For 3 full radio shows, 3 consecutive days, 9 full hours of valuable time on the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh has been bullying a 30 year old Georgetown student for the crime of speaking out in public on a concern to most women.
Rush didn't really seriously debate the merits of her argument, he didn't treat the issue as a matter of valuable civil discourse, no Rush Limbaugh decided to viciously attack the messenger by repeatedly called her a slut and a prostitute.
For 3 days this voice of the right-wing has been publicly trying to ridicule and embarrass this young woman, trying in essence to shut her up with his attacks and the response from the GOP has been nearly total, absolute....silence.
Yes, we have 4 men who are running to be the GOP nominee for the office of President of the United States.
Three of these men, Willard Mitt Romney, Newton Gingrich and Rick Santorum have, in virtually every GOP Primary debate I've watched, thumped their chests, compared their testosterone, each one boasting what complete courageous bad asses they would be as President.
They would expand the military to a huge, throbbing size. They would flatten any country or person who even looked at the US the wrong way. They would be the Rambo's, the Chuck Norris's, the Dirty Harry's, the steel cage fighter commander-in-chief that would ensure that decency and morality and safety would reign in our land.
The only problem with their bold contentions of courage is that they're such apparent cowards that not one of them has the balls to stand up to the round mound of hate, Rush Limbaugh.
Now get this...3 days of calling a single woman a slut, a prostitute, telling her parents they should be embarrassed of her, telling the world this woman must be having sex practically every waking moment, after 3 days of such public denigration of this woman in particular and women in general, a few of these so-called tough guy candidates finally speak out. And when they do, rather then roar like lions, instead they squeak like little mice.
Willard Mitt Romney, in the face of a woman being dragged through the mud by the "Voice of the right" managed to finally offer this brilliant observation saying of Rush Limbaugh's vicious sexually charged verbal attacks, "It's not the language I would have used."
REALLY??????
What the HELL does that mean? Does it mean you are offering a literary critique? Based on your use of the English language does this mean you would have called her loose instead? Does that mean you would have used a quaint odd term like you often do, while talking about how "the trees in Ohio are lovely and almost the right height, that Sandra Fluke should be thought more of a harlot or a wanton women instead of a slut?"
It 's unfathomable to me that it took Willard Mitt Romney 3 full days to consult with his advisers, the ones who tell him everything of what to say and after consultation and deep thought the best response he can come up with to the to a rotund bully of the right is to say "It's not the language I would have used."
"It's not the language I would have used" is the language of a coward the likes of whom I haven't seen since watching the original George McFly (the one before he was transformed by his son Marty into a hero) in 1985's Back to the Future. In that movie, Crispin Glover wonderfully portrayed a shrinking lily-livered character who can only laugh when being bullied by the schools lead bully named "Biff." Hehehe George McFly laughs trying to deflect the reality of the situation. In one scene, Biff threatens Romney, er, George McFly for not doing his homework for him and George can only muster up this..." Now, look. I'll, uh, finish those reports on up tonight and I'll run 'em on over first thing tomorrow. All right?" Yeah, alright, Willard.
Rick Santorum took a different tact. Rather than offer up an strangely worded rather mysterious literary observation on the language one should use when calling a woman a slut, Rick decided to avoid the issue by saying that Rush Limbaugh's attacks were "absurd" but you know kinda expected because after all, an "entertainer does those things."
That's an odd thing to say about a man who has a 3 hour national political radio talk show that arguably helps mold the base of the very political party Santorum is running to be the head of. Furthermore, this "entertainer" has spent the last few months, when he's not calling a 30 year old woman and any women who want insurance coverage for birth control, sluts, this "entertainer" has been tearing down Willard Mitt Romney's candidacy, to the utter benefit of one Rick Santorum. Little Ricky Santorum would be back in PA by now knitting new sweater vests for the family if Rush "the Entertainer" Limbaugh hadn't helped bring his candidacy back from the proverbial dead.
So in truth, we KNOW that Santorum certainly thinks Rush is more than an "entertainer" who just entertains by making absurd remarks. The proof of this is that when Rush started tearing the Willard a new a-hole, Ricky's polling numbers when up. But when Santorum's unpaid neo-superPAC mouthpiece of the conservative GOP base starts to to insult many women in the United States by calling them sluts, Rick "I'm gonna be a tough guy on defense" Santorum can only muster a slight shrug of his softly slouched, sweater-vested shoulders and mumble something about "entertainment."
And where are the loud strong voices of the GOP in Congress? You know, the ones who have been calling out Obama as weak, as a coward, as a Muslim, as evil, as the destroyer of the very fabric of the US, of the family, the Other who roams with Satan, where are these voices of courage? Well, they're strangely silent and seemingly camera shy right now and who can blame them? Clearly they're a bit more fixated on searching for their non-existent balls and can't be bothered with spending time in front of television cameras.
So these are the big tough guys, who can stand up to Iran or China, eh? Excuse me if I laugh until my sides split.
The next time you hear some paid GOP hack or politician mouthing off about how they're such a bad ass who has THE solution to standing up to Iran, how they have THE fortitude to take on the world's bad guys, how they have the balls to stand up to evil in the world and take that 3 am call and make a quick, courageous decision that will protect the US and our security interests, just remember that these men, profiles in courage that they are, can't even stand up to an aging, rotund, Oxy-addled entertainer who whose weapon is a microphone rather than a nuke.
How can anyone expect the GOP to stand up to Iran on nukes or China in trade when they can't even stand up to Rush Limbaugh on the radio?