Like a lot of people, I listened to Rush Limbaugh the day after the election. Pure Schadenfreude, I admit it; I just wanted to hear the reaction. I searched the right-wing media landscape far and wide and tried to find even a hint of self-examination, self-criticism, and I didn't find much. Then again, they didn't lose the presidential vote by much, so they didn't take the election result as a total repudiation of their belief system, as they probably shouldn't have, anyway.

But some introspection was probably in order, particularly with the question – soon to become the dominant question in American major party-politics – of what the Republicans have to do to do better with women and minorities. They dominated with white males, but lagged with almost all other groups.

Rush addressed the question with a long, passionate soliloquy. It was fascinating. Let me excerpt it here. He began with the difficult (for him) admission that his party is not doing well with minority groups. The emphasis here is mine:

It's being said once once again that the Republicans have an outreach problem, that we don't have Hispanics, we don't have blacks, and we don't have women and it's... Okay, fine, we don't, what are we supposed to do?

From there he self-apostrophizes, asking what the Republicans need to do to get those votes. He answers the question in a mocking tone that in fact is the entire source of his problem – the very answer to his question is drop the freaking sarcasm when you talk about minorities and minority issues, and you just might get their votes – but he's so psychologically well-defended that this never occurs to him, and he just plows on.