Right Wing Nut House

What’s wrong with conservatism?

Philosphically, absolutely nothing. There is a family argument going on at the moment where some question how conservative principles can be translated into a set of issues and policies that would lead to actual conservative governance but beyond that, everything is just peachy, right?

Sarcasm aside, the question for the day is can political moderates be conservative too? Can you believe in conservative “First Principles” and believe in less ideological, realistic conservative governance at the same time?

(Note: This is the de facto position of the David Brooks, David Frum’s, Ross Douthat’s, and Kathleen Parker’s of the world.

Forget Specter. This was no “moderate” and, of course, neither was he a conservative - except around election time when all of a sudden he would discover his connection to Ronald Reagan and the conservatism he represented. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic had it about right, calling Specter an “Unprincipled Hack.” That just about covers it.

But looking at the larger picture, conservatives should be asking themselves some hard questions about the future. The outpouring of “good riddance” wishes to Specter on the right included calls for other GOP moderates to join him. This “urge to purge” seems to be the fate of losing sides in elections as liberal activists made the same calls for ideological cleansing for two decades. The result: An electoral map that glowed in the dark it was so red. Not so today, of course, And while blame can be laid at the feet of Republicans more interested in their jobs than in advancing conservative governance, an equal amount of credit must go to the Democrats who put up more moderate, less ideological candidates in dozens of districts across the country despite complaints from their base. While Kos and his Krew were getting excited about Ned Lamont who got creamed in the general election, Howard Dean was recruiting candidates like pro-gun, anti-abortion, fiscal conservative Heath Shuler in North Carolina who beat an 8 term Republican incumbent.

To clarify, if the reason one holds to conservative principles is something beyond idly exercising one’s brain, it should be obvious that one of the purposes of conservatism is that it be realized as a governing philosophy. For that to happen, conservatives need a political vessel to translate thought into actions. This is where the Republican party comes into play and why what happens to the party affects conservatism and vice versa. A defeat in a North Carolina district where the incumbent hadn’t been challenged in more than a decade could be explained away by the local peculiarities of that race including the celebrity factor and dissatisfaction with the incumbent Charles Taylor over his failure to vote on CAFTA. But you cannot explain away what has happened to the Republican party in the Northeast where unmitigated disaster has overtaken the party.

In 2006 and 2008, the Republican party was decimated in New England, the Northeast corridor, and the Mid-Atlantic states with additional losses in the upper Midwest and Mountain West. There are now 3 Republican Congressmen from the state of New York out of 29. New Hampshire has lost both GOP congressmen. The party is virtually a memory in Vermont and Connecticut.

Is the reason that long term incumbents like Sue Kelly ( NY-6 terms), Nancy Johnson (CT-12 terms), Jim Leach (IA-15 terms), and Charles Bass (NH-6 terms) lost in 2006 was that they weren’t conservative enough? When you consider that more than 98% of incumbents are successfully re-elected, questions must be raised about why GOP moderates in what used to be the strongest area of the country for Republicans were tipped over.

Perhaps my more conservative friends are right and if only the party would put forward “true” conservatives in the Northeast all would be well and Republicans would regain their position as the dominant party in New England and become competitive again in New York and Pennsylvania.

Pigs could fly too, but I’m not waiting for that to happen.

Conservatives interpret First Principles differently according to political realities, personality, temperment, and one’s own life experience. They are not the Ten Commandments carved in stone and where no discussion is allowed. Taking a principle like “limited government” and asking a Republican from the Northeast and a GOP southerner to define it, I daresay you would get two different answers. The point being, there are many paths to realizing conservative governance and I guarantee you it will take more than a few self-appointed guardians of conservatism defining “true” conservatism to achieve it.

Take a concept like “fiscal conservatism.” Let’s define it (arbitrarily) as “The State should not take from citizens more than is necessary for the maintenance of a just and moral society.” That is a broad conservative concept on which Northeasterners and Southerns would probably agree. But in interpreting that concept, the Northeastern conservative may believe that a “just and moral society” includes federal funds for S-Chip or Pell Grants to college students. It might mean less for defense and more for transportation. It could even mean raising taxes to pay for those programs.To the southerner, it might mean eliminating or drastically reducing those programs and cutting taxes.

One is considered a moderate, the other a “true” conservative. And yet both adhere to their interpretation of “fiscal conservatism.” Why should one interpretation be considered “more conservative” than the other?

Recognizing that many “moderates” that are left in the GOP subscribe to the idea of a slightly larger government in the sense that they believe that government has a bigger role to play in society than perhaps many who consider themselves “true” conservatives doesn’t mean that there is just cause to read them out of the Republican party. I’ve said this before but there is a difference between “ideology” and “philosophy.” And it appears to me that many who would be so quick to drum moderates out of the party for not being conservative enough are confusing the two concepts. There are broad areas of agreement where moderates and conservatives differ only in the interpretation of principles - ideology - not in philosophy.

We have lost the ability to articulate overarching principles in such a way that it would attract a broad spectrum of the American electorate. I think this introduction to an excellent short course in conservative thought at the First Principles website captures the essence of the right’s problem in this regard:

Since World War II, there has been a rebirth of conservative thought in America, beginning with pioneers such as William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Friedrich Hayek, Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, and Irving Kristol, and culminating with the electoral triumph of President Ronald Reagan in 1980. Today, the conservative “movement” enjoys both political prominence and a sturdy institutional infrastructure of political organizations, charitable foundations, think tanks, publishing houses, magazines and journals, and other such entities. Because of the movement’s success, a growing number of ambitious students and young professionals are now attracted to careers that advance the conservative cause.

Unfortunately, many of conservatism’s elder statesmen have expressed a grave concern that the rising generation is not well grounded in the fundamental texts, arguments, ideas, and themes that originally inspired the movement. Lacking a firm foundation in first principles, responsible and reflective citizenship is impossible, since we are tossed about by the enthusiasms of the day. Conservative “talking heads” in the electronic media may be effective political combatants, but their short-term goals—winning votes, passing legislation, boosting ratings—often work against the more important goal of cultivating, exploring, and developing conservative principles in light of changing historical circumstances.

