Limbaugh Claims Poll Data is a Voter Suppression Tactic

"The mainstream media's efforts to suppress your vote is now at full speed. It's getting tiresome to me, but it is taking place now at full speed."

That's talk-show host and touchy professional grouch Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday trying to explain away Romney's trailing in the polls even though it's actually Republican state legislatures behind the REAL voter suppression efforts.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 180 separate bills aimed at restricting the right to vote have been introduced by legislatures in 41 different states since the start of 2011. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy quasi-public/private think tank that I blogged about back in March of last year, actually drafts the language of right-wing legislation for GOP politicians has been very busy indeed; the implications for the basic tenets of Democracy are chilling.  

In one of the most perplexing political jabs of the campaign season, Limbaugh claims that two CBS/New York Times and Washington Post polls that show President Obama with significant leads in critical swing states are "..irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over." The transcripts are on Limbaugh's own Website.

Let's review shall we? The same guy who advocates on behalf the Koch brother's Tea Party-backed True the Vote -the organization behind morally reprehensible voter-suppression tactics - is claiming that poll data taken by three of the most trustworthy news sources in the world are themselves, tactics to suppress the Republican vote. How crazy is that? Kevin Cirilli wrote an interesting piece on Limbaugh's kooky assertions on Politco.com.
 
If Rush Limbaugh were just another schmuck with a radio show, the baseless absurdity of his loony right-wing political theories would likely be dismissed as the rantings of just another small-minded man channeling his anger into a mic. But he's not.

Limbaugh is the anointed mouthpiece of all things Republican, so his latest effort to help salvage poor Flipper's imploding presidential campaign only served to further cement the perception of the GOP as hopelessly stuck in a detached ideological reality the majority of the country can't identify with let alone stomach.

If you think about it, it's kind of like the build-up to the invasion of Iraq under W back in 2002.

When Dick Cheney didn't like the intelligence he got from the CIA and MI-6 saying Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 911 attacks; he simply instructed his staffers (none of whom were actually intelligence experts) to use inconclusive raw data to create their own intelligence conclusions about WMD's for W to use during his State of the Union address; Yellow Cake anyone?

But you have to admit Limbaugh's got moxie. Poll data isn't saying what you want? Smear it! It's like when Paul Ryan got all worked up when multiple fact-checking organizations called him out for blatant factual errors in his speech at the RNC. Rather than make loose accusations about poll data, perhaps Limbaugh should blame the current culture of the GOP which never seems to let facts stand in the way of the rigid convictions of it's own ideology.

Do you know who Catherine Engelbrecht is? The New York Times sure does. If you believe all American citizens legally registered to vote in this nation have the right to do so, you should too.