in part because they validate the liberal critique of the conservative force: that he’s merely an “entertainer.”
That’s one of the phrases often used by Democrats who seek to diminish Limbaugh. MSNBC’s liberal talk-show host Keith Olbermann, for example, frequently mocks his broadcast adversary as “comedian Rush Limbaugh.”

Steele’s broadside comes as top-level Democrats are working to portray Limbaugh as the face of the GOP and daring anybody in the party to separate themselves from him.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs jumped on an opportunity to discuss Limbaugh Monday, saying at the press briefing that reporters should ask Republicans if they side with the talk show host.

“Do they want to see the President’s economic agenda fail?” asked Gibbs of the Republicans, citing the talker’s comments earlier this year and over the weekend at CPAC about the Obama agenda. “You know, I bet there are a number of guests on television throughout the day and maybe into tomorrow who could let America know whether they agree with what Rush Limbaugh said this weekend.

A liberal coalition has already aired two ads tying congressional Republicans to Limbaugh and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that the conservative is the “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

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Update: Steele says he’s sorry for causing offense and being inarticulate about Limbaugh because his job is to “bring people together.”

He was just, you know, misunderstood.

No word on how his agreement with Hughley that the GOP convention looked like “Nazi Germany” was misunderstood, too.