Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has slammed Time magazine's selection of President Barack Obama for the 2012 “Person of the Year” award when he charged on Wednesday and Thursday that the Democratic incumbent was re-elected because he appealed to “low-information morons” who make up a new demographic in the nation.
On Wednesday's syndicated program, Limbaugh responded to the announcement made that morning on NBC's “Today Show” by stating that Richard Stengel, the editor of the liberal publication, said Obama was chosen “because he is a symbol, the champion, of the new low-information American voter.”
He won reelection despite a higher unemployment rate than anybody’s had to face in 70 years. He’s the first Democrat to actually win two consecutive terms with over 50 percent of the vote. That’s something we haven’t seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And he’s basically the beneficiary and the author of a kind of new America, a new demographic, a new cultural America that he is now the symbol of.
Limbaugh also indicated that Stengel said “15 percent of voters actually don’t care about politics. These are the people we didn’t know who are gonna show up at the polls who actually like Barack Obama, in the sense they feel like he’s outside of politics.”
The radio host then described Time as a “failing magazine with a dwindling subscription and a dwindling advertiser base that's no longer relevant in the media world” but “still holds onto this Man of the Year thing.”
However, the conservative commentator saved his harshest barbs for Obama, who was also chosen for the honor in 2008:
We’ve never had a more radical, we’ve never had a more partisan politician in the White House than Obama. It’s only a low-information voter (we used to have call ‘em “morons”) that could think he’s outside of politics, but there you have it.
I wonder what these elite Democrats really think about that. So this guy’s Man of the Year because idiots love him? Because believe me, if they think low-information voters are idiots, I guarantee you they’ll be glad to take their votes. The new stupid America? That should have been Man of the Year, Person of the Year: Stupid people, the low-information voter.
Then on Thursday, Limbaugh continued his discussion of the subject by pointing out that Obama is “the first politician to get votes from people who don't care about anything and who aren't paying attention. That is worth honoring in 2012, almost 2013 America.”
The conservative host then stated that this development “adds even more insult to the injury we're already facing. We already have a debacle.”
Do you know what the real worry here is given this? If you don't feel bad enough yet (chuckles), let me add this. Ronald Reagan -- and Obama knows this, by the way. Ronald Reagan was the last transformative president we had, a man who genuinely changed the direction the country was going.
Limbaugh stated that Obama wants to follow in Reagan's footsteps, except for the fact that he's “promoting socialism, redistributionism, big government expansion.”
If the Democrat's agenda is seen “by a lot of people as transformative and good, then we're gonna lose the country for a generation or two,” he added.
As NewsBusters previously reported, NBC Today's co-host, Matt Lauer, stated in November that if he was deciding the “Person of the Year,” he'd select either President Obama or climate change.
Soon after, the selection process generated some controversy when it was learned that Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown University law student who became embroiled in a national debate over whether women should receive free contraception from insurance companies, was named as one of the 40 candidates for the award.
At that time, many people stated that the honor was Obama's to lose since most of the other candidates did not have a prominent impact on America or the news in the past year.
Rush is right to point out the danger the GOP might soon have to face. The Democratic Party is a compilation of several minorities -- including liberals, union members, environmental activists, feminists, African Americans and homosexuals -- and the addition of this “new demographic” might be enough to give them the majority vote they need to win elections in the future.
