Carbonite caves in to the Left's efforts to silence Rush Limbaugh $CARB

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection is closely following the Left's efforts to silence Rush Limbaugh through advertiser boycotts.

Liberal groups have seized on a strategy I didn’t think would be effective, but has had some success, to go after advertisers of prominent conservative media personalities. ... ...Media Matters explicitly seeks to bring down Fox News and investigate its executives, and Fox News advertisers have been targeted by groups like Color of Change, which has targeted Glenn Beck, Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan and Andrew Breitbart.

Now Rush Limbaugh advertisers are the target because of an analogy he used... [and the controversy] distracted from the attack on religious freedom which is the heart of the controversy.

As has become the pattern, Rush’s advertisers immediately were attacked and threatened, and several gave in quickly, like Quicken Loans and Sleep Number, pulling their advertising.

No advertiser was more associated with Rush than Carbonite, an online computer back up company. Rush often would read Carbonite’s ads himself, and would tout their service.

Carbonite initially took a principled position, asserting that it advertises on both conservative and liberal shows, and that its advertising does not constitute an endorsement of what any particular host says... Indeed, Carbonite still advertises on the show of Ed Schultz, who makes unhinged attacks on the Tea Party and conservatives daily, and called conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a slut (for which he later apologized).

...Saturday night, the CEO of Carbonite issued a statement withdrawing advertising from Rush’s show notwithstanding that earlier in the day Rush has issued an apology... This is an attempt find something, anything, to force Rush off the air. Ms. Magazine has launched a campaign do do just that by going after Clear Channel Communications, whose stations carry Rush’s program.

Today's Leftists have a totalitarian mindset. They despise free speech.

Unable to win in the marketplace of ideas (remember Air America?), the would-be despots of the hard Left instead try to silence the voices of those with whom they disagree.

The Statists, the Marxists, the progressives -- what ever name you prefer to call the hard Left kooks that now dominate the Democrat Party -- would be at home in the Soviet Union, or North Korea, or Venezuela. They are an appendage of centralized government and bent on retaining their white-knuckled death-grip on power.

Their anti-American efforts must be stopped. And Carbonite is as good a place to start resisting these regressives as any.


Update: Dan Riehl has more details on Carbonite's P.R. debacle (hat tip: BadBlue.com).