Nearly every organization has a symbol and spokesman that serve as a brand identifier, and like McDonalds’ golden arches and Ronald McDonald, the Republican Party has a red-white-and-blue elephant and Rush Limbaugh. There have been numerous debates regarding whether Limbaugh controls the GOP or if he is just their mouthpiece, but one thing is certain; he is the Republican Party’s brand. It is not just Limbaugh’s remarks to the Georgetown law student that identifies him with Republicans and their assault on women’s right to choose their own reproductive health; it is everything he champions from supporting Paul Ryan’s Draconian budget to his shameless defense of the man who murdered Trayvon Martin in Florida.
The furor over Limbaugh’s use of the words “slut” and “prostitute” prompted most of his advertisers to pull their ads from his radio program, but his employer, Clear Channel Premiere has stood by him with unwavering support. Limbaugh’s boss, Bob Pittman, claimed Limbaugh’s remarks about Fluke were “part of the normal day-to-day of talk radio” and that Rush was still the king. There is a reason Limbaugh was not summarily fired after losing advertisers and it is not necessarily that Premiere likes losing ad revenue; it is more likely that Republicans depend on Limbaugh to parrot their agenda to his audience of gun-toting sycophants, opponents of the Affordable Care Act, fiscal conservatives, and racists.
The assault on Sandra Fluke was disgusting, but no Republicans condemned his misogynistic remarks because they served their purpose of inciting opposition to contraception coverage among the religious right. Limbaugh is not known for his veracity, but he made a remark that rings true with Republicans that “his listeners didn’t think his remarks were that big of a deal to begin with” and he is probably correct and it is why he turned the Trayvon Martin case into an indictment of President Obama and support for the National Rifle Association.
According to Pew Research, 76% of Limbaugh’s audience supports the NRA and it is little wonder he has defended Trayvon Martin’s killer and, in effect, the “Stand Your Ground Law” supported by the NRA and ALEC. Limbaugh has attempted to portray the killing as an “overzealous” act by a guy who “wants to be a cop” and that there “are people trying to fan the flames of this rather than cool it down at the highest levels.” Limbaugh told his audience “we know who the people trying to benefit from this are, and you would think that people would want to try to douse it, cool it off a little bit.” Limbaugh could not care less about the controversy, but he is duty-bound to parrot the NRA myth that President Obama intends to take real Americans’ guns away and it plays well during an election year which appears to be Limbaugh’s job, and invoking racially divisive rhetoric will endear him to racists.
Limbaugh never met a Republican policy he did not like and as Draconian as the Paul Ryan budget that passed in the House on Thursday is, Limbaugh has supported it with zeal as “our kids’ salvation” and claimed that Democrats, “the architects of our debt disaster, have no right to attack Paul Ryan’s budget.” The budget that passed in the House yesterday will add to the deficit while destroying Medicare, cut aid to children, send more Americans into poverty, and give the ultra-wealthy a 10% tax cut on top of their Bush-era cuts. Limbaugh’s defense of the Ryan budget most likely came directly from Ryan and the GOP because it is a nearly word-for-word reiteration from Ryan’s promotional video touting the benefits of giving tax cuts to the wealthy while slashing safety nets millions of Americans depend on to survive. Limbaugh is the Republican Party and he is going to be around as long as they need him to promote their policies.
Rush is facing the biggest threat of his career after his vulgar remarks about Sandra Fluke, and despite his claims to the contrary, he must be worried or he would not have mobilized a counter-offensive against the left. He has downplayed the effect of losing advertisers at the same time he created a crisis management team to attack the various groups intent on getting him off the air, but he underestimates the resolve of the StopRush and BoycottRush movement that are in this campaign for the long haul. It is possible that Clear Channel can absorb Limbaugh’s bloated salary for some time, but the hundreds of local affiliates that carry his program cannot and will not continue carrying his show if they begin losing advertising revenue.
Republicans need Limbaugh on the air to promote their agendas, and his fortunes are tied to theirs. Limbaugh and the Republicans in Congress and state legislatures will discover that people are fed up with tax cuts for the rich, GOP’s assault on contraception and women’s rights, and attempts to eliminate safety nets for millions of Americans, and recent polls do not bode good fortune for Republicans in November. Rush Limbaugh’s supporters will not abandon him because he reflects their beliefs or he would have been off the air by now, and they agree with his ideology of defaming women, African Americans, and President Obama while he defends a killer. But he has went too far and enraged an army of committed, decent Americans who will not rest until he is gone for good and if he thinks for one second that he can manage this crisis, he is sadly mistaken. In every community that carries his radio show, there is a steady call to drop his program and as the effort ramps up, they will either drop his show, or lose their audiences.
It is a sad commentary that a hate-filled man like Limbaugh represents a segment of the population who will rally to protect him as much as it is tragic there are Americans who support Republican policies that are detrimental to their own interests. However, like Republicans, Limbaugh fails to recognize that in attacking an intelligent young woman and defending a man that killed an unarmed teenager, they have awoken decent Americans from their malaise and they will make them pay dearly in November, and as the Republicans go, so goes Limbaugh. Americans have had enough of Limbaugh and based on the response to the StopRush movement, they are more than willing to stay the course until he is off the air for good. He made a bad judgment call in labeling Ms. Fluke a slut and a prostitute, but playing the race card against President Obama and defending George Zimmerman has incited outrage among people of all colors and Limbaugh, like Republicans, will not recover. Republicans need Limbaugh to promote their agenda of contempt for the poor, women, and minorities, but they underestimated the consequences of tying their brand to a hate-monger. Perhaps the next time the Republican Party chooses a hate-monger as their brand, they will look back and see what a disaster forming a symbiotic relationship with Rush Limbaugh turned out to be, but chances are they will be too focused on the next campaign to hurt the poor and enrich the wealthy. The StopRush movement is in its infancy and their efforts pressured nearly 200 of Limbaugh’s advertisers to suspend or stop their commitment to support his program, and their anger is only tempered by their resolve to put Limbaugh in the same place they will put Republicans; out of a job and out of Americans’ misery.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
The cadre that now passes for the Republican Party will no more let Rush be dispensed with than the Nazis would have done with Goebbels, but I have some hope that the American public has enough lingering sense of decency left to be disgusted at last.
