Isolating Rush

Rush's efforts to stem the advertiser stampede with a modified, limited hangout (that doesn't mentioned non-birth-control medical uses of birth control pills at all) doesn't seem to be going very well:

So why did this not work for Rush Limbaugh, who took back the words "slut" and "prostitute" when talking about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who testified about the importance of contraception coverage through insurance? Limbaugh apologized on Saturday, but here it is Tuesday, and sponsors are still dropping him and the outrage continues.

Part of the reason is that Limbaugh didn't actually apologize. As Fluke herself noted on The View, he only regretted the words he used, not the concepts that those words conveyed, namely that she and every other woman in the country (roughly 99 percent of American women) who has used contraception are immoral, irresponsible people who need to learn to practice celibacy if we don't want to get pregnant and/or be obliged to give Rush Limbaugh sex tapes to masturbate to.

...Another problem for Limbaugh is he has no credibility. Even Don Imus—Don Imus!—denounced Limbaugh specifically by calling him an "insincere pig." ... Limbaugh even tried to put the blame on liberals for his three day rampage against Fluke and all women who use sexual health services... Saying what you mean should be a point of honor. Since Limbaugh's continued argument is that he was right that women who use contraception are bad people, and that the only question here is "two words," this really just makes it all worse. Cowards hide behind euphemism, Rush. Why not just say it if you mean it?

The final reason the outrage won't die down is that this is about more than Limbaugh. As Roy Edroso chronicled at the Village Voice, the right wing media has largely picked up Limbaugh's claims about Fluke and therefore about all women who use sexual health services.... Until the argument that women who use health insurance for sexual health services are bad people is retracted, anyone who has a scrap of common sense left is going to be furious.

Rush is so popular among conservatives that he can probably survive just fine without any advertisers at all. There is so much money floating around rich, conservative circles that his show could be supported entirely by various PACs and foundations:

At least one advertiser stepped forward Monday to acknowledge increasing its ad spending on the Limbaugh program. A spokesman for Winning Our Future, a "super PAC" backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, said the group purchased more airtime.

But a Rush that isn't dependent on advertisers and their concerns would mean a Rush completely untethered from the rest of the universe: a kind of out-of-control Right-Wing Zeppelin crashing into skyscrapers and causing no end of mayhem. He would be completely free, and indeed would feel a compulsion to, say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, on any subject. Which just guarantees even more outrage in the future. But he would also be isolated. Quarantine is the first step to curing an infection. But right now the infection is still raging, and leading Rush to poison the GOP brand:

This is what makes the context of Limbaugh’s attack on Fluke so damaging for Republicans. It’s not just that he said something awful about a 30-year-old woman who hadn’t said anything about him. It’s that he did so by way of amplifying the GOP’s message on contraception. Republicans had been taking pains to claim their objections to the Obama administration’s mandate that women be able to obtain birth coverage through their health insurance plans were all about protecting religious liberty — that they weren’t on some puritanical crusade. With his unparalleled platform, Limbaugh has made a mockery of that idea, and he’s put a particularly nasty face on the GOP’s posturing.

...The specific threat to Republicans involves a very specific type of voter: The unmarried woman. ... Single women tend to be receptive to Democratic candidates, and hostile to Republicans and their culture war politics. As Greg Sargent noted, there is already some evidence that the contraception debate is pushing single women who had defected from the Obama camp back into his fold. The Limbaugh drama could accelerate this trend.

Isolating Rush is an important goal, and I'm hoping that's what results from this particular controversy.