Here it is, folks (as he did). You can BET money now in Vegas that more Republicans will inch over to this line since it has been announced by the party’s chief intellectual strategist and perception shaper: Rush Limbaugh.
You hear it here first. And you can guess what he said, can’t you? In case you haven’t been able to predict his comments so far, here it is!
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh thinks Republicans should reject Caitlyn Jenner, even if she agrees with them politically.
Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday that liberals are trying to “redefine normalcy” in an effort to stigmatize conservatives and that conservatives shouldn’t agree to their terms by accepting Caitlyn Jenner as a woman.
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He likewise dismissed a conservative blog that wrote that Republicans should embrace Jenner as one of their own to seem more humane, saying that doing so would constitute falling into a liberal trap.
Under this system, “conservatives and Republicans are the new weirdos, the new kooks,” the pundit said, “and that is part of the political objective here in normalizing all of this really marginal behavior. I mean, if less than 1 percent of the population is engaging in it, it’s marginalized behavior. It isn’t normal, no matter how you define it.
“We should not be celebrating this, we should not be lionizing this, we should not be encouraging this. These people have a very serious problem, and they need treatment,” he said. “They need help, not encouragement.”
Jenner made her debut as a transgender woman on Monday in images from the July issue of Vanity Fair.
As someone who listened (and greatly enjoyed) Rush during his initial years and found him witty and funny as he (then) pushed the envelope and went after people in both parties even though he was conservative, I will say it again: due to its evolution where it tossed out most wit and humor just as assuredly as most Broadway musicals in the 2010s have tossed on rich melody, talk radio has proven to be one of the most toxic forces in American political life, particularly in how it’s impacted the Republican Party with its Profiles In Most Assuredly Not Courage parades of politicial scramble like weasles with bladder problems to try and get in line with what their constituents who listen to talk radio are telling them — and many of these constituents parrot what they hear on talk radio.
It’s the tail wagging the elephant. And that’s a heavy lift.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.