Radio host Rush Limbaugh says this week’s election victories for Democrats will prompt them to use controversial rhetoric embraced by Latino Victory Fund.
The eponymous host of “The Rush Limbaugh Show” says pundits and lawmakers will learn the wrong lessons from Democrat Ralph Northam’s victory over Republican Ed Gillespie in the Virginia gubernatorial race. The conservative said it was absurd to call Tuesday’s election a referendum on President Trump when Hillary Clinton won the state by 5 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election.
“You got two blue states here who stayed blue,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “Nothing’s changed in that regard, and in that sense, they still remain vulnerable. Now, they won a couple of elections. They won states that Trump did not carry. Trump didn’t carry New Jersey; Trump did not carry Virginia. It was not expected that Republicans would win in either of these states. It was hoped for, and it was thought to be possible, but things just didn’t happen to make the possibility reality.”
Mr. Limbaugh then referenced a political action committee’s ad in which minority children ran for safety from a deranged man driving a pickup truck — replete with a Confederate flag and an Ed Gillespie bumper sticker.
“The ’hateful politics’ was found on the Democrat side in that Latino Victory fund ad,” he said. “By the way, those people now say they’re going to double down. They think the Latino Victory fund ad with that black pickup truck with the Gillespie bumper sticker trying to chase down and run over Hispanic kids and a young Muslim kid, they think it worked. So they going to be doubling down on calling Republicans Nazis and whatever else they think they succeeded in doing in that race. Let them. Let them keep doing that. That’s not why they won in Virginia.”
The host said one of the ways that Republicans will be in “big trouble” moving forward is if they fail to deliver on tax reform after having already botched plans to repeal Obamacare.
“The point is, the people inside the Beltway and the establishment have never believed, Republicans, too, have never believed we’re in danger of, quote, ’losing the country’ or ’losing the culture,’” Mr. Limbaugh said. “But the people who elected Trump are. And if that aspect is not going to be serviced or promoted, Republicans are in big trouble. And the tax reform issue, if it doesn’t pass — and the Democrats are gonna double down now on making sure that it doesn’t — then there could be a big heap of doo-doo.”
Mr. Northam beat Mr. Gillespie by a 53 percent to 45 percent margin.
Democrats also captured Virginia races for lieutenant governor, attorney general, and the House of Delegates.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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