Rush Limbaugh vs. Senate Democrats
Needless to say, in this sort of battle, the audience is the real loser. Rush Limbaugh, whose popular show is broadcast over Armed Forces Radio (and Clear Channel stations), declaimed "phony soldiers" who come home and oppose the Iraq war. That led Senate Democrats to denounce him. Some snippets (courtesy of a Fox News story).
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.):
Reid accused Limbaugh of attacking "those fighting and dying for him and for all of us. Rush Limbaugh got himself a deferment from serving when he was a young man. He never served in uniform. He never saw in person the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in a civil war. He never saw a person in combat. Yet, that he thinks his opinion on the war is worth more than those who have been on the front lines," Reid said.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa):
Harkin followed Reid, saying: "Maybe he was just high on his drugs. I don't know." In 2003, Limbaugh admitted a dependency on pain medication, but three years later reached a plea deal that cleared him of prescription shopping for Oxycontin.
And Limbaugh:
In an attack that began with the first words of the show and continued throughout his daily three-hour broadcast Tuesday, Limbaugh compared Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is using a liberal media watchdog to suppress her opposition and said he feels sorry for Sen. Tom Harkin's family for having to be associated with the Iowa Democrat's statements on the Senate floor a day earlier…
"It's about them and they are desperately trying to salvage themselves with their own lunatic fringe base who they are not only disappointing but they are deceiving because the dirty, little secret, as I also predicted, was that if the Democrats win the White House in '08 they are not pulling out of Iraq. All the top tier Democrats have said so," Limbaugh told his audience.
"Time to distract those peasants with pitchforks out there who are fit to be tied over being betrayed by Harry Reid, (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats," he said.