Limbaugh, GOP: Call Obama's Road Trip 'Misery Tour'

Republicans and conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh are scrambling to grab the naming rights for President Barack Obama’s three-day bus tour through Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Leading the pack so far is the “Magical Misery Tour.”

President Barack Obama boards the bus at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport today before heading to a town hall at Cannon Falls, Minn. (AP Photo)

Both GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and radio talk show host Limbaugh favor variants of the old Beatles album and tune, with Romney going for “Magical Misery Bus Tour” and the radio talk show host favoring the simpler “Magical Misery Tour.” Limbaugh’s version is a closer match to the Beatles album and song entitled, “Magical Mystery Tour.”

The Republican National Committee is running an Internet and radio campaign dubbed, “Obama’s Debt-End Tour” and is calling the bus the “Debt-End Express.”

The president’s tour, an official White House trip, is designed to give him a chance to hear directly from the public as he presides at five town hall events in three days. However, Obama’s opponents see the trip as a thinly disguised campaign outing, especially as it passes through Iowa which just hosted a GOP presidential debate and straw poll, and have shown no shyness in attacking it.

During Limbaugh’s show Monday, he spent some time making light of the tour. He threw out a host of alternative names, including the “Hell in a Hand Basket Express,” “Are We There Yet Tour,” “Running on Empty,” “The Shovel Ready Tour,” “The Republicans Have to Sit in the Back Tour,” “The America Under the Bus Tour,” and “The Debt Man Driving Tour.”