“Changing historical circumstances” and the recognition that although our principles may be immutable, how they are interpreted is up to each generation. My interpretation of First Principles differs broadly from most of you reading this. Does this mean we can’t be allies in the struggle to bring those principles to the job of governing a great nation? Chasing away those who agree with you in principle but differ with you on interpretation will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. I have to think we’re too smart to allow that to happen.

I used to be as much of a frothing at the mouth, anti-EPA, anti-environmental regulation ideologue as the next fellow. Back in the early 1980’s when I was but a young buckaroo, I could rail against the anti-business, anti-free market bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency and the anti-people environmentalists with the best of them.

But at that time, one must recall that the Reagan administration represented the first push-back against some of the really silly and stupid — not to mention draconian and illiberal — regulations that had contributed to the decline of the steel and other industries as well as placing an unnecessary burden on farmers, ranchers, loggers, and other small businessmen who became targets of the regulators.

So what happened? I’d like to say I grew up and opened my eyes but that would presuppose that somewhere in my conservative soul I wasn’t concerned about the environment all along. Rather it was the gradual realization brought about by my own life experiences that the industrial age and free market capitalism had brought us wondrous riches and allowed for a lifestyle unknown anywhere else on the planet but that it had come at a cost. We have always known of this cost to the environment. Even in my dotage I can recall Lake Michigan beaches in Chicago being closed due to excess pollution, and a small stream near where I grew up becoming a frothing, foamy cesspool of smelly brown sludge from some business or other dumping waste upstream. Driving through Gary, Indiana in the 1960’s after spending 4 weeks in the pristine wilderness of northern Michigan made us all gag from the stench of the belching steel mills running 24 hours a day, turning white laundry a soft shade of brown on backyard clotheslines.

Knowing all this, I still resisted the idea that government could tell business what to do. I just never made the connection between pollution and the polluters until I had traveled enough and lived long enough to see the impact on ordinary people’s lives.

Later, it was concern about suburban sprawl that affected me directly and all the attendant environmental problems and quality of life issues that came with it. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that environmental protection was necessary and even desirable, and that only the federal government was a big enough entity to take on giant corporations and powerful interests who were acting in an irresponsible manner toward the natural world.

And therein lies the conservative dilemma about the environment and why, to this day, conservatives are uneasy about getting too excited about going “green.”

In a perfect world where the free market was truly “free,” environmental protection would be fairly easy. “You break it, you pay for it,” would be the sentence for polluters who damaged the air and water that Americans breathe and drink. There might even be incentives for business to be good stewards of the land. But that notion supposes that all businesses will act with some degree of responsibility toward the environment. History has proved otherwise which made federal intervention a necessity.

In the early days of the federal environmental movement, there was much support from more moderate Republicans for measures like the creation of the EPA, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and the original efforts to cut down on lead in gasoline emissions.

But when EPA regulations began to cut into profits and pose a burden on businesses large and small, conservatives saw an agency out of control and uncaring about economic growth. The fervent beliefs and self-righteousness of environmentalists didn’t help matters either. In the end, it was enough to simply oppose anything the EPA tried to do, branding it as government overreach and injurious to wealth creation.

This view became even more pronounced during the 1990’s as the Global Warming debate heated up. As climate change advocates became more and more accusatory of skeptics, conservatives recoiled from what they saw as the almost religious nature of AGW beliefs. Kyoto, a treaty so obviously flawed that the senate wouldn’t even consider it, proved to conservatives that the global warming argument was less about climate change and more about massive transfers of wealth from rich nations to poor.

But why should conservatives look upon environmental issues in such a way? Environmentalism was invented by a “progressive” conservative, Teddy Roosevelt. TR was in love with nature — especially that part of which he could shoot — but he also realized that unless action was taken, some future generation of Americans would lose the legacy of our wilderness. The almost incomprehensible vastness of the land is one of the things that makes us an exceptional nation and TR saw a day when almost all the empty spaces would be filled up. Thus was born the conservation movement by government (it had existed for 50 years previous to that as private citizens bought up more than 20 million acres to save the wilderness).

What happened to that legacy? Post World War II conservatism became entranced and then captured by the idea that untrammeled growth and unregulated free markets was the ticket to paradise. Somehow, the notion that bigger was better married with a semi-religious belief in corporatism to unbalance the traditional conservative belief in “conserving” the past. When the reality of choking smog and filthy rivers became an issue, conservatives balked, believing it was a “cost of economic growth” or more incoherently, a question of “keeping the government out of the business of business.”

That view held by many conservatives has matured since the 1960’s but not by much. Conservatives are still apt to make fun of “tree huggers” and others who go overboard in professing their love of nature while believing that global warming is a “hoax”. In this, the right has been content to allow the left to claim the mantle of “Protectors of the Earth” despite the fact that there are few issues that are more conservative than conservation.

Conservative thinkers for the last century have embraced conservation and environmentalism as a natural outgrowth of one of conservatism’s most cherished principles. Political theorist Russell Kirk:

“True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. ‘Nature’ is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.”

The “heritage of humanity, or as he put it later in life, the “concept of society as joined in perpetuity by a moral bond among the dead, the living, and those yet to be born—the community of souls. . . .”

Prudence, piety, a regard for the world around us and the people in it; you can’t get much more conservative than that. We see this ideal slowly being resurrected among younger conservatives especially. Perhaps the last two decades of materialism and the celebration of capitalism has affected younger conservatives who seek more meaning in their lives. This is part of the crunchy-con beliefs of Ron Dreher and embodied politically by Mike Huckabee. Environmentalism to some younger righties is very much a concern that is tied into an overall critique of American capitalism.

