Brooklyn Broadside: Rush Limbaugh Controversy – Where Is Republican Outrage?

March 6, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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By Dennis Holt

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN — “We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”

This statement was made this weekend by the CEO of one of the firms that withdrew their advertising from “the Rush Limbaugh Show” over Limbaugh’s despicable comments and language in his discussion of a woman’s use of contraception used by Limbaugh regarding contraception.

The phrase “civilized public discourse” is really what is at issue and has been for three years. The Republican Party has allowed itself to be bullied and captured by radicals, stupid people really, and that is destroying civilized public discourse.

I came across a statement by British writer Sylvia Townsend Warner that summed this up quite nicely: “One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid.”

I don’t know what disgusts me more: listening to the ranting and raving of Limbaugh or the lame and dishonest apology he felt he had to make.

Equally depressing are the weak comments made by the Republican leadership.

Speaker of the House John Boehner said Limbaugh’s words were “inappropriate.” This sounds like someone debating whether to use “should” or “would” in a sentence. And Mitt Romney’s remarks that he would have used different words is essentially what Limbaugh later said himself.

There was no Republican who stood up in the bully pulpit to say, “There is no place in the Republican Party for that kind of thinking and that kind of language. Be gone with you!”

I didn’t think the abuse of language and political thought could get worse than it has unfortunately become, but I was wrong and I fear what could yet come our way.

It is time for some Republican to start fighting back. Losing Senator Olympia Snowe is bad enough. The political dementia and intellectual inebriation of the past three years has to be swept away and put in a box not owned by Pandora.