CNN’s Jack Cafferty Bashes Limbaugh's Audience as 'Right-Wing Nuts'

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CNN commentator Jack Cafferty returned to his routine of bashing conservatives and Republicans in a column published on CNN.com on Tuesday titled “GOP becoming a cartoon.” He accused the Republican Party of “pandering to the right wing nuts that comprise Rush Limbaugh’s radio audience,” and listed this as the primary reason that the GOP lost the 2008 presidential election. Cafferty also bashed Republicans for being too busy “obstructing Obama's programs and criticizing the Democrats’ spending plans that are aimed at trying to bring the country out of a horrible recession.”

The commentator began by criticizing three notable Republicans -- Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, and Michael Steele. He labeled the Louisiana governor “embarrassing” for a small grammatical error. Cafferty denounced Palin (a regular target of his ire during the presidential campaign), accusing her of performing a “tawdry grab at a few dollars that didn’t belong to her,” after the Alaska governor decided to reimburse the taxpayer dollars she used to pay for the travel expenses of her children. But he saved the most stinging language for the Republican Party chairman, simultaneously jabbing Limbaugh in the process: “Michael Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, down on his knees apologizing to the helium-filled poster boy of the conservative right? Pathetic.”

After making this thinly-veiled reference to the talk radio host, Cafferty decided to attack the millions who listen to Limbaugh: “If the Republicans are ever to emerge from the long dark night they have created for themselves it will have to be without pandering to the right wing nuts that comprise Rush Limbaugh’s radio audience. Didn’t they learn anything in the last election?”

The rest of Cafferty’s column stuck to the Republican/conservative-bashing theme. He chided the GOP for not condemning the “the evil their party put in the White House the previous eight years.” At the same time, the commentator bashed Republicans for not kowtowing to President Obama’s agenda: “But instead of getting on board the change train and recognizing the incredible amount of damage their people had done to the country, Republicans go blithely along as though nothing has happened. They’re busy obstructing Obama’s programs and criticizing the Democrats’ spending plans that are aimed at trying to bring the country out of a horrible recession.” Don’t the Republicans know that the president has “what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight,” as the commentator himself put it?

Cafferty made an error of his own at the end of his commentary, after taking Jindal to task for making a mistake. He cited a “GOP straw poll” about 2012 presidential race where “Mitt Romney finished first followed by Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.” Actually, the straw poll was conducted at the annual CPAC conference organized by grassroots conservative organizations. It is not affiliated with the Republican Party. Cafferty must have been too caught up in his anti-conservative tirade to get that detail correct.