I don't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about Rush Limbaugh and his utterly offensive comments towards Sandra Fluke; I believe this has been covered extensively in the mainstream media and on this site in particular. Rush has been saying outrageously offensive things for the past 25 years or so, and all of the advertiser boycotts will not change that. He is who he is. But what this episode has shown is the stark difference between President Obama and Mitt Romney when it comes to making a stand which defines their political careers.
You may recall in 2008, video surfaced on YouTube featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was the pastor at then-Senator Barack Obama's church, stating the infamous line "God damn America." The GOP and conservative movement literally salivated at the video, sensing the opportunity to take Obama out of the Democratic Presidential primary race by portraying him as an angry black man who wanted to hurt America. However, within days of the video surfacing online, Obama gave a heartfelt and very informative speech on race relations which was notable not only for distancing himself from the inflammatory rhetoric of Rev. Wright but reassuring the American public about the state of race relations in this country, giving probably the greatest speech on that topic since Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. That speech in itself endeared a lot of the public to vote for him that November and send him to the White House.
Flash forward four years. The Republicans are in a grinding primary to select a nominee for the Presidential election. Mitt Romney is the presumptive frontrunner for the GOP nomination, yet he can't lock up support from the evangelical and Tea Party portion of the base. Instead of focusing on the issues which most Americans are concerned about, like the economy and jobs, the candidates are focusing their attention on probing women's private parts to stop abortions and banning birth control and contraception. Candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are very much in favor of these measures, which many people find repugnant, but they have been consistent in their positions for a long time.
This leads us to Mitt Romney. As governor of Massachusetts, he ran the state as a moderate Republican and even created the prototype for the Affordable Care Act. But as a Presidential candidate he has been furiously backtracking on all of his prior policy positions to pander to an increasingly out-of-touch political base. He states one position one day, and then reverses himself a day or even hours later in an effort to play to the very right wing of the party.
Now when Rush Limbaugh came out and attacked Ms. Sandra Fluke for testifying in favor of women having the right to have contraception included in insurance coverage for plans sponsored by religious-affiliated institutions by calling her a slut and prostitute, the only response Mitt Romney could muster over Rush's offensive comments was that he would not have chosen those words. Now does this mean that Mr. Romney really believes in the essence of what Rush Limbaugh said about Sandra Fluke? I highly doubt it, but it does show that he squandered a real opportunity to set himself apart from the rest of the GOP pack to show true leadership and make a definitive statement respecting the honor of women. Instead, he made a tepid response which showed he is more fearful of Rush Limbaugh than the voters he is trying to win over in the election.
So it goes to show the stark contrast between the President and Mr. Romney when confronted with inflammatory people who are hurting their party. One candidate stood up to the extreme element within his party and won the respect of his supporters and even some of his opponents, while the other blinked and hoped the extremist would just go away, only to look like a weakling in the process. Is this really the best the presumptive GOP candidate has to offer?