Rush Goes X Files on Me and “Showdown”

Rush Limbaugh.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultravod/120460275/">Dan Correia</a>/Flickr

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My new book, Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party, which comes out Tuesday, generated a burst of media attention on Monday. Huffington Post published an excerpt in which House Speaker John Boehner flees the Grand Bargain deficit-reduction talks with President Obama after House GOP colleagues warn Boehner that House majority leader Eric Cantor is poised to lead a mutiny against the speaker. Politico summed up a few of the more gripping moments in the book, including a meeting in which Obama expresses frustration with the Fox News-driven political culture. (Drudge linked!) Mediaite also picked up this Fox News tidbit, and Fox News’ Bret Baier pushed back. USA Today zeroed in on a portion of the book in which Obama compares himself to the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post dissected the book’s account of Obama’s pivot toward deficit reduction. Paul Krugman responded to Sargent’s post.

And then there was Rush Limbaugh. Referring to a Washington Post article published this past weekend on the collapse of last summer’s Grand Bargain talks (casting the Post piece as more negative toward the president than it was), the recently-besieged talk show host suggested that my book was part of some dark conspiracy related to that article. “The plot thickens,” he huffed. I believe he’s suggesting that a book a year in the making (which has a slightly different take on that episode) was cooked up and released this very week to counter a newspaper story. But it’s hard to tell. At least he didn’t call me a slut.

Listen:

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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