RNC mulls Limbaugh abortion Obama jab

by Andrew Zajac

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh boosted Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pro-life position and mocked Barack Obama on his radio show yesterday with a make-believe riff in which Obama asked Palin "When you found out your baby would be born with Down syndrome, did you consider killing it before or after the due date?"

Limbaugh's "humor" caught the fancy of the Republican National Committee, which, in an internal e-mail, proposed using the bit in a YouTube clip.

The e-mail, which was sent to RNC Communications Director Danny Diaz, and mistakenly to a Tribune reporter, was titled "wow...good YouTube potential..."

The rest of it reads:

"Rush, just now imagining a series of questions that Obama can ask Palin, if they ever meet:

One about how to shoot a gun...
One about do you bait your hooks when you go fishing?

And then, this (paraphrase):
"when you learned that you were going to have a Down Syndrome baby, did you consider aborting it, before or after the due date?""

Here's a PDF of the e-mail: RNC email

Palin, named to yesterday by McCain to fill out the GOP ticket as his running mate, has been on Limbaugh's radar screen in the veepstakes since February, when he noted that she was on the right side of the issues and "a babe" besides.

In a statement, an RNC spokesman said, "A staffer with separate responsibilities made a poor recommendation that was not heeded. The individual has been spoken to and this will not occur again."

The staffer who wrote the message said the obvious -- that it was sent to the wrong person -- but otherwise declined to discuss it.

Diaz asked The Swamp not to post the message and said the RNC had not and would not act on the suggestion, but otherwise declined to talk about it on the record.

There's a time to honor requests to disregard misdirected email, but this isn't one of them.

The note is a good illustration of how campaigns really work and helps to explain why many people think the national political discourse is noxious.

The official McCain campaign, and the official Obama campaign for that matter, generally take the high road, rarely getting down and dirty.

Limbaugh and his ilk in talk radio and the blogosphere, on the right and left, are, officially, independent actors. So when they veer into coarse or offensive commentary, campaigns shrug, 'What can we do? We don't control them.'

They could repudiate ugly comment. But that rarely happens.

What does happen, as yesterday's errant RNC notes illustrates, is campaigns look for a benefit, furtively.