Are Republicans Finally Done Apologizing to Limbaugh?

You have to wonder why Rush Limbaugh holds such an exulted position in the Republican pantheon. Not only did Republicans put him in their top three "least favorite" news personalities in a recent Harris Poll, but he's frequently more trouble than he's worth. Yes, he's the top-rated talk radio host in America. Yes, his audience is nearly entirely Republican. And yes, that audience are proudly "dittoheads" who do whatever Limbaugh tells them to. But all of that means jack. No one listens to talk radio. The local classic rock station probably has a bigger audience than Limbaugh in any given market. In any sane world, he would be nobody. The vast, vast majority of Americans -- and even of Republicans -- don't hang on Rush's every word. In fact, that majority doesn't listen to him at all. Color me perplexed.

Maybe it's Limbaugh's position as a corporate mouthpiece that frightens the GOP. It's not who he speaks to that's important, but who he speaks for. His market share isn't really the result of popularity, it's the result of Clear Channel's desire to get Limbaugh's voice heard. If Rush were left to live or die on ratings, he would've been cancelled long, long ago (as his ratings-dependent TV show was) and talk radio in general would be a dead medium. He's like Glenn Beck before Fox News finally tired of him -- a revenue hole, but useful as a propaganda tool.

Which is why it's hard to get extremely excited by this news:

Politico:

One of the advertisers on Rush Limbaugh’s popular conservative radio show Friday announced that it is pulling its ads in the wake of the host’s controversial “slut” comments this week.

“We don’t condone negative comments directed toward any group. In response, we are currently pulling our ads from Rush with Rush Limbaugh,” the company Sleep Train Mattress Centers announced on its Twitter account early Friday.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

No End in Sight

Ezra Klein calls last night's primary contest in Michigan a "win that made Romney look weak." In delegate math, a win is a win and Team Romney's probably happy to take it, but I've written before about polls influencing polls. The candidate is losing his electability argument and last night's performance didn't do much to revive it. If people are looking for a candidate who can win, he didn't inspire confidence. His weak win in one race may affect voters in later ones. This morning, much of the punditry are taking the "he didn't lose" point of view, rather than the "Romney won" side. He's not the winner of last night's primaries, he's the survivor. And Romney didn't help himself much on that point in his victory speech, as Klein points out:

...Romney was right in his victory speech. “We didn’t win by a lot, but we won by enough and that’s all that counts,” he said. His advisers might have preferred if he'd omitted that unusually honest look into the dynamics of the campaign. But Romney did win by enough. He remains the frontrunner. He remains strong enough to dissuade any new entrants. Which means the status quo continues. Romney vs. Santorum. The Republican Party will continue to have nowhere else to turn and independent voters will continue to see a side of Romney they don't much like. You can argue that Michigan produced three kinds of winners last night. Romney, who didn't lose. Santorum, who almost won. And the Obama campaign, which gets to sit back and watch this primary go on for that much longer.

And "that much longer" means beyond Super Tuesday. If anyone drops out of the race after then, it'll probably be Ron Paul (or maybe Gingrich -- more on that later), since he probably won't win any states. And it may not be a big Romney night, either. He's heading for a huge landslide in Massachusetts and a sizable win in Vermont (the RealClearPolitics polling average in those states is +48 and +19 respectively), but other candidates are looking at big wins too. Ten states are up that night and RCP has polling averages for six. Of that six, Mitt takes two.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Democrats for Santorum

I have a confession to make; in 2004, I engaged in voter mischief. I didn't vote for the candidate I most wanted to win the Wisconsin primary, but rather to extend the primary season. In my case, I didn't vote for a candidate from the other party, but John Edwards. See, the candidate who best fit my worldview was Dennis Kucinich. But, by the time Wisconsin's primary rolled around, it was pretty clear that Kucinich was a lost cause. I would only be casting a protest vote. I wanted it to count for something.

The reason I chose Edwards was a strategic one. I really didn't care much whether it was Edwards or Kerry in the end; both were fine with me, if not ideal (we didn't know what we know now). But I'd noticed that President Bush was dropping in the polls. Edwards and Kerry weren't spending much time attacking each other, but were instead engaged in a contest for the status as the one who thought Bush sucked more. Bush was the one taking the beating in the Democratic primary, not the candidates. Kerry was ahead in the delegate count, so Edwards was the logical choice. Bush didn't win by much in 2004 and I still believe to this day that had that Democratic primary gone on longer, Bush would not have been reelected -- assuming the primary had stayed so Bush-negative. In the end Wisconsin was a close one, but my single, strategically placed vote wasn't enough. Kerry extended his delegate count lead, effectively shortening the nomination process. And you know the tragic end to this story.

I say I was engaging in voter mischief because I didn't vote for the person I thought was best suited for the job. I didn't even vote for the man I thought had the best chance of beating George W. Bush (I thought it was about equal), I voted for the man most likely to keep the Democratic primaries going. It wasn't what the Athenians had in mind when they invented democracy and it probably wasn't what the founders intended either. My vote was based on math. But it was my vote, protected and defended by over two hundred years of heated debate and cold bloodshed, and I felt I could do whatever the hell I wanted with my tiny shred of responsibility in American government. I still do.

Of course, the problem with voter mischief is that it very rarely works. This is because -- unlike in my situation -- it requires you to vote for someone you absolutely do not want to win. Which means someone from the opposing party.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

An Astonishingly Poor Opinion of Women

Tell me if this sounds achingly familiar to you.

ThinkProgress:

When a woman in Alabama seeks an abortion procedure, she already has to sign [pdf] that her doctor has performed an ultrasound and that she either viewed the ultrasound image or rejected seeing it. But state Sen. Clay Scofield (R) is pushing SB 12, a bill in the Alabama legislature that would mandate the physician “to perform an ultrasound [pdf], provide verbal explanation of the ultrasound, and display the images to the pregnant woman before performing an abortion.” The physician could also require the woman to submit to a transvaginal ultrasound — “in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced” — if she or he determines it necessary.

A Senate committee voted 4-1 on Friday to approve the measure, and the state Senate is expected to vote on it early this week. Even though studies have proven that viewing an ultrasound does not lead women to not have abortions, the bill’s sponsor says he hopes it will...

After Virginia Republicans were forced to remove the transvaginal ultrasound measure from their pointless bill, Alabama's going to go ahead and give it a shot. Identical bills in two states? Like the so-called "life amendment," his has ALEC written all over it. So much for "local control"; Washington lobbyists now write state laws and local legislative puppets just introduce and vote for them.

CONTINUE TO POST>>