Last week, I noted the most amazing thing about the Rush Limbaugh "slut" saga is that the GOP could barely manage a peep against him. Now TPM is advertising a "tipping point", as "GOPers Start To Turn On Rush Limbaugh." Forgive me, but I just don't see it.
The only two politicians they cite who really can be said to have "condemned" Limbaugh are Carly Fiorina (who I already mentioned) and Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) (locked in a tight battle with Elizabeth Warren). Beyond that? It's basically nothing. John Boehner murmers that Limbaugh's comments were "inappropriate" -- roughly as offensive as a Democratic fundraising letter. Rick Santorum called the statement "absurd" but observed that "an entertainer can be absurd". Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) (who in a sense is responsible for this whole mess) barely managed to sneak in a word against Limbaugh as he tried desperately to play the victim. And Mitt Romney? "It's not the language I would have used." Feel the outrage!
No, there's no tipping going on amongst the GOP. They're still as much in thrall of Rush as ever.
The criticism has been well within the bounds of Limbaugh's own apology, which as he made explicit on his show today, was solely for the terms "slut" and "prostitute." Everything else he said about Fluke for 3 days, ranging from lying about the content of her testimony (she never once referred to her sex life or even whether she personally used contraception), to declaring that she wanted taxpayers to pay for her to have sex (except this is an issue for Georgetown precisely because it's a private sectarian institution), to demanding that she make him a sex tape .... no apologies.
ReplyDeleteAnd as Cyril's comments to your earlier post indicate, the word has gone out not to engage in discussion of Limbaugh's remarks at all, but instead to refocus on what the GOP believes to be a winner: religious liberty.