The press has castigated talk radio host Rush Limbaugh for suggesting that he wants President Barack Obama’s policies to fail — but ignored similar comments from Democratic strategist James Carville 7 1/2 years ago.

Speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Sept. 11, 2001 — just before the terrorist attacks — Carville said of President George W. Bush:

“I don’t care if people like him or not, just so they don’t vote for him and his party. That is all I care about. I hope he doesn’t succeed, but I am a partisan Democrat.”

Bill Sammon, Washington managing editor for Fox News, wrote: “Months and even years later, the mainstream media chose to never resurrect those controversial sentiments, voiced by the Democratic Party’s top strategists, that Bush should fail.

“The omission stands in stark contrast to the feeding frenzy that ensued when radio host Rush Limbaugh recently said he wanted President Obama to fail. The press devoted wall-to-wall coverage to the remark, suggesting that Limbaugh, and by extension conservative Republicans, were unpatriotic.”

What Limbaugh in fact said at the Conservative Political Action Conference was: “So what is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation?”