You're right. The plus side is that Rush has successfully and tactically turned his mistake back upon his attackers and will come out stronger than before as far as his own commercial success is concerned.
The downside is he enabled the left to hijack and divert the national conversation into an area in which the rest of our leaders are ill-equipped to handle.
This incident and issue is going to hurt us this year because it's allowed the Left to reach in and grab the emotions, on a visceral level, of vast numbers of women and impregnate them with the meme (sorry, couldn't help myself) that Republicans want to take control of their reproductive lives.
We are fighting an enemy who has complete control of the DBM.
If they want to create a meme/issue out of thin air as George Stephanopolus did some weeks ago while interviewing Romney in a debate they can. And they got have away with it. Just the sheer repetition of contraception as if it were truly an issue is enough to create hundred if not thousands of headlines as if their self created issue was real.
Romney by the way did not fall for it at the time but they kept on with the meme since all of this was undoubtedly planned by the DNC than executed by the DBM. The rats are expert liars and know how to astroturf almost anything they want. Just ask David Axelrod who is probably behind this sham anyway.