Republican shock jock Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday that he accepts responsibility for Mitt Romney’s loss in the 2012 presidential election. “Just as I predicted, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “This election was lost because of your host, Rush Limbaugh. I am the primary reason.”
While that’s not exactly correct, Limbaugh was in fact the first big target of one of President Barack Obama’s principle reelection strategies: winning with women.
When he called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” in March, prompting a personal rebuke by Obama, it ignited a rhetorical fuse that burned straight through election day.
It’s a long held addage in American politics that if you cannot win with women, you cannot win at all. And after high profile Republicans made a series of idiotic comments about rape, birth control, abortion and other issues of importance to women, Obama ultimately took 55 percent of the female vote versus Mitt Romney’s 44, even though Romney won among Caucasians and married women. As the Gallup polling firm explained, it was the largest gender gap in U.S. electoral history, and its beneficiary was primarily President Obama.
Of course, that’s not exactly how Rush sees it.
“There are others, but I’m the primary reason the Republican Party lost,” he added. “And I am, by the way, the primary reason the Republican Party will keep losing, until I am denounced by the Republican Party.”
The longtime radio talker explained that the GOP’s “ruling class” now believes their only shot at winning future presidential elections is to appeal to Latino voters as much as possible despite his wishes, which he claimed to be representative of what he called the “country class.”
“Do you really think that the democrat party will ever allow you Republicans to be seen as pro-Latino and pro-immigration?” Limbaugh asked. “If you do, you are incompetent and unqualified.” He added: “The media and the Democrats will always find a way to say that you are anti-immigrant.”
Of course, in order for the media or Democrats to accomplish that, all they’d have to do is play some of Limbaugh’s old clips.
The Obama campaign even previewed this strategy in 2008, cutting a Spanish-language ad tying Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to some of Limbaugh’s more extreme anti-immigrant quotes, like the time he called undocumented workers “stupid and unskilled.”
As the Republicans eye a drastic policy flip-flop from promoting “self deportation” to potentially backing a pathway to citizenship, the perception of Limbaugh as a liability is only likely to grow. That’s especially true given Obama’s overwhelming victory with Latinos, 72 percent of whom voted Democratic in the last presidential election.
