One important tactic in the conservative arsenal is to throw civil rights language back at liberals in order to put them on the defensive.

Here’s a case in point. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) recently made a nasty allusion to Condoleezza Rice’s lack of immediate family during a Congressional hearing on the war in Iraq:

Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.

Rather than simply stating that Rice’s family situation is irrelevant, Rush Limbaugh accused Boxer of “trying to lynch” Rice “right before Martin Luther King Day” (as Media Matters documented):

LIMBAUGH: Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this — an African American woman — right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here.

The statement is nonsensical on its face — the incident has nothing to do with Rice’s racial background or Martin Luther King Day. But by reversing civil rights language against Boxer in this way, Limbaugh is trying to delegitimize criticism of Rice generally.