Rush Limbaugh: What if shooter were named Muhammad?

PALM BEACH, Fla. – With waves of media stories suggesting possible causes for the Tucson, Ariz., shooting ranging from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to hateful speech on talk radio and the Internet, Rush Limbaugh is now posing a new question.

Rush Limbaugh

"Just ask yourself this. If the shooter had been a 22-year-old named Muhammad, would we be hearing that Muslim talk radio and the Muslim Internet blamed for it?" the top-rated host asked today. "No, we'd have been told that we can't blame Muslims for the action of one kook."

Limbaugh spent all three hours of his program today focusing on coverage of the weekend massacre that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in critical condition and six others dead.

Limbaugh called attempts by many on the left to make the shooter seem influenced by those on the political right "sick."

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"In continuing this template and narrative that the tea party and Sarah Palin, that talk radio and Fox News, are inspiring violence, they forget that, in the process of so doing, they are attacking what is now a majority of America," Limbaugh said. "They are accusing a majority of Americans of being accomplices to murder. ... It's all just surreal. These people are making abject fools of themselves in open, public now."

He continued: "Whoever they think is the biggest threat of the moment is who's responsible for this. When I heard over the weekend 'Sarah Palin,' I almost started laughing. How utterly irresponsible and predictable. Sarah Palin responsible for murder? They say Sarah Palin's too stupid to put two sentences together. Now all of a sudden Sarah Palin has all this ability of mind control. Sarah Palin? Talk radio? People ought to be dropping like flies if that's the case. I mean I'm in my 23rd year here, folks. People ought to be dropping like flies, but they're not. These are isolated incidents and in practically every one of them you're dealing with someone who's insane or deranged or a schizophrenic or something."

Limbaugh said he's "always amused at how it's never socio-economic causes or other influential items that cause behavior except when conservatives do it."

"I wouldn't be surprised if somebody in the Obama regime or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressperson's already written up legislation to stifle and eliminate conservative speech and that legislation's sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event to clamp down," Limbaugh said. "They can't beat us, and so they're going to do what they can to shut us down. And even if they don't have popular political support for it, they will still try it. That's what this is all about."

He also noted that if there's one side of the political spectrum that's more prone to violent acts, it's the left and not the right.

"Wherever there is mass violence, wherever there is mass murder, civil unrest or what have you, it's leftists," he said. "They're the ones who don't have jobs and who thus have the time."

As WND reported, the suspected gunman, 22-year-old Jared Loughner listed "The Communist Manifesto" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" among his favorite reading materials.