Kirk decisively rejects the “practical conservatism [which has] degenerated into mere laudation of ‘private enterprise,’ economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.”28 He “Indignantly denie[s] . . . that his conservatism could or should be identified with businessmen.”29 Other leading traditionalists concur. Peter Viereck admonishes conservatives to “conserve the humane and ethical values of the West rather than the economic privileges of a fraction of the West.”30 Stephen Tonsor contends that the traditionalist conservatives “are not now, nor will they be, identified with the American business community. They are clearly identified with natural law philosophy and revealed religion.”

From a traditionalist perspective, just as we have inherited our culture and must preserve it for future generations, so have we inherited this earth, and we have to take proper care of it as good stewards. As Margaret Thatcher stated when she announced her conversion to environmentalism, “No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease.” The principle of stewardship, and consequently of “sustainable development,” should lead conservatives to accept their duty to design our economy so that we produce our goods in a way that does not impair the planet’s ability to provide for future generations.

The question, then, of why conservatives have abandoned environmentalism and ceded the issue to the left is more political than philosophical. The rationale has always been there. It’s just that in the heat of political combat — and thanks to a Republican party that would rather be in bed with the polluters than regulate them — conservatives have ultimately taken the position that whatever the liberals want to do with regard to the environment is wrong and must be opposed as a matter of principle.

I would say to my friends on the right that we’re missing the boat when it comes to the environment. President Obama’s top down solutions will be costly, inefficient, and in the end, won’t work very well. The liberals have left a huge political hole that conservatives could drive a truck through if they would begin to think more than superficially about how to protect the earth. Obama wishes to mandate which technologies will win out in the competition to develop alternative energies, reduce carbon emissions, and develop clean coal plants. One wonders what kind of mandates the government will force on auto manufacturers to develop “green” cars now that they have The Big Three by the short hairs. And cap and trade may prove to be one of the biggest boondoggles in the history of government - without reducing carbon emissions by one molecule.

But does that mean that these goals are unworthy? Or is it that the “solutions” are wrongheaded? Being dismissive of global warming is one thing; not promoting the idea of reducing carbon emissions is quite another. There are good reasons beyond “saving the earth” from what may be catastrophic climate change to reduce our carbon output. First of all, there’s a chance that ruinous changes in climate might actually occur unless we do something. The problem is that global warming has partnered so many odious ideologies and movements that the “solutions” being offered are thinly disguised power and wealth grabs by the United Nations, anti-globalists, anti-capitalists, radical environmentalists who put nature above human beings, and “sustainable development” freaks who actually wish to rid the world of 80% of its human population.

Making the reduction in carbon emissions a goal in and of itself would make more sense. Lessening our carbon footprint saves energy and helps us along the road to energy independence - a worthy goal all by itself. And devising laws and regulations that maximize market input into what kind of technologies will win out to help with the development of new, cleaner systems (and old ones like fast-tracking new nuclear power plants).

Resistance by conservatives to the idea of “going green” is, in the end, self defeating. Issues such as what is happening to our forests and national parks where over logging has denuded the land of millions of acres of trees (at bargain basement prices), as well as the systematic plunder of western lands where companies have purchased mineral rights for a song while reaming the taxpayer thanks to the stupidity of Congress and bureaucrats should be cause for reproachment of the Democrats by conservatives and not a reason to brand those who advocate protecting these resouces as kooks.

This state of affairs should rend the soul of any good conservative who agrees with Kirk that we are not leaving a decent “heritage to humanity” by our silence and non-engagement on environmental issues. If we continue to allow Democrats the run of the house and not challenge them with good, solid, conservative alternatives to their collectivist notions of paternalism and government control, we will be missing a huge opportunity.

C’mon, what’d you expect? A full fledged mea culpa complete with sackcloth, ashes, and my kneewalking to the shrine of  tea party activism?

Not hardly.

However, I was mostly wrong when I wrote this after the first round of tea parties in February:

I will say this as gently as my curmudgeonly soul will allow; not a chance. It is delusional to believe that these tea parties are the beginning of anything except a round of raucous Bronx cheers from the left, calling conservatives out for their inexplicable, over the top reaction and unrealistic expectations for these 40 or so tea parties that went off today.

If this really was the beginnings of something profound that was tapping into the rage of the American people, there would have been not 300 but 30,000 people screaming their opposition to spendthrift Obama. People would have taken off from their jobs, bundled up against the cold, walked, rode, took the bus, or crawled their way to a protest if they were truly fed up and ready to throw the Democratic rascals out.

Instead, we get 40 events that remind me of the old Mickey Rooney Andy Hardy movies where he and Judy Garland would put on a show to save someone’s business or house. “Hey kids! Let’s put on a show!” was Rooney’s battle cry in those movies and it is an apropos slogan for the effort that went into promoting these tea parties.

When you get some money, organization, professionalism, and a little more realism, come back and see me.

Well, there still isn’t much organization and little professionalism, but it turns out that I was the one lacking realism. I failed to grasp the excitement this idea generated and how it would animate the grass roots to actually get out of their chairs and do something about the creeping statism and generational theft being perpetrated by the Obama Administration. I also failed to give any credit to the thousands of ordinary citizens who, without any help from an organized political structure and with little or no money, managed to organize around 800 of these tea parties, and make a virtue out of their inexperience by being imaginative and working hard. In the end, results count. Today will see uneven results from venue to venue but overall, will no doubt be judged a success - if not by the media then by the movement itself.

(Note to our lefty friends: By the time Fox News got around to mentioning the tea parties, more than 500 had been announced. To believe that FNC is “behind” the tea parties is delusional. Any publicity they give is, I’m sure, appreciated by the organizers. But what does it say about the “reality based community” when they so easily slough off reality in favor of paranoia and fantasy?)

But my concern in February, as it is now, is that the rhetoric about what the tea parties will accomplish will not match the reality of what actually occurs. Exaggerated claims of “revolution” as appear on the PJTV site are not only unrealistic but defeat the purpose of the movement by scaring otherwise sympathetic people off. Most Americans probably do not want “revolution” nor are they necessarily in tune with the goals of the tea party - not when 71% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy. The best that can be said is the that success of the tea parties show that many Americans are uneasy about this administration’s actions in spending our way to oblivion and that higher taxes for everybody are a dead certainty as a result.

