For conservatives, the news of the week was Rush Limbaugh’s speech to the annual CPAC conference in Washington DC. The speech achieved all and more that Rush could have hoped: It was rapturously received by the more than 8,000 conference attendees and broadcast live on Fox News. Better still, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, appearing the next morning on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” acclaimed Rush as the “voice, energy, and intellect” of the Republican Party.

So everybody’s happy, right? Well, everybody except Republicans who care about their party’s future electoral chances. As ardently as Rush’s fans adore him, Limbaugh is one of the less popular figures in American public life. He polls especially poorly among two groups whom Republicans must attract in the future: independent voters and women. Independents take a negative view of Limbaugh by a 45-22 margin. As for women … well Rush himself has acknowledged the problem. “Thirty-one point gender gaps don’t come along that often,” he mused on his Feb. 24 program.

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David Frum is editor of FrumForum.com and the author of six books, including most recently COMEBACK: Conservatism That Can Win Again. In 2001 and 2002, he served as speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush. In 2007, he served as senior foreign policy adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign.