IE8 ignoring custom styling

I have a site that calls for a full width header image so I’ve repositioned the menu with an @media screen call for big screens (so it doesn’t mess with the wonderful responsiveness of the theme).

@media screen and (min-width: 1021px) {
blah blah}
}

For IE8 I’ve added conditional styling.

<!--[if lte IE 8]>
<style>
blah blah
</style> <![endif]-->

All works in Firefox/Chrome but in IE8 the menu positioning and background of .navbar-inner don’t change. The background image does show up so I know the conditional css is being read.
The javascript that usually enables @media css in retarded browsers didn’t work with this theme either. The code is quite complex for this theme and I’m reluctant to change it too much because I don’t want to wreck some of the very nice things it does.
https://ebirder.webbrewers.com/