Limbaugh Latest Target in War of Condemnation
NY Times
By CARL HULSE
Published: October 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 — Having abandoned for now their effort to force President Bush to withdraw troops from Iraq, Democrats are not giving ground against a lesser nemesis: Rush Limbaugh.

With the help of liberal advocacy groups, the Democrats in Congress are turning Mr. Limbaugh's insinuation that members of the military who question the Iraq war are "phony soldiers" into the latest war of words over the war.

A resolution introduced by 20 Democrats urges the House to condemn the "unwarranted slur" made by Mr. Limbaugh, though it does not condemn the broadcaster himself.

Their push, not coincidentally, comes after House and Senate Republicans maneuvered some Democrats into voting to condemn an advertisement by MoveOn.org in The New York Times last month that referred to Gen. David H. Petraeus as "General Betray Us."

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the House majority leader, said Tuesday.

The back and forth on the Petraeus advertisement and, now, over Mr. Limbaugh's remarks, illustrates how both parties are turning miscues into fodder in the run up to the 2008 elections, particularly in the absence of serious legislative accomplishment when it comes to the war.

Republicans used to be considered superior at drumming up a quick controversy over some actual or perceived Democratic outrage. But Democrats and sympathetic advocacy groups are catching up fast. And the political exchanges are being amplified by the reach and power of the Internet and the repetition of the 24-hour news cycle.

"Maybe Rush got away with smears like this in the past, but he's not going to on our watch," said Jon Soltz, an Iraq veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, a group closely aligned with Congressional Democrats that is behind a new advertisement taking on Mr. Limbaugh.

The advertisement, to be pushed with a modest $60,000 buy, is scheduled to be broadcast Wednesday on national cable news channels, with a radio version in certain markets during Mr. Limbaugh's show. In it, a wounded veteran chastises Mr. Limbaugh. On Tuesday, Mr. Limbaugh compared the veteran to a suicide bomber, saying the advocacy group had strapped "lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into," according to a transcript distributed by Media Matters.

The broadcaster has accused critics of distorting remarks he made last Wednesday when a caller said the news media liked to focus on antiwar views raised by soldiers. Mr. Limbaugh then said, to the caller's approval: "The phony soldiers."

After the liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters sounded the alarm about his comments, Mr. Limbaugh said on subsequent shows that he was talking about only one discredited man who claimed to be a wounded veteran. "I was not talking about antiwar, active duty troops," he insisted.

Yet analysts for Media Matters noted that Mr. Limbaugh's first reference to the discredited man came nearly two minutes after his plural reference to phony soldiers. That group and like-minded Democrats have refused to back off. More than 40 Democratic senators signed a letter sent Tuesday to the company that syndicates the radio show, asking that Mr. Limbaugh's remarks be repudiated.

But no Republican senators signed the letter, highlighting a significant difference between the responses to the MoveOn advertisement and the Limbaugh comments. The Republican-backed plan to condemn the Petraeus advertisement drew substantial Democratic backing in the House and Senate, while Democrats have been unable to splinter Republicans on Mr. Limbaugh.

In fact, Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, has prepared a resolution praising Mr. Limbaugh should Democrats proceed with what he said was an unwarranted attack on a private citizen. "He is a talk show host," Mr. Kingston said. "He has a right to speak out and say what he thinks."

The Limbaugh furor is just the latest episode in how each side has sought to paint the other as unpatriotic or unsympathetic to the military by focusing public attention on various comments that lawmakers might wish they had phrased differently or could take back.

Earlier this year, Republicans had a field day with what they decried as a morale-busting assertion by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, that the war in Iraq was already lost.

After the Petraeus testimony, Democrats returned the favor by jumping on an observation by Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, that the cost of the war in Iraq was a "small price" to pay if Al Qaeda could be stopped there.

Mr. Boehner's aides later said he was referring to the financial costs of the war though his comment was in response to a question that also included the military toll.

There is certainly nothing new in trying to use political opponents' words against them. But in the current environment, efforts to out-condemn one another are becoming a proxy for a more substantive fight over the war and cannot be dismissed as one factor in the low public approval ratings for Congress.

House Democratic leaders still had not decided Tuesday whether they would bring up the resolution denouncing Mr. Limbaugh's comments, which is likely to spark a partisan free-for-all on the floor.

Mr. Hoyer, despite his goose and gander view, was not so sure that House members should get into the business of unleashing a resolution of disapproval each time they encounter something of which they disapprove.

"I think, frankly, I would like to see us restrain ourselves in condemning through resolutions all of that with which we disagree," Mr. Hoyer said. "I have a zillion resolutions that I could think of pursuing that objective."

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