CBS News reports Paul: Limbaugh apologized for personal gain.
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul said an apology by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke for calling her a "slut" and a "prostitute" was not sincere, and was made only because it best served Limbaugh.Attack by Limbaugh Awakens a �Stop Rush� Campaign
"He's doing it because some people were taking their advertisements off of his program. It was his bottom line he was concerned about," Paul said.
Paul referred to three companies that pulled advertisements from Limbaugh's show following incendiary remarks Limbaugh made about Fluke for testifying before a mock Congressional committee in favor of free contraception insurance coverage at Georgetown, a Jesuit university. [One company's spokesman said that Limbaugh's comments "do not align [with] our values." Another pulled out "Due to continued inflammatory comments - along with valuable feedback from clients and team members" about the remarks.]
Although Paul disagreed with Limbaugh's remarks and called them "over the top," he said the government should not mandate that insurance companies provide contraception coverage.
"This is philosophically and politically important because, does the government have a mandate to tell insurance (companies) what to give?" Paul asked, and then responded to his own question: "So they're saying that the insurance companies should give everybody free birth control pill, that strikes me as rather odd."
Paul was specific in his attack against former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and his support (as Senator) for Planned Parenthood dollars in a government funding bill.
"He pretends to be the champion of social values," Paul told Schieffer. "That to me is rather bizarre, and that's why I call him a fake conservative."
The New York Times reports Attack by Limbaugh Awakens a �Stop Rush� Campaign
Some of the same activists that persuaded advertisers to boycott Glenn Beck�s television show on Fox News in 2009 are now mobilizing against Rush Limbaugh in the wake of his verbal attacks on a Georgetown University law school student this week.Limbaugh the Epitome of Everything Wrong With Republican Party
Actually, they are remobilizing. A Twitter account, �Stop Rush,� which has been dormant since late 2010, woke up on Wednesday, when Mr. Limbaugh first called the student, Sandra Fluke, a �slut.�
On Friday, as complaints from �Stop Rush� and others about Mr. Limbaugh�s comments mounted, a handful of companies said that they had halted their advertising on �The Rush Limbaugh Show,� at least temporarily.
One of the companies, Quicken Loans, wrote on Twitter, �Due to continued inflammatory comments � along with valuable feedback from clients and team members � QL has suspended ads on Rush Limbaugh program.�
Two mattress companies, Sleep Train and Sleep Number, made similar statements on Friday. A representative of Sleep Number wrote on Twitter, �Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh do not align w/ our values, so we made decision to immediately suspend all advertising on that program.�
Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are the epitome of everything wrong with the Republican party. Limbaugh is a chickenhawk, a sexist, was fired from sports broadcasting for being a racist, was arrested on drug charges, and was addicted to pain killers.
Yet the blazing hypocrite stated "Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
Asinine talk might appeal to the far right, but the far right is not going to carry the day. Republicans need to be seeking the middle ground and independents. Divisive attacks on abortion, birth control pills, and refusal to consider military cuts are not going to win over independents.
Rooting for Santorum
New York Times columnist Joe Nocera says he is Rooting for Santorum.
I�m rooting for Rick Santorum to win the Republican nomination. Seriously.The Republican party needs to get rid of the extreme right-wingers like Limbaugh and Santorum, the phonies like Mitt Romney, and the war-mongers like McCain. If they did, they could hold the center for decades (assuming there was anything left of the party).
You probably think that is because it would be the best possible outcome for President Obama. No doubt it would be. If Santorum were the Republican nominee for president, the independents disenchanted with Obama would come flocking back; their fear of Santorum�s unyielding brand of social conservatism would far outweigh their reservations about the incumbent president. A Santorum nomination would likely lead to an epic defeat, ranking with Richard Nixon�s 49-to-1 state landslide victory over George McGovern in 1972, or Ronald Reagan�s 49-to-1 state whipping of Walter Mondale 12 years later.
But it�s not the Democrats I�m really concerned with. It�s the Republicans. For more than a decade now, moderate Republicans have been an endangered species, either losing elections or choosing to retire in the face of a hard-line challenger.
During the McGovern-Mondale era, the Democrats were exactly where the Republicans are now: the party had been taken over by its most extreme liberal faction, and it had lost touch with the core concerns of the middle class, just as the Republicans have now.
One person who was drummed out is Lincoln Chafee, the governor of Rhode Island, a Republican turned independent. �I care about deficits,� he told me, �but, on social issues, I believe that people should have the right to make their own decisions.� As a result, he said, �I realized that there wasn�t any room in the Republican Party for me.�
When I asked him what it would take to change the Republican Party, he had a quick answer: �What it usually takes is a good drubbing at election time.�
If Mitt Romney takes the nomination and then loses to Obama, the extremists who�ve taken over the party will surely say the problem was Romney�s lack of ideological purity. If, however, Santorum is the nominee � and then loses in a landslide � the party will no longer be able to delude itself about where its ideological rigidity has taken it.
An alcoholic doesn�t stop drinking until he hits bottom. The Republican Party won�t change until it hits bottom. Only Santorum offers that possibility.
10 Things That Should Be Clear
- It should be clear by now that cutting taxes and spending more money will not shrink the budget.
- It should be clear by now the US cannot afford to have troops in 140 countries
- It should be clear by now that wars are expensive and we cannot afford more of them
- It should be clear by now that some bargaining is needed to bring the deficit under control
- It should be clear by now that some tax hikes coupled with genuine structural reforms to rein in collective bargaining of public unions would be a good idea
- It should be clear by now that republicans need independents and the center to win
- It should be clear by now that the war on drugs cannot be won, should not be fought, and US prisons are overloaded at great expense as a result
- It should be clear we need less government on social issues, on drugs, on war-mongering, on taxes, on education, on spending, on everything, not just half of everything along party lines.
- It should be clear that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Rush Limbaugh are not the future of the Republican party
- It should be clear Republicans risk losing to a very weak, unpopular Democrat president in the midst of economic uncertainty and miserably high unemployment rates
Those things should be clear but obviously they are not. Perhaps a Democrat landslide is what it takes to make the case clear.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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