SALON

Friday, Feb 17, 2012 11:13 PM UTC

Rush Limbaugh, secret Democrat

That's the only explanation for why the right-wing blowhard is leading the GOP off a culture-war cliff VIDEO

By

Topics: Rush Limbaugh, 2012 Elections, ,

Rush Limbaugh, secret DemocratRush Limbaugh (Credit: AP/Chris Carlson)

I’ve decided Rush Limbaugh must be a closeted Democrat. I can’t think of any other reason he would be leading the Republican Party over a political cliff by advising that they double down on the culture wars.

With new poll data showing that President Obama is quickly gaining ground among women voters, at least partly due to Republican extremism on contraception, Limbaugh told his listeners Thursday that the GOP would win the election if it’s decided on culture-war terms.

“Something tells me, that if the upcoming election could be decided on social issues, the Republicans could win that in a landslide, because we are on the right side of the culture war,” he said. “The problem is, we’re scared to death of it. The Republican establishment wants no part of it.”

Smart Republicans are indeed afraid of the culture wars – because they know they’re on the losing side. Sadly, there aren’t very many smart Republicans anymore; or at least there aren’t very many who will stand up to extremists in their base and say enough is enough on their jihad against birth control.

A majority of women voters, 51 percent, now approve of the job Obama is doing, according to the weekly Gallup tracking poll, up from a low of 41 percent last August (only 43 percent of men approve.) A Democracy Corps poll taken from Feb. 8-13 found Obama now leads Mitt Romney 65-30 among unmarried women, an 18-point swing since November. (Yes, Democracy Corps is run by Democrats, but they regularly deliver bad news for their party when their polls require it.) Women may also be behind some more bad news for Republicans: A majority of seniors, thought to be the party’s base, now view the GOP negatively, according to Democracy Corps. Most seniors happen to be women.

It’s not only women who disapprove of Republican extremism on contraception, though: a New York Times poll this week found that two-thirds of all voters support requiring health care plans to cover the whole cost of birth control – including almost three-quarters of women. By the way, Catholics support the measure 67-25. The only group that has a problem with it is evangelical Christians, the core of the GOP base.

Please remember that all three of those polls were taken before Thursday, when Rick Santorum’s money man Foster Freiss made his idiotic joke about aspirin serving as birth control (if it’s held tightly between the knees, a joke straight out of a ’50s locker room) and Darrell Issa assembled only men on a panel to talk about what women can do with their bodies.

That’s why Rush Limbaugh can’t even keep up the pretext that contraception is a winning issue for his party throughout an entire broadcast. During the very same show in which he told Republicans they’d win if the election was decided on culture-war issues, he also accused Democrats of starting the birth-control debate to hurt Santorum. But how can it hurt him if a culture war is good for Republicans? None of his callers asked him that question. Here’s more of what he said:

The whole point of bringing up contraception and trying to make it look like the Republicans want to ban birth control is simply something to excite the Democrat base, which has been depressed as it can be because their president has done a rotten job.  The economy is in the tank.

Of course, Limbaugh is wrong about that too. The economy isn’t great, but it’s improving and voters are giving the president better marks for that, too. Also: the base isn’t depressed. The Democracy Corps poll found that Republican Party extremism combined with the improving economy is revving up the Democratic base again, pulling what they call the “Rising American Electorate” of young people, unmarried women and non-white voters back behind Obama and his party. Meanwhile, it’s the GOP base that appears depressed, with turnout either flat or down in every primary and caucus except South Carolina.

Even Michael Steele didn’t try to spin the bad news for his party on “Hardball” today. I did catch him trying to blame Obama for craftily making the contraception debate about…contraception. How dare he?

Here’s my “Hardball” conversation with Steele. I had the easy side this time.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Joan Walsh

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." More Joan Walsh.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 127 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
241 points242 points | 8 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
172 points173 points | 1 comment
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
155 points156 points | 42 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
54 points55 points | 8 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
29 points30 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations