This is absolutely typical behavior for Rush Limbaugh, and you can now expect all the right wing blogs to start spouting the same talking point in unison: Limbaugh: “I Acted Too Much Like The Leftists Who Despise Me”.

Yes, he’s blaming the left.

Rush Limbaugh has accomplished something very real with his piggish remarks, though. Before this, the Republican Party was having some success in reframing the debate over contraception as an issue of “religious freedom.” It was a stupid angle, but they were playing it hard and sowing confusion for all they were worth.

But since Rush Limbaugh launched this sickeningly personal attack on a woman whose only offense was to testify about the need for private insurance to cover contraception, and since the right wing media and blogosphere closed ranks around their idol and ferociously doubled down on Rush’s misogyny, it’s become crystal clear that the GOP’s “religious freedom” ruse was simply that — a sham.

This debate over contraception is about the religious right wing’s reactionary compulsion to try to control the awesome power of the vagina, and it always has been.