Rush Limbaugh: The American flag is next

The debate over the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina and elsewhere is not really about the banner itself, Rush Limbaugh says. And it won’t stop there, the radio host said during his show on Tuesday.

One day, he said, what is happening to the rebel flag will come to pass for the American flag, too.


To liberals, he added, the American flag “stands for the United States of America and, as such, everything that’s wrong with it.”

“The American flag has flown over a slave nation much longer than the Confederate flag did, folks. The American flag has flown over all kinds of atrocities,” Limbaugh told his listeners, calling the Confederate flag “business” an “all-out assault on what the left thinks is a last remaining enclave of solid Republican voters, and that is the South.”

Limbaugh imagined what the liberal talking points on attacking the stars and stripes might be: “Can you just hear it now? I can hear it now: ‘The United States flag has flown over slavery and symbolized racism, discrimination, bigotry, homophobia for hundreds of years; the Confederate flag flew only four years, and we’re getting rid of the Confederate flag.’ Mark my words.”

Limbaugh, citing a 2011 University of Chicago study that found a single exposure to the U.S. flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior among Democrats and Republicans alike, said liberals believe those results.

“It’s not so much that it makes people vote Republican, although the survey results say so. The way it’ll be internalized and expressed is, ‘My God, that flag makes them leave us! We own the TMZ. That flag… Somebody spots the American flag and they vote Republican! They’ll look at this as the flag results in them losing support,’ and they’ll believe this,” he said.

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