Peter King Blames Rush Limbaugh for Port Support

Newsmax
Feb. 28, 2006

New York Congressman Peter King, who sounded the alarm two weeks ago over the Bush administration's decision to permit the sale of several dozen U.S. port terminals to a Dubai company, blamed conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Monday for softening the firestorm of opposition to the deal.

Asked why some hard-line opponents of the Dubai deal seem to have changed their minds, King told WABC Radio host John Gambling:

"I am very disappointed in that. It almost seemed that once the administration started to counterattack, you had people like Rush Limbaugh and others who have just been - ah - I think [they] have gone into the tank, quite frankly."

Limbaugh adopted a wait-and-see posture on the ports controversy early last week, saying that more information was needed. But by Friday he told his audience he was suspicious of the monolithic opposition.

"You remember the movie 'The Perfect Storm'?" he asked. "What do you suppose happens when 2006 politics and a liberal lust for power and longshoreman union power and Bush hatred and uninformed reporting and the GOP's fear of losing power all get tossed into a stew pot, and then you add in a dash of xenophobia and a touch of racism, and what do you get? Exactly what we had earlier this week: the perfect panic."

Still, despite their disagreement, Limbaugh never attacked King personally - a line crossed by the New York Republican with his Monday "into the tank" reference.

King complained that defenders of the ports transaction were trivializing the debate: "For them to ridicule or to trivialize the objections that we have - I mean, stand back for a second and look at this."

"What we're talking about, you know, turning over the operation of our ports to a company which is owned by the government which was cooperating with our enemy just a few years ago. And they're trying to ridicule and trivialize when you raise questions about that," he told Gambling.

The Long Island Republican, who has appeared with Sens. Schumer and Clinton in recent days to speak out in opposition to the ports deal, said he saw a growing split within the GOP over the ports controversy: "I think you're seeing something of a split here in the Republican Party between what I call the Reagan Democrats, you know, the ethnics from the cities and the suburbs, the middle-income working people - and the big-business wing of the party."