As no longer seen on TV
The Heritage Foundation's supposed new "immigration study" is being slammed so hard
even by fellow conservatives that it threatens to damage the entire organization (and we're talking about a
conservative think tank, here, not generally a group known for taking damage due to inane or fraudulent stances). It didn't help that one of the study's co-authors was discovered to have written a previous dissertation
on the "substantially lower" IQ of non-white immigrants, a paper which closely paralleled certain parts of the Heritage argument, or that he was revealed to have
hung out with a few eyebrow-raising crowds.
It's not all bad, though. Support for both Heritage's much-maligned study and even more maligned co-author came Thursday from, lo and behold, a certain conservative media powerhouse called Rush Limbaugh (No link, but you can find the transcript on his site):
There's also a move out there -- understandably in the Democrat Party, but within certain elements of the Republican Party -- to go after, discredit, and basically blow up the Heritage Foundation study on immigration and the cost of amnesty. […]
You see now, the long knives are out for anybody at Heritage who had anything to do with this.
Wow, what are the odds that Limbaugh would so quickly rally to the Heritage Foundation's defense, even while so much of the rest of the conservative infrastructure hit the ol' eject button just as soon as Heritage released their little "study"? As it turns out, pretty close to 100 percent. Remember the pay-for-praise agreement they've got going with
Limbaugh and other conservative radio hosts?
[I]n the midst of a flurry of scrutiny of GOP presidential candidates’ stances on health insurance mandates similar to one included in the 2010 Democratic healthcare overhaul, Limbaugh took to the airwaves to defend Heritage’s past support for such a proposal.
“The Heritage Foundation to this day says they are being impugned and misrepresented in terms of their advocacy for such a thing,” Limbaugh said, explaining that the venerable think tank “abandoned the idea once they saw it implemented” and realized “it doesn’t work.”
Limbaugh, who has been a paid Heritage endorser since 2009, said the reversal did nothing to detract from the “profound … respect for Heritage. Heritage is the gold standard. Heritage was every bit as involved in Reaganism as Reagan was, and nothing’s changed.”
That was in 2011, back when health insurance mandates had to shift quickly from being the conservative/Heritage/Romney "solution" to health care to being an unconscionable abomination unto our liberteez, and Limbaugh was a very useful cog in pulling
that little magic trick off. During the same year, Heritage paid Limbaugh over $2 million for "sponsorship" of his show that included "promotional tie-ins" and other personalized, from-the-man-himself testimonials on how very, very wonderful the Heritage Foundation truly was and how everyone that hated them had cooties. This is what's known in the industry as "being a shameless whore."
The pay-for-praise relationship with Rush appears to be an active, ongoing affair. If you ask me, though, Heritage is getting ripped off. Limbaugh defends even obvious racism for free, so why does Heritage have to chip in a few million to get the same results? I suppose the way to look at it is this: Rush isn't defending all those other racist things for free, Heritage is just "sponsoring" them. Not every jackass in America can afford to pay Rush personally, after all.