It is amusing to watch many on the left pretend that they don’t know what the tea parties are all about - or posit wildly off base reasons for the protests that they know full well to be false. For a bunch that prides themselves on being smarter than the rest of us goober chewin’, bible thumpin’, gun totin’, cousin marryin’ rubes out here in flyover country, they sure are awful at pretending.

But for many liberals, if at first you don’t succeed in belittling the effort, why not simply make sh*t up about how the whole thing is a manufactured mirage, funded by lobbyists, and peopled by fakes:

This was easy for for Brian Beutler over at TPMDC:

That all changed on February 19, when CNBC commentator Rick Santelli erupted in anger on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and proposed a “Chicago Tea Party” for traders to protest the government’s plan to provide mortgage assistance to distressed homeowners.

The idea took hold and on February 27, a handful of cities across the country hosted gatherings that involved genuine tea (or at least the use of the word “tea”). One of those tea parties occurred from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Friday February 27, in Tampa, FL, organized according to the website Tampa Bay Online, by “John Hendricks, a Tampa-based consultant.”

John Hendricks turns out to be John Hendrix, who by phone earlier today described the events as completely spontaneous. “These are independent groups, not coordinated,” he says, “and most of the people, including myself, have never done anything like this.” He even said that two distinct groups in Tampa emerged simultaneously–both called the “Tampa Tea Party,” each unbeknown to the other.

I asked him where the idea came from. “Tom Gaithens,” Hendrix said. “He’s with FreedomWorks.”

“Oh really?”

“He sent an email out with his network of contacts to see who could help.”

Evil corporate lobbyists are hiding behind concerned citizens, pumping money and expertise into the protests in a classic case of astroturfing. I’m sure out of the 800+ protests planned for today, the overwhelming majority of organizers are asking, “So where’s the dough?” And all those conservative “plants” who have been hired as cut outs will no doubt ask the same question.

A little reality from Marc Ambinder:

Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it. All are quick to tell you that the movement is a bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real.

They are: FreedomWorks, the conservative action group led by Dick Armey; dontGO, a tech savvy free-market action group that sprung out of last August’s oil-drilling debate in the House of Representatives; and Americans for Prosperity, an issue advocacy/activist group based on free market principles. Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities. Armey will appear at a major rally in Atlanta, FreedomWorks said.

All three groups vehemently deny that the movement is a product of AstroTurfing–fake grassroots activism organized from the top down–as some on the left have claimed. They will tell you that citizens-turned-activists, upset with President Obama’s economic agenda and the financial bailout, have been calling them, asking for help and how they can organize protests on Wednesday. The movement, they say, is entirely organic: they are mostly providing help and resources to this new class of outraged conservative free-market populists, some of whom are their own members and some of whom are outsiders to politics with whom they’ve never communicated before–not even on an e-mail list.

It is arguable how many of these tea parties actually received help from any one of the three conservative groups. And I can guarantee if this was a “top down” organizational effort, you wouldn’t have the probable wildly different turnouts in various parts of the country as you will have today. Some events will no doubt see participants in the thousands. Others, in the hundreds. Still others will see a couple of families on a busy street corner with homemade signs like “Honk if you hate socialism!” If it really was as organized as many on the left claim, it would be a different story.

And you always know when the left gets stymied by something when the race card is dusted off and taken lovingly off the shelf:

Were you wondering what happened to all the rabid, wild-eyed bigots yelling, “Kill him!” and “Terrorist” and “Socialist” carrying stuffed monkey plush dolls at the McCain-Palin rallies? It’s easy in our jubilation over Obama’s victory to forget the many people in America who were deeply fearful and hate-oriented towards an Obama presidency. Those people didn’t just shrug their shoulders at the Democratic victory in Nov 2008. No, they’ve re-organized. Largely abandoned by the Republican party who tapped cynically into their ignorance, fear and hatred and whipped these folks into a racist lather as a Get Out The Vote strategy, the Tax Day Tea Party people have used the internet to find each other and organize.

[snip]

I’ve been parsing the words and the racists have been very careful to cover their tracks and fury that a black man is President. But not well enough. I’m starting to become pretty convinced at this point that “socialist” is a some kind of code word for “nigger”. Here’s an example of some of the subtle language the Tea Party people are using to describe their own movement (emphasis mine) from the Michelle Malkin blog, a central hive for the poorly informed, wild-eyed, bigoted, Fox News/wingnut blog-driven lynch, ahem I mean Tea Partiers:

I love it when liberals use the word “nigger.” They get such a thrill from it, showing how “authentic” they are and all. The fact that they have done more to contribute to the virtual slavery of African Americans by making the impoverished among them so generationally dependent on government for survival, the dripping irony of showing “solidarity with the oppressed” escapes them.

But leaving what liberals think of the tea parties behind - as well the organizers should - there is a burning question that needs answering when the last protestor leaves the venue and heads home.

Nedryun at Next Right:

But I have one concern: We show up; we protest; we go home. But what comes next?    There are events in history that impact the direction a nation takes. This could be one of those moments. I know the organizers of the National Tax Day Tea Party have begun to think about it, and I am convinced that if done right, this could be the MoveOn.org moment for the conservative movement. Think about it: MoveOn.org began as a simple petition and email list, wanting people and leaders to move on from the Bill Clinton impeachment. Consider what it is today.   To help keep the momentum of the Tea Party Revolution going, American Majority has developed an After the Tea Party plan. My challenge to those attending the Tea Parties is this: we’re showing up to protest on behalf of freedom and limited government. But that should just be the beginning. We need to take it a step further if we want to see true freedom and limited government here in America. We need implementers of freedom and limited government. If people are really fed-up with the current elected leadership of this country, then they should think about becoming the next generation of leadership. We need people to channel their passion into part of a long-term approach, and run for local office (or become more effective activists). What if we have 1,000,000 people show up on the 15th? What if 5% take up this challenge to run for state and local office on free market, limited government principles? It would be the beginning of something very, very good for this country.   That’s what After the Tea Party is about. We want people to go to www.aftertheteaparty.com and sign up. American Majority will then train those who sign up to run for office or to become a more effective activist.   I’m posting this so I can help get the word out about After the Tea Party.

