Rush Limbaugh wants to know why George Will can root for Obamacare to fail without consequence while he faced criticism for hoping Obama fails, sentiments that are “the same thing” according to the radio host.

Newly-crowned Fox contributor George Will appeared on Fox News Sunday's online after-show Panel Plus on October 27 to discuss glitches in Healthcare.gov. Will told the panel, “Of course I want Obamacare to fail. Because if it doesn't fail, it will just further entangle American society with a government that is not up to this.”

To Rush Limbaugh, Will's remarks reflected the same sentiment Limbaugh himself expressed back in 2009. Because “if you want Obamacare to fail,” Limbaugh reasoned, “you want Obama to fail.”

Indeed, four days before then-President-elect Barack Obama took office in 2009, Limbaugh infamously declared that he “hope[s] Obama fails,” a refrain he repeated that day and throughout Obama's presidency.  

Part of the impetus behind this sentiment, Limbaugh explained at the time, is that he did not want the government involved in health care:

LIMBAUGH: Look, what he's talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don't want this to work.

Unsurprisingly, the radio host received bipartisan condemnation for his comments.

Now, Limbaugh is attempting to drag George Will under the bus with him. On the October 28 edition of his radio program, Limbaugh aired Will's remarks about his desire for Obamacare to fail, and claimed this was the “same thing” he had said in 2009 for “the exact same reasons”:

LIMBAUGH: So here's George Will, perfectly comfortable now saying 'of course I want Obamacare to fail.' Well if you want Obamacare to fail, you want Obama to fail. And that's all I said, it's the same thing, except I said it two weeks before he was immaculated. For the exact same reasons he gave here on Obamacare, I said I want the whole kit and kaboodle to bomb out.

While Limbaugh qualified his criticism by saying, “I don't mean to make this personal,” it's clear he believes the lack of controversy around Will's remarks is just that.