Is Rush Limbaugh too old to stop Hillary Clinton?

Often the gems in the New York Times are left to last. Wrapping up a front page Sunday survey on what Republican strategists are saying about Hillary Clinton as their opponent in 2016, Jonathan Martin reported: 

“The radio host Rush Limbaugh, echoing his commentary from her first presidential run, asked his audience in April whether the American people “want to vote for somebody, a woman, and actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

Although it’s a safe bet that Hillary Clinton will outlive Rush Limbaugh, he’s probably good for another national election. Also, it’s unlikely that the Republican Party will get him to shut up. Certainly, the Clinton itching-for-war-room must be preying that he carries on. “Knock on wood,” as Clinton adds wisely about her own “incredible stamina and energy.”

The next president will age visibly, in public. It goes with the job of being president and our preference for following politics on screens. This has been our way for 2 generations. Nevertheless, anticipating the aesthetic decline of the next president has never seriously competed other popular fears and clichés about the future.

For the next 3-and-a-half years, conservatives will try to avoid the word “old.” And every time Hillary Clinton is accused of saying something liberals have been saying since the 70s, her liberal supporters will unleash the word.

It doesn’t feel natural, but that’s politics.

Rush Limbaugh’s obscenities unite Ann and Mitt Romney

On tricky (potentially revealing) issues, some wives will say almost anything to help out. Mitt Romney knows that Ann Romney is that kind of wife.

What does he do when the loudest conservative in the country calls a young law student a “slut” and “prostitute” for disagreeing with him on access to contraceptives? Romney has said the issue is of grave national importance, the student spoke back gravely, and he’s been a blue blazer gentleman since his nineteenth birthday.

The frontrunner huddles with his wife of 42 years and they dance. Here’s a glimpse at a Romney White House under pressure:

“When finally pressed for an opinion on Friday night, CNN quotes him as saying, "I'll just say this which is it's not the language I would have used," Romney said. "I'm focusing on the issues I think are significant in the country today, and that's why I'm here talking about jobs and Ohio."

“Romney's wife spoke out as well, and in the same vein: 'I love it that women are concerned and voting for economic reasons,' she told a handful of supporters at her husband's Ohio campaign headquarters in Columbus. 'Moms are very angry about the deficit spending in Washington, D.C.'"

Click on: http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981162013

Ann Romney, America’s best known bi-coastal homemaker, went on to enthuse that “Women ... for the first time, may be voting their pocket books, which is great.”

Their evasive duet deserves wide and unreserved scorn.

It expresses the frayed hope that women voters generally will look the other way in November on contraceptives, Supreme Court appointments, and health issues on which Republicans would roll back American social policy. They will also forget that their nominee couldn’t stand up to a vicious bully, that civility might be just too European for modern Republican politics. Heck, modern women like a good joke too and Limbaugh is just too funny to be scolded.  

Does Anne Romney imagine that her husband can be a good old boy on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—and a cosmopolitan on Tuesdays and Thursdays?

Does Ann Romney think that other women in America will let her husband lie to them because he doesn’t lie to her?

Furthermore, where did she pick up this princess notion that American women might, for the first time, put their pocketbooks—or allowance, in her case—front and center in a national election? As if the ditsy girly-vote and girly legislators launched the $trillion dollar wars of the last two generations, the free prescription drug plans, the universal tax cuts, the earmarks, and Star wars. And now—“I love it”—are growing up.

Historically, women have never been less concerned about the future, the sustainability of their families, their communities, and their country’s finances than men. And today are no easier to distract—when threatened individually or as a gender—by the Limbaugh’s, Catholic bishops, or their apologists.