Conservative Radio Hosts Lampoon McCain

Rush Limbaugh

The Rush Limbaugh Show

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Limbaugh has said that a McCain nomination would mean the death of the Republican base. He has attacked McCain personally, charging that senators don't get elected because "they have the biggest egos," that he is "180 degrees out of phase," and that he has lied about Romney's record.

But his biggest criticisms have been on matters of policy: tax cuts, campaign finance, big government, immigration. He said recently on his show: "What a racket McCain is running....McCain comes out with this lie about Romney in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, and there's no way a Romney camp or group can run an ad on television here in Florida refuting it because you can't do that 30 days before a primary under McCain-Feingold's restrictions on free speech, but the candidates can go out there and say what they want. So Romney had to do the replying himself. He put a video up, and they were quick getting it out...It's hilarious. Hey, Senator McCain, you can't say anything about any candidate within 30 days before the election. McCain-Feingold ought to extend to the candidates, too, don't you think?"

Following McCain's primary win in Florida, Limbaugh weighed in on the candidate's credentials: "All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse — and so, just as I predicted, the base has fractured....Senator McCain's been able to cobble together enough votes to win a few states....But to pretend that [he] is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite..."

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck Show

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Glenn Beck, nightly star of the Glenn Beck Show on CNN Headline News, has hammered McCain on his economic policies, specifically his support for measures to curtail global warming and his opposition to the first rounds of tax cuts. He has also said that McCain is "more dangerous than Hillary" and that he flip-flops on social issues.

Beck on McCain's global warming policy: "You know, the same way he should get credit for the war, you should give him the same amount of credit for wanting to spend as much as $1.2 trillion a year by 2050 on something that can't possibly affect temperatures by a measurable amount. That's not me saying that. That is—I mean, even if the global warming theorists are 100 percent right, look it up. 1.2 trillion a year, and it doesn't work. And just remember that when he's telling you that he's a fiscal conservative."

Beck on McCain's tax cut record: "Now, with that in mind look what he said about tax cuts in 2001. He said: I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of the middle-class Americans who need tax relief. This is the classic rhetoric of the left. Tax cuts only benefit the rich. Be honest. If John Kerry would have said that, quote, word for word, and he did, if Hillary Clinton said that quote, and she did, you would be hammering them on it, hammering them."