Talk radio is in for a revolution, and it won’t be because of the national media coverage. It will be very local and starts with the sales person working for a local radio station that is losing advertising sales from local businesses that don’t want to be identifid with hate radio. That person’s complaints to the programming director about losses of advertising dollars will be the real effect. Whether Limbaugh and all the hate radio wannabes stay or go will be determined by the lowest person on the totem pole – the person who has to sell the advertising slots.
Now let’s go after the illegal aliens like this. We should align with Michelle Malkin who advocates that the illegals be put in internment camps. They can leave for work at Walmart or McDonalds, which I am sure would support this. Love Michelle and have all of her books, each one signed at a book signing event. I always travel to see her (and maybe smell her-love her new conservative cologne line). I have a huge poster of her in my office, next to a Kinkaid painting of Him. I even named my cat Malki, she is siameese too. Me and Malki love us some Malkin. She was also the first to show the true pictures of thug Trayvon Martin on her website twitchy.com, he is a gang banger with tats and flipping off in his picture. Glory
It’s the Oxycontin speaking,or lack of!? Rush Limbaughh is a doctor shopping drug addict,FACT!!!
That’s the key. As long as the Repubs need him. If they start losing elections at an alarming rate and they are faced with the reality that the average American is sick of their B.S., then they will have to adapt or die. If that happens, then we may one day have elections where the two candidates are separated by degrees of difference, and not a vast chasm where one side is complete bat doo doo crazy.
Silence the GOP mouthpiece!!!
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Just when is Mitt Romney going to speak up? After all, Bain owns (in part or wholly?) Clear Channel.
It’s almost as if Mitt is afraid to speak up, or else he’s benefiting or planning on benefiting from the misinformation campaign.
Too bad everyone is so sidetracked by Romney’s daily gaffes to ask him where he stands on this issue, as a stock holder and “businessman”. Smirk.
i read your post i thought it was a joke but im not soo sure considering you do sound like one of those paranoid tea party waitin for the rapture wingnuts.who the f^&** is michelle malkin i thought you meant bachmann.she sounds every bit as crazy as you do.it sounds like your obessed with the woman watch it the stalking laws are stiff.
Excellent as usual.
#rushlimbaugh is done. It was his ratcheting up his vitriol on Ms Fluke day by day that got to me. he is a disgusting closeted, viagra chopping, junkie, boy loving pig. And he should talk about anybody.
What I called him has been proven unlike what he try to do to Ms Fluke.
He needs to go, and we need to inflict costs on the GOP in the form of voting them out of office as the price for embracing the nihilism of Limbaugh as well as that of other folks like Palin, Beck, and Hannity and of the Tea Party. He has a history of not only insulting women but also blacks, gays, immigrants, and even the children of political figures he hates. When Chelsea Clinton was a young teenager, he made comments to the effect that the Clintons had another pet in addition to their cat, and he named Chelsea.
He should have actually been gone a long time ago.
Ally, I think it is a joke. BTW Michelle Malkin is an ultra conservative of Asian descent. She is well known in conservative circles, and has written and taken stances on some of the most God awful stuff. Her claim to fame, is her belief that it was the right call to put Japanese Americans in internment camps during WW II.
Limbaugh bears a striking resemblance to Herman Goering.
I have faithful Republican-voting family members who have already stated: “We’ll be voting for Obama this time…the GOP has attracted far too many crazies”.
The many years of Limbaugh-like talking-heads has begun to wake all of America up!
Anne, We should all listen to our local ‘Hate-Radio’ Stations…it doesn’t take long to hear the ‘lack of empathy’ toward everything we cherish.
Then call the station…let them know the issues discussed are extreme and not American values!
Ihave never been a fame of this utterly obnoxious, pompus, contemptable loud mouth. His rhetoric is displeassing to say the least. Why waste my time listening to such ilk!!
I think we are all done with the Republicans for their women-hatred, gay-hatred, fact-hatred, science-hatred… spare me,.,.. their hatred in general for anyone who is not a white Christian male… we are done with them.. done.. they have no plans to offer.. they just stop the government from moving in any direction… they are divisive.. obstinate and seem to revel in stupidity the likes that come from an illiterate’s mouth like Sarah Palin.. who had Paul Revere “shooting those guns and ringing those bells to warn the british..” They don’t stop stupidity like this… they encourage it… the country is done… DONE with them
Father Conklin, Billy Sunday…. radio has always been the home of hate.
I don’t know the answer of this, but you said Rush was on Oxycontin. Are you sure he was abusing this and not Oxycodone? There’s a major difference between the two and if he was abusing Oxycontin, I’d say he’s lucky to be alive.
If anyone else knows which one please feel free to comment.
I really hope you’re right folks – I’ve been a Registered Republican for 29 years, and keep my ear on some mighty conservative blogs – all I hear from that quarter is DUMP OBAMA. The majority couldn’t possibly care less about the state of the unemployed / uninsured, ways to fix the health care system, or actually ‘creating jobs’ rather than shipping them overseas where wages are pennies on our dollar – they just want Obama gone, and women back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, with no rights to bodily autonomy whatsoever. This is what they want, it’s all they care about, and they brag about their ‘patriotism’ and their contributions to the right wing religionists. God help us if you’re wrong, because these goons will DEFINITELY be at the polls in November.