That's right. No one in the Republican leadership has the guts to stand up to Rush Limbaugh, says conservative columnist George Will. Appearing on ABC's This Week, he condemns GOP 'leadership', for not doing so.
“[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff,” Will said. "It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right and its excesses, (just like liberals unfailingly fail to do) and it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”
Criticism has rained down on Limbaugh's 'poor word choice' from every direction, including his fans for issuing an 'apology', but the best the GOP 'leadership' could muster is 'inappropriate'.
While President Obama has denounced Limbaugh’s comments as “reprehensible,” Republican leaders and GOP presidential candidates have used far milder language.
Comments ranged from 'absurd' (Santorum) to 'poor word choice' (Romney) to 'it's Obama's fault' (Gingrich). Pundits offered 'it confuses the issue of religous freedom (Peggy Noonan) to Matthew Dowd, who said, in a self-contradictory fashion:
ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said the Republicans’ apprehension to say anything negative about the conservative big hitter is based on the “myth” that Limbaugh influences a large number of Republican voters.
“I think the problem is the Republican leaders, Mitt Romney and the other candidates, don’t have the courage to say what they say in quiet, which, they think Rush Limbaugh is a buffoon,” Dowd said. ”They think he is like a clown coming out of a small car at a circus. It’s great he is entertaining and all that. But nobody takes him seriously.”
So they all agree he is a buffoon but they're terrified of saying so in public because everyone thinks he holds sway with the voters but he really doesn't. So how did this myth take hold? Maybe because he and Grover Norquist are the defacto leaders of the party?