The GOP’s Rush Limbaugh Problem Deepens After His ‘Slut’ Attack
By using his mighty megaphone for raunchy name calling, Rush Limbaugh has handed the Democrats a big fat gift.
Whatever the damage to the nation’s top radio talker, he has put a face on the argument that President Obama’s party has been mounting for months—that Republicans are waging a “war on women.” In calling Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” merely because she testified to Congress in favor of insurance coverage for birth control, Limbaugh has given the Democrats an indelible image to make their case.
“I don’t know any woman in America who finds being called a ‘slut’ funny,” Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic national chairman, told me. She was referring to Limbaugh’s explanation that his attempt at humor had gone awry. “To suggest that in exchange for access to contraception a woman should have to post sex tapes is just so outrageous.”
The Florida congresswoman also took a shot at Mitt Romney for his tepid response to Limbaugh’s three-day assault on Fluke. “The most their frontrunner could bring himself to say is that he wouldn’t have chosen those words,” Wasserman Schultz says. “You have countless candidates quaking in their boots when asked to criticize him.”
A onetime Romney adviser didn’t argue the point. The former Massachusetts governor “didn’t help himself,” says Alex Castellanos, a top strategist for Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. “He had an opportunity to demonstrate strength. He left the bat on his shoulders.”
Whatever the damage to the nation’s top radio talker, he has put a face on the argument that President Obama’s party has been mounting for months—that Republicans are waging a “war on women.” In calling Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” merely because she testified to Congress in favor of insurance coverage for birth control, Limbaugh has given the Democrats an indelible image to make their case.
“I don’t know any woman in America who finds being called a ‘slut’ funny,” Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic national chairman, told me. She was referring to Limbaugh’s explanation that his attempt at humor had gone awry. “To suggest that in exchange for access to contraception a woman should have to post sex tapes is just so outrageous.”
The Florida congresswoman also took a shot at Mitt Romney for his tepid response to Limbaugh’s three-day assault on Fluke. “The most their frontrunner could bring himself to say is that he wouldn’t have chosen those words,” Wasserman Schultz says. “You have countless candidates quaking in their boots when asked to criticize him.”
A onetime Romney adviser didn’t argue the point. The former Massachusetts governor “didn’t help himself,” says Alex Castellanos, a top strategist for Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. “He had an opportunity to demonstrate strength. He left the bat on his shoulders.”
