Limbaugh: Republicans Want a New Base Without Tea Party

The Republican Party wishes the tea party would go away, and would prefer a new base altogether, says conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

In an hourlong interview with Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren Tuesday, Limbaugh said the Republican leadership isn't conservative.

"They're not particularly crazy about conservatives," he said, adding that members of the tea party can't be controlled by the GOP leadership. In 2010, the grassroots movement rose up in opposition to President Barack Obama, but the Republican establishment didn't embrace them.

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Tea party members sensed that rejection and sat home in the 2012 presidential election, Limbaugh said, handing defeat to GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

And Limbaugh says the GOP establishment isn't too enamored of him either.

"I get more grief than the Taliban gets," he said. He believes that's because he speaks for the views of conservatives rather than promoting the national party's views.

But he sees no reason to compromise with Democrats. He said he prefers, instead, to defeat them in the arena of ideas.

"The country's hanging by a thread here. We're about to lose it," Limbaugh said. "Why compromise with the people responsible for this?"

He is amazed, he said, at how Obama gets away with not being blamed for any of the policies he's implemented. He has developed what he calls "The Limbaugh Theorum," which he said explains why the public doesn't blame Obama for his bad policies.

"I've never seen a president get away with 4½ years of not being seen as responsible for anything he's done when everything that's happened is because of him," he said.

"He never appears to be governing," Limbaugh said. "That's why he's constantly campaigning. Why is there a campaign going on for Obamacare? It's already the law."

Obama has positioned himself as an outsider, not attached to anything that's happening, Limbaugh said. When anything bad happens as a result of his policies he positions himself opposed to it and "fighting for everybody else to overcome what he has done."

Obama make it look as though there are a "mysterious, powerful bunch of forces that are opposing him, and stopping him from creating jobs, and stopping him from giving people proper health care, and stopping him from making their home values go up," Limbaugh said.

It's all a sleight of hand to keep the focus off what he is actually doing, Limbaugh said.

"His policies have done great damage to the economy, have done great damage to the American culture, to the American psyche," he said. "There is a malaise. There is a sense of hopelessness and depression out there."

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