Ned recommends several common sense steps that can be taken in the aftermath of the tea parties that seem to me to be eminently reasonable and doable. I am going to sign up and I would hope everyone who attends a tea party does also.

Last night on my radio show, I asked the same question - what next? - to my guests Ed Lasky and Rich Baehr of The American Thinker. Will some conservative politician try and “adopt” the tea party movement and would that be a good thing? We all agreed that some kind of leadership is necessary but that the movement should strive to maintain its independence. Clearly, there must be some kind of clearinghouse for information and ideas as well as coordination with other organizers for future events. But beyond that, perhaps I was wrong when mocking the movement as little more than aping the plot of the old Andy Hardy movies where Mickey Rooney, in order to solve a finanical problem for a friend, would snap is fingers and cry out, “Hey Kids! Let’s put on a show!”

Perhaps that is a large part of the movement’s charm - and potential effectiveness. And I guess I was stupid not to see it.

UPDATE:

See also Pat Ruffini’s “The Rise of the Right’s New Distributed Online Activism” that details the significance of the tea party movement to what Pat and others have been trying to accomplish on the net.

As I peak out from under the couch where I was hiding these last few days, I note that the guests have departed and I can begin cleaning the spittle flecked walls and ceiling as well as get a start on blotting up the urine stains on the carpet. That was one drunken blog brawl and it will be a relief to go back to inhabiting my comfortably obscure corner of Blogdom.

But before I leave the subject entirely, there is a point to which I need to respond made by many commenters here and bloggers elsewhere; why piss on your own? What purpose is served by going after Beck (or other pop conservatives)? Can’t you just ignore Beck if you don’t like him? And relatedly; You are only playing into the hands of the left; you are allowing them to define acceptable conservative discourse.

I’ll take the second part first, Mr. Trebek. This is a point made by Stacey McCain, Jim Treacher, and others - that I am consciously (or subconsciously) accepting the narrative offered by the left on people like Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, and other conservatives; that we should ignore the exaggerations, the false contextualization of remarks, the cherry-picked quotes, that the left routinely uses to demonize them, and through them the entire right.

(Note: It is hard to “exaggerate” or “take out of context” many stunts pulled by Mr. Beck of late, a subject I will deal with later.)

I am sympathetic to this argument because the reverse is true as well; we should not pay any attention when liberals try and define what is acceptable discourse on the right by praising critics of pop conservatives as “smart” or “sane.” We should appreciate it when some liberals with a track record of rational analysis and thoughtful criticism comment favorably on our critiques of our side - even criticism that includes smacking down elitism and what McCain calls “The Assistant Secretary Syndrome” that damages conservative punditry. But in the main, the idea that we should respond Pavlovian-style to liberal criticism or praise is absurd.

But what about being true to oneself, to one’s own sense of the perception being formed by the electorate with regard to the hard right? The “take no prisoners” attitude on the part of many conservatives flies smack in the face of what most Americans want from the opposition today. What they crave are alternative ideas, reasonable criticism, and not the wild-eyed, fanatical, over the top warnings of a disappearing republic, fascism on the march, socialism, Communism, dictatorship, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria! It makes conservatism look ridiculous to the vast majority of non-elite, non-Inside-the-Beltway, voters. (You are already aware of how it plays with the elites both in and out of Washington.)

You can argue that much of this perception is due to an extremely unfriendly media that is in cahoots with liberals to smear conservatives. But give the people a little more credit than that. If we believe that it’s the media or the left’s fault when Glen Beck tries to create a conspiracy theory involving the Mercury Dime, the fasces, and fascism, we are in a deep state of denial.

In truth, I owe all you Beck supporters an apology. Not that I still don’t think he is unbalanced. Or that he doesn’t hugely exaggerate the dangers of what the government is doing under Obama. Or that he is irrational. Or that his appeal to some conservatives isn’t taking the movement over a cliff the more popular he becomes.

No - my apology is for getting too personal and calling him a “kook” and a “loon.” Those who took me to task for that were correct. My explanation is that I sometimes go for the giggle when I should stick to reasonable analysis.

After immersing myself in “Beckisms” and “Beckmania” for the last few days, I can say flat out that this guy is crazy like a fox. Allow me to explain.

I see the appeal, entertainment-wise, that Beck brings to the table. He has the same gifts of any good stand-up comedian. His sense of timing is impeccable. He has a good grasp of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to comedy. Occassionally, he misfires - the gasoline bit is a good example - but his rants appear to be calculated to get his listeners nodding in agreement as he alternates between a sort of rough hewn populism and really “out there” charges against Obama and the Democrats.

The hyperbole is incredible - literally. To my ears, his off the wall spoutings are very difficult to understand in any context save his desire to get a rise out of people. For example, he couldn’t possibly believe that the US has been headed for fascism “since Teddy Roosevelt” and that the Mercury dime has the symbol of Mussolini’s Fascist party on its back and that this is somehow indicative of Woodrow Wilson’s support for it, can he?

Here’s the transcript of the interview that Beck did with Sheldon Richman, current editor of the libertarian The Freeman which is published by the Foundation for Economic Education.

BECK: OK. I — first of all, am I wrong on this one, Sheldon? That what I’m seeing here is fascistic.

RICHMAN: You’re not wrong. The only thing I would do is broaden your perspective a little bit. We’ve been on this road a very, very long time.

BECK: Oh, I think we’ve been on this road since Teddy Roosevelt. And — I mean, look, I want to show you something. This is — explain what this is. Do you have feedback? This is that — this is all the sticks bound together in the axis. It’s the Roman symbol of fascism?

RICHMAN: This is what the fascists in Italy used as their symbol, which was this Roman depiction of a bundle of rods bound together with an ax coming out the top, which I assume is a symbol of a collective unity and force of power.

