Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist

With apology to Limbaugh, GOP's looking sorry indeed
He once described feminism as something invented to allow ugly women access to the mainstream. According to the media-watchdog group Fairness...

By Leonard Pitts Jr

Syndicated columnist

He once described feminism as something invented to allow ugly women access to the mainstream.

According to the media-watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, he once advised a black caller to his radio show: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

He once made fun of the body tremors of a man struggling with a degenerative and incurable disease of the nervous system.

Yet, when Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele described Rush Limbaugh's radio program during a recent CNN interview as "ugly" and "incendiary," it was Steele who was required to tender a prompt apology.

People keep asking, in the wake of two consecutive shellackings at the voting booth, what is wrong with the GOP. They have wrung their hands and hung their heads over Steele's goofy attempts ("off the hook") to bring street cred to the party of big business and social conservatism, over the way Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal seemed to channel Howdy Doody in delivering the GOP response to President Barack Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress.

But if you want to know what ails the elephant, you need look no further than the sight of its putative leader groveling before the throne of a radio talk-show host and declaring his "enormous respect" for this "ugly" and "incendiary" fellow.

It must be crowded at the base of the throne. Steele is only the latest GOP official (Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford preceded him) to find himself offering clarifications and apologies for making the mistake of speaking honestly about the party's bloviator in chief. It's a sign that, for all the talk about rebranding and reinventing, the party remains too reluctant and regressive to match its words with actions. And that bodes ill for both it and the nation.

You will not believe it, but I have been rooting for the GOP. As well-deserved as its recent drubbings have been, the fact is, single-party governance is invariably a recipe for overreaching, the Bush years proved that inarguably. So for the sake of the checks and balances that make our system work, I would like to see the party get off the mat.

But it is hard to imagine this is how they will do it.

As many pundits and even party officials have noted, given the dramatic cultural and demographic changes under way in this country, the GOP faces a real possibility of being reduced to a regional party of limited national relevance unless it broadens its appeal beyond angry white men living primarily in the states of the old Confederacy.

That being the case, why are they kissing the ring of the angry white man who broadcasts from West Palm Beach?

Why are they not in South L.A. talking about entrepreneurship? Or in the Ninth Ward bearing proposals to encourage marriage and strengthen families? Or in Liberty City offering ideas to stem the violence? Why are they not competing for the votes they say they want?

To judge from the eagerness with which they prostrate themselves before Limbaugh, the answer is troublingly simple: They fear losing the votes they have. They are unable to disenthrall themselves from that culturally intolerant, intellectually incoherent, perpetually outraged and willfully ignorant cohort of the American demographic they call their base, i.e., extreme social conservatives.

Over the years, the GOP has reliably been able to woo them by demonizing gays, people of color, Muslims, feminists and anyone else who did not fit their white picket-fence fantasies. But the changes afoot in our country suggest that won't work quite as well in the future as it has up till now. So it's all well and good if the party feels a need to apologize.

But they're facing the wrong way.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts' column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com

O'no! Another self professed independant that has nothing more to do than surf the internet to find obscure columns from other liberal wacko's and post them here. Nope, you sure are not liberal Stlhead. Your about as independent as the hidden love child of KK and JLH.

Aw, c'mon doc. Lets have duelling columnists.....Maybe we could play the theme song from Deliverance......

Gingrich: Obama's Bipartisan Sham
Sunday, March 8, 2009 8:20 PM


Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh is nothing more than a political maneuver orchestrated by the Obama White House to distract from its economic failures.

It is "a deliberate strategy by the White House," to distract from the massive, $410 billion Congressional spending bill laden with 9,000 earmarks, Gingrich said. He specifically cited the "intense partisanship" of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as the mastermind of the Limbaugh/GOP attack. Earlier in the week, Gingrich compared Emanuel to the dirty tricksters who ran the Nixon White House.

"I think what they did with the whole Rush Limbaugh thing - they can't defend signing the 9,000 earmarks, they can't defend an energy-tax increase, they can't defend [Treasury Secretary Timothy F.] Geithner's failure to pay his income taxes, so they decide, 'Let's have a fight over Rush Limbaugh.' It is the exact opposite of what the president promised ... to focus on large things, not small things," Gingrich said.

“The president promised to focus on large things, not small things; he promised to bring us together, not divide us,” Gingrich continued. “… It has to trouble you to have that level of intense partisanship as chief of staff if we're going to in fact come together as a country. And I just think either Emanuel's got to change, or the president's got to understand he is--he is going to have a very partisan regime.”

Gingrich said that Limbaugh is not the head of the Republican Party; he’s a radio personality.

“No, it's like saying does Chris Matthews help or hurt the Democratic Party? The fact is he has a large audience, he--the audience believes him, the audience calls their members, the audience has an effect,’’ Gingrich said. “He's (Limbaugh) not the leader of the Republican party. And Michael Steele's one of the leaders. Bobby Jindal, who you had on recently, is one of the leaders. Sarah Palin's one of the leaders. Eric Cantor's a rising new leader. Paul Ryan's a--I mean, there are tons of leaders in the Republican Party. It is a deliberate strategy by the White House.”

Even better than duelling columnists is one columnist dueling with himself-



Video here- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/08/gingrich-takes-on-rush-ho_n_172852.html

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich....bwahahahahahaha...nuf said.....that's what the GOP is left with.....bwahahahahaha.

""a deliberate strategy by the White House," to distract "

What? Didn't they elevate the threat level to Orange first?

Docs Pud, yup an independant who has voted for many a Republican but have a hard time seeing myself ever voting for one again. Tired of being F'd by that party.

these threads are becoming increasingly

So Mike, you've been really enjoying "the Chive", enh?

Mike just ruined my appetite.

Pisco-

Bad economy = lots of time to peruse the internets



SS-

You eat trailer tacos off the rez, surely you can stomach anything!
Here's another example of the non-heterosexual nature of some of these threads

WHAT THE CRAP?!?!?!?!??!?!?!

i dont think that was necessary

If I had half a mind,
I'd be a liberal.

Please confer with ChuckS well, at least for half of that statement!

i dont know about this switching from bikini pics to gay pics

just one more feature and benefit of being from california

land of fruits and nuts

he already explained why he stopped posting bikini pics.....and it was a good reason.

Califruits!

how do I get goaded into these things?

Is that a high school pic of Larry Craig?