Limbaugh introduced the term “ feminazi,” a pejorative he assigned women who spoke out for their own rights generally, and for abortion rights specifically. Limbaugh then further wielded his huge platform to threaten and denigrate smart, ambitious, politically involved women. Clinton, and the conservative public’s insatiable appetite for attacks on her, partly to thank for his success. Clinton was accompanied by a feminist wife whose biography - a successful lawyer, an advocate for women’s and children’s rights, a woman who kept her own name and identity after marriage - often set off unhinged emotional outbursts from many Republicans, including Mr. He really hit his stride when Bill Clinton ran for office. Limbaugh, though, this was a mark against us.) He argued that women shouldn’t be allowed on juries if “the accused is a stud.” He claimed that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” (He wasn’t entirely wrong about that last bit - feminists do indeed want to live in a society where women have equal rights and equal access to resources and power regardless of how men rate our attractiveness. Limbaugh’s sexist provocations were myriad.

Republicans, in turn, saw opportunity in him. While he often gave rhetorical nods to the “pro-family” traditional values of the Moral Majority, he didn’t adopt its veneer of propriety - he was positively lascivious in his rhetoric, using ugliness and shock to promote embittered and unvarnished sexism, and he saw a world of opportunity in the party.

Limbaugh burst on the national scene in the late 1980s during a national anti-feminist backlash and as the Republican Party was completing its turn away from libertarianism and toward the religious right.

Cracking open his slobbering hatred of women allows insight into his success, as well as the perversion of the party he championed. His belligerent chauvinism was key in making the Republican Party the party of anti-feminism.

Porky pig rush limbaugh