BECK: Right. OK, could you zoom in on this? Here it is — Harry, bring it forward a little bit. Zoom in right here.

This is — this is the Mercury Dime. On the back of the mercury dime — and Harry saw this earlier today. He works the gib camera that’s zooming in right now. They look familiar? This is the symbol of fascism.

Who brought this dime in? It happened in 1916, Woodrow Wilson was the president. I didn’t even put this together. We’ve have been on the road to fascism for a while.

Mr. Beck is trying to make a connection between the US government deliberately putting a symbol of fascism on a dime and Woodrow Wilson because…why? We wanted to announce that we supported fascism in a subtle way? Did we want to send signals to other fascists that we were with them? Was Wilson a closet fascist? Why in God’s name would the US government deliberately place a fascist symbol on its money?

Truth be told, what Beck refers to as the symbol of fascist Italy did not begin as a “fascist” symbol” but rather as a symbol of power “carried by lictors in front of magistrates” in ancient Rome. Even in modern times, the symbol was apparently used by a variety of Italian political parties from socialist to nationalist.

Um…the symbol is also found on the “seal of the United States Senate, the emblem on the back of the Mercury dime in the United States, the coat of arms of France, the wall of the debating chamber of the United States House of Representatives and the coat of arms of the Swiss Canton of St.Gallen.”

For a man who prides himself on having crackerjack researchers, are you trying to tell me that Google is unknown to them and they couldn’t have found the Wikpedia entry that I linked above? Most of the uses of of the fasces predates fascism itself.

There is no rational answer to why Mr. Beck was trying to connect the use of the fasces on the back of a dime with the idea that fascism has been on the march in America for a long time, culminating in President Obama’s efforts to quaisi-nationalize banks and auto companies. Beck’s trying to connect the dots here an exercise in sophistry, a monumental exaggeration of what Obama is doing, and either an ignorant or dishonest reading of history.

And this brings us back to the first part of the question that people were asking me; why bother? Beck is an entertainer. He speaks for the little guy. In the large scheme of things he doesn’t matter. Besides, he’s funny. He’s not serious about a lot of the things he says.

All of that may be true. But if you see someone running toward a gasoline dump with a lit match, what would you do? Say, “Ignore him, he doesn’t matter?” Or perhaps, “That’s pretty funny, someone trying to immolate himself.” Or maybe, “Man, this explosion and fireball is going to be so kewl!”

You can argue that I’m an idiot for believing this as many of you have and no doubt will continue to do so. But Beck and others like him, who constantly raise the specter of American doom, of Obama as commissar, the Democrats as Nazis, while imploring listeners to “take the country back” and start some kind of “revolution” are bat sh*t dangerous to the conservative movement. I am not convinced, as many on the left seem to be, that any of this hyperbolic rhetoric will lead to a massive outbreak of violence. But there is little doubt it marginalizes conservatives even more than they were on November 5 of last year and unless the tables can be turned and the Beck’s of the movement are themselves tossed to the sidelines, I fear that conservatism - yours, mine, the paleos, the neocons, the elites, and every kind of conservatism in between - will achieve the same kind of irrelvancy that liberalism experienced (for many of the same reasons) for much of the two decades preceding Obama’s election.

I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said that “Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.” It is my belief that unless the Beckian wing of the hard right is marginalized, we conseratives are going to learn the truth of that adage very shortly.

UPDATE

Comments are open. I have an itchy trigger finger.

Stacey McCain - The Other McCain - has a brilliant piece up on his site; a real tour de force that not only comments on my Glenn Beck piece yesterday, but also analyzes and dissects some of the systemic problems with conservatism and the GOP today.

I wish he’d write more about these issues. Stacey has a very sharp mind and clear writing style. And I want to be just like him when I grow up.

Don’t have time today to write a worthy response but I sent him this email this morning:

Your piece was a brilliant exposition of conservative philosophy and history of the Republican party. I have written quite a few similar tracts, making some of the same points you have about the GOP’s lack of a domestic policy and especially the crack up of the anti-Communist coalition that held the party together for so long. I have also commented in the past on your “Assistant Undersecretary” syndrome where appeals to authority appear more relevant to many in Washington than simply cracking good thinking and writing.

Given my long windedness, it would probably take me a couple of days to say everything you did in a few paragraphs. Well done.

Not exactly sure what you’re getting at with the elites vs.populists theme but some of it rings true. If you are trying to make the point that the conservative elite punditocracy places perception above principle, I would reluctantly agree to some extent but defend them by mentioning that even today with a myriad of news and information outlets, the big guns firing in the information wars are still liberal media and therefore, the perception shaped in the public’s mind does indeed matter. Accepting that as a fact of life, and recognizing that electoral success in the GOP depends at least partly on altering this perception of the party as a bunch of angry, southern white males who hate gays and blacks, love guns, and exhibit paranoia about government, it is understandable that some would seek to distance themselves from this perception.

I may be wrong in thinking this - and it certainly is winning me no friends - but there is an anti-intellectual strain in conservatism that bubbles to the surface every once in a while. Not talking about the fringe FEMA camp nonsense. I’m talking about a genuine resistance on the part of many conservatives today to the idea that there is more to the world than what the cotton candy conservatives say on the airwaves or write in their books. That nuance and subtlety are not always bad. That it’s OK to change your mind about an issue if the times change or you are exposed to new information. That allowing emotion to drive your thinking leads nowhere. And that there is a difference between ideology and philosophy.

I make no claims to being an intellectual or a deep thinker - never have. Don’t have the patience or the innate smarts for it. But like you, I have 5 decades of life experience and some common sense to apply to what our problems are. The fact that we fundamentally disagree about some things doesn’t mean we can’t agree on other issues.

Couple of things: I lived in the reddest county in Illinois for many years - rock ribbed Midwest Republicans in McHenry county.

I was thinking of Martin Anderson (Hoover Institution), not that blowhard John Anderson, who had a column in the 1980’s in WaPo and who wrote a couple of very interesting books including “Revolution” which some consider the most scholarly work on the Reagan years. He was a disciple of Rand, knew her personally, and attended many of her lectures.

And where I came up with “Fitzgerald” I will never know. I meant Jeanne Kirkpatrick (former IL sen. Patrick Fitzgerald?) who may not have been as conservative on domestic issues as many would like but no one can deny her brilliance or her passion.

I have read Road to Serfdom and have heard of Mises but have not read anything by him. I didn’t read Free to Choose until the 90’s (just never got around to it) but was a big fan of Friedman via the public TV series of the same name.

I am going to publish this email on my site as a response. Wish I had the time to do your piece justice. Perhaps on the weekend I will take a stab at a more in-depth critique.

Rick Moran

I hope you will forgive me in advance because this is one of those posts where I’m not exactly sure what I want to say but will know it when I eat it.

I know this drives most of you batty because this is one of those issues where I don’t stake out a position immediately and defend it to the last extremity. Most of the time, I prefer ideas to percolate a while, age a bit like a fine wine (or, my detractors might say like rancid beef). I like to play the angles on most issues because there is always more than one side to any argument and usually more than two sides. The world is not an “either/or” proposition and if that makes me a squish on some issues, so be it. The bane of my existence has been my meager academic record and loving parents who insisted their children learn how to think rather than make academic achievement an end unto itself. To ensure this, they exposed the 10 of us children to an extraordinary array of philosophers, historians, poets, essayists, novelists, and humorists who looked at the world from every possible angle. From Marx, to Montesquieu, to Mad Magazine, my dad’s library was a playhouse for the mind, and an enriching experience for the soul.

None of that plays well on the internet (or, these days, among most conservatives) as my dwindling number of blog readers and ever more strident critics never let me forget. But lest you take this for a whine, fear not. I am content to do as I have been doing for going on 5 years - wake up every day and write what I want, and share my thinking on whatever catches my fancy. And right now, I have bosses that put up with my apostasy and stand behind me - at some cost, I might add, as I have no doubt both American Thinker and Pajamas Media have lost some readership because I have pissed so many off. I am grateful for their support (and the continuation of my paychecks) which for the time being, allows me a freedom of expression that should be the envy of any political writer on either side of the divide.

Today, it is the critique by the left that somehow, the radical right has captured the conservative movement and, by extension, the Republican party. Liberals have temporarily abandoned the idea of trying to make Rush Limbaugh the leader of the conservatives and the GOP because Mr. Limbaugh has failed to cooperate by not being very radical lately or at least, loony tunes radical which is the standard by which the left wants to establish in people’s minds when they look at the right.

Instead, they have focused on another pop conservative in Glenn Beck, a big time talk radio host and a budding star on Fox News. Mr. Beck is the kind of “conservative leader” I warned about in this post when I wondered whether tapping into populist rage by stoking the rhetorical fires was such a good idea:

The inevitable populist backlash is predictable. The problem is that mass movements based on populist rage have generally led to untoward and unanticipated consequences. History is littered with these populist outbreaks - especially those that happen as a result of great cultural and economic changes being enacted by a perceived elite. The last major populist movement in America was George Wallace’s candidacy in 1968 (to a much lesser extent in 1964 and 72) that saw the Alabama governor get an astonishing 13.5% of the vote and carry 5 states in the general election. Wallace tapped into the rage and fear being felt by white, working class men who felt threatened (thanks to Wallace’s sneering, bigoted rhetoric) by African American agitation for equality. Nixon and the GOP then mainstreamed the tactic albeit using much more subtle language and even Clinton got into the act with his famous “Sister Souljah Moment,” assuring whites he wouldn’t pander to black racists like Jesse Jackson (Clinton is the only Democrat since JFK to carry any states of the traditional “Deep South.).

Tapping in to the rage of taxpayers by exploiting their fears then, would almost certainly result in unanticipated problems for the GOP. But beyond that, is this the way the Republicans wish to return to power? The Rovian strategy of using wedge issues to cleave the electorate over gay marriage, abortion, and other social issues got Republicans elected but also sowed the seeds of their own destruction. By the time 2008 rolled around, those wedge issues had lost their potency and there was ample evidence of a backlash by center-right and center-left moderates against the GOP and their perceived intolerance. It was Obama who exploited this backlash by promising to govern based on not what divides us but by what unites us. His “post partisan” message - a campaign gimmick we know now - resonated powerfully with the center who had tired of the back biting and poisonous partisan atmosphere in Washington and longed for “change.”

(Side note: Many commenters mentioned Ross Perot’s third party insurgency as the last “populist” uprising which is true to a certain extent but hardly compares to the fear and rage present in 1968 or today.)

I know many conservatives adore Glenn Beck. He has an everyman demeanor and an obvious deep and abiding love of America which serves as a tonic for many on the right in these sometimes depressing times. I wouldn’t call him thougtful but he is not without brains and appears to prep very well for his radio and TV shows.

But Glenn Beck is also something of a kook. Back in March, he claimed that he had been doing “research” on the so-called “internment camps” where first, liberals claimed the government was making ready for them and now some conspiracy minded conservatives believe Obama is preparing for the right (Don’t you wish the government would make up its mind?). He made the statement that he couldn’t “debunk” the story and added, “”If you have any fear that we might be heading toward a totalitarian state, look out. There is something happening in our country and it ain’t good.”

I don’t care where you are on the ideological spectrum, anyone who believes we may be headed for dictatorship is a loon. I could agree with that last statement but when it is preceded by such a fantastically ridiculous notion that Obama and the Democrats are going to cancel elections, or disband the Supreme Court, or initiate other actions that would be necessary to turn this country in a totalitarian haven, any rational American has to ask if this fellow isn’t a couple of shakes short of a martini. I was relieved to hear that he brought in a writer from Popular Mechanics to debunk the FEMA camp story recently but that doesn’t change the fact that Beck lacks the ability to think rationally.

Of course, that’s not the only thing Beck has said over the years. Asking Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim:

And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”

And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Beck can say that he loves Muslims all he wants and it won’t change the fact that asking that question brands him as a bigoted kook. We gave up on religious tests at the same time we ratified the Constitution. Conservatives who don’t see a problem with the way Beck “feels” about asking that question - admitting his own prejudice and ignorance - I say for shame. It is no different than asking John F. Kennedy if he could be a “loyal American” and a Catholic at the same time, referring to a Catholic’s supposed allegiance to the Vatican. It is a monumental insult and, at bottom, anti-American. Ellison himself may be something of a crackpot but to place him on the same plane as Bin Laden is irrational.

Here’s an exchange with another problem pop conservative Chuck Norris on Beck’s radio show:

GLENN: Somebody asked me this morning, they said, you really believe that there’s going to be trouble in the future. And I said, if this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country, which it would have under I think the Republicans as well in this situation; they were taking us to the same place, just slower.

NORRIS: It was slower, yeah.

GLENN: Americans will, they just, they won’t stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up. And they said, where’s that going to come from? And I said Texas, it’s going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that, Chuck, or not?

NORRIS: Oh, yeah. You know, Texas is a republic, you know. We could actually —

GLENN: It was a country before it was a state.

NORRIS: Yeah, we could break off from the union if we wanted to.

GLENN: You do, you call me.

NORRIS: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: Seriously, you do. I don’t mind having that lone star on my flag. I really don’t mind it. I’ve been out with a seam ripper looking at my flag going, I don’t know, California could go. I’m just saying —

I listened to this audio and these guys weren’t joking around. They were dead serious. Well, Norris seemed to be having a little fun at Beck’s expense. But even if you think Beck was joking around, the way he said it would give most of his listeners the idea that he was serious.

Now, if someone wants to make a case that this was a rational, reasoned response to our current crisis, I would first put you in a padded room and then give you some crayons to play with. Perhaps one of things that attracts many fringe righties to Beck is that often, he appears to be barely under control, as if powerful emotions have a hold of him and only with a mighty, conscious effort is he able to keep from erupting into spasms of emotive irrationality. This plays well especially on TV where Beck has been reduced to near tears several times when contemplating what America is becoming.

Now, there are plenty of other instances where Beck has gone off the deep end - at least according to the left. The examples above were ones that I tried to thoroughly research because the effort underway on the left to discredit conservatives includes the long time liberal strategy of telling one and all exactly what conservatives are thinking - even when they’re not. This piece in Politico is an example of how the left “interprets” conservatives:

The Republicans find themselves caught between two countervailing forces: the need to craft a policy agenda that appeals to middle-class Americans and the need to maintain the support of an angry base of voters that is alienated from, and suspicious of, the new president.

Beck, who with no sense of irony favorably compares himself to Howard Beale, is taking the latter course — with a vengeance. While Democrats have sought to tie Republicans to Rush Limbaugh, his attacks are tame compared with those of Beck, who spoke recently of creeping fascism as visuals of Nazi rallies played behind him. His occasionally unhinged attacks of strung-together nonsequiturs about the evils of Big Government provide little in the way of constructive solutions to the country’s vast problems. But this is also true of what we are hearing from Republican leaders.

The author of this piece is a former Dodd speechwriter and a fellow at the New America Institute, a think tank with a decided lefty tilt. Don’t you love the way he characterizes Beck’s attacks as “unhinged?” Not all are, of course. It’s just that Mr. Cohen happens to love Big Government and hence, any attack on it by definition is “unhinged.”

So too the liberal’s idea of “far right” which usually places someone referred to as such somewhere to the left of David Brooks. Suffice it to say, allowing the left to define conservatives and try to discredit them by marginalizing even mainstream righties is a breeze when kooks like Glenn Beck give them fodder for their critiques almost every day.

Stacey McCain:

So there seems to be a certain sort of bipartisan consensus that the GOP is now fully committed to pandering to Buchananites, Birchers, goldbugs, gun nuts, Paulistas and sundry fringe types, and yet . . . I dunno. I’m not feeling the love here.

Do any of my fellow right-wing extremists share this perception? You there — reloading your 7.62 ammo in the Idaho cabin while listening to the short-wave militia broadcast — do you feel as if you’re now part of the woof and weave of the GOP tapestry?

How is it that Charles Johnson and Christopher Orr both think Glenn Beck (whose Fox show I’ve never watched, BTW) represents the camel’s nose in the tent, a dangerous intrusion of crackpottery into the Republican mainstream, while the genuine wingnuts still feel as ostracized and alienated as ever? Is this a consensus or . . . a conspiracy?

The reason that the fringe still feels alienated is because people like Beck are making a living by playing to those feelings and fears, stoking the fire that manifests itself in feelings of helplessness and anger. I don’t buy Cohen’s thesis but at the same time, you cannot ignore the rise of people like Beck whose fantasies about Obama and the Democrats trying to turn this country into a socialist nation (or Communist) rather than implement a far left liberal agenda; or confiscate weapons instead of infringing the rights of gun owners through draconian legislation and regulations; or permanently appropriating auto and financial companies instead of bailing them out and imposing stifling rules that will make them less competitive — all are serious and undermine our liberties and the free market but are so far from “totalitarianism” as to not be believable. There are rational critiques of everything Obama is doing without having to resort to exaggeration, hyperbole, and simple looniness. I wish Beck and others would realize that.

Of course, rational criticism don’t pay the bills in this day and age so the more dire you can make the situation sound, the more eager people will be to tune you in and revel in their own feelings of betrayal. By listening or watching Beck, people know that like minded patriots are experiencing the same fears and frustrations that they are, making those who tune in part of a community. We saw this exact same phenomena during the Bush years with the left and the widespread belief in a draft; in “another 9/11″ in order to cancel the election of both 2006 and 2008; in the almost weekly “We’re going to invade Iran” rumors; and, of course, the usual black helicopter and FEMA camp nonsense. Hofstadter was right. The “First Party System” - where the party out of power believes the other party will destroy the country - is alive and well in America.

Beck worries me. Conservatives worry me. I worry about myself. I feel trapped in a huge ