On the May 8 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh blamed “unchecked liberalism” for the failure to “save” New Orleans residents who perished -- or otherwise suffered -- during Hurricane Katrina. Limbaugh stated that New Orleans is “a microcosm -- a model of exactly what unchecked liberalism does. It creates destitution. It creates hopelessness. It creates a mess!” Limbaugh added: “Such a mess [that] they couldn't even save some of the people who were there [in New Orleans] to get them out of town, even though they had the mechanism and the advance warning to do it.”
As Media Matters for America has noted, Limbaugh previously linked the humanitarian disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to “the welfare and entitlement thinking of government.”
From the May 8 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: Now, here's what we're seeing, folks. One of the things -- and I know this is going to irritate some of you in New Orleans, and I'm sorry, but it's the truth -- when -- when -- after Hurricane Katrina, and there was such misery, and there was such suffering, we were all stunned because New Orleans has been run by Democrats. Louisiana had been run by Democrats for decades; liberal Democrats to loot -- to boot. New Orleans should have been a -- a utopia. There should not have been any racism because liberals don't believe in it, should not have been any unemployment because liberals don't like that. Everybody should have been earning lots of money because liberals support paying people more than the minimum wage. There shouldn't have been any discrimination because liberals are not racists. There shouldn't have been any poverty because liberals won't tolerate it. They have a war on poverty -- and yet, what did we find? We found out it was the exact opposite! We had a microcosm -- a model of exactly what unchecked liberalism does.
It creates destitution. It creates hopelessness. It creates a mess! Such a mess they couldn't even save some of the people who were there to get them out of town, even though they had the mechanism and the advance warning to do it. So, this is what happens when you take a government-dependent, crime-ridden neighborhood and relocate it to another city. Shazzam! You get the same thing! You can take people out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the people, and the way they've been raised, the way that they have been coddled by government and so forth. So, now, Houston has -- has a problem here. And if -- if something like this happens in the future, will any other city be as eager to offer assistance if the -- if the likelihood is that a similar group of people are going to be your new inhabitants?
