Rush Limbaugh launched into his show Monday with a mea culpa for having allowed himself to become a distraction from the religious-freedom questions posed by the Obama administration’s recent religious employer contraception and abortion requirement.
Limbaugh’s comment last week calling Georgetown Law student and feminist political activist Sandra Fluke a “slut” and “prostitute” ignited a firestorm from the left that caused 15 sponsors to drop his program as of Monday night. The talk giant apologized on Saturday, but that didn’t stop the attacks – with leftists announcing Monday on Twitter that they plan to pressure Armed Forces Radio to dump Limbaugh.
“I became like the people we oppose. I ended up descending to their level. It’s important not to be like them, ever, particularly in fighting them,” Limbaugh said. The old saw, you never descend to the level of your opponent or they win.
“I am huge on personal responsibility and accountability, people providing for themselves when they’re totally able to,” Limbaugh continued. “The government has no business doing any of this, getting in people’s bedrooms and mandating that other citizens pay for other citizens’ social activities and so forth. That was the wrong one to focus on.”
Indeed, Limbaugh’s rhetoric managed to divert attention away from the Obama administration’s effort to force religious employers to violate their moral consciences by providing coverage for sterilization, abortion drugs and for contraception.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich confronted the issue during his appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“I am astonished with the desperation of the elite media to avoid rising gas prices, to avoid the president’s apology to religious fanatics in Afghanistan, to avoid the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression and to suddenly decide that Rush Limbaugh is the national crisis of this week,” Gingrich said. “There’s no debate about access to contraception; there is a debate, which Cardinal George of Chicago has pointed out is a war against the Catholic Church.
“You do have this weird situation where President Obama apologizes to Islamic extremists while waging war against the Catholic Church.”
Limbaugh went on to agree with the former speaker in his remarks and point out that the Sandra Fluke affair was a smokescreen by the Democrats aimed at distracting attention away from Georgetown University’s Catholic affiliation.
“It’s a Catholic university! Everybody that goes to there knows. Miss Fluke stated on occasion she went there specifically to change the policy,” Limbaugh said. “If birth control insurance is important to you as an enrolling student, and you find out that Georgetown doesn’t offer it, you might want to attend (or work at) a school that isn’t run by Catholics. I mean, just a thought.”
Fluke first came to attention in the run up to House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s Feb. 16 hearing into the impact of the mandate on religious freedom.
The Democrats initially put the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans for the Separation of Church and State forward as an expert witness to testify on their behalf, but withdrew him and submitted Fluke in the 11th hour.
Issa rejected her as a witness citing her lack of qualifications and that her testimony would not be germane to purpose of the hearing.
The Democratic members of the hearing sounded in unison throughout the hearing denouncing Issa for putting forward an all-male panel without Fluke’s participation.
Limbaugh told his audience that Fluke is part of the Obama administration’s effort to undermine the religious convictions of schools like Georgetown.
“All of this is to serve Obama’s agenda. The agenda he worked all summer on. He abandoned it only when America stood up, united, and this said they would not tolerate tearing down religion to increase government’s control over our lives,” Limbaugh said. “You did that. You stood up to him. You made him stop. That was a proud moment for all of us.”
Gingrich made similar comments during his “Meet the Press” appearance, noting that Obama is in effect forcing the Catholic Church to violate its religious beliefs, which the Catholic bishops warn would lead them to disassociate themselves from every Catholic school or hospital in America.
“If you want a debate over whether or not the president of the United States wants to impose his views on a religious institution or over whether or not America is now a secular country,” Gingrich said. “Let’s have that debate.
“Nobody is blocking access of anyone to contraception,” Gingrich continued. “The question is whether the Catholic Church … or should a Protestant fundamentalist institution be dictated to by bureaucrats in Washington over whether or not it is allowed to have its own religious beliefs. Or have we become a country where it is OK to go to church on Sunday morning for one hour, but let’s not express those beliefs the rest of the week.”
The former House speaker concluded his remarks calling the Obama administration policy the “most fundamental assault on religious liberty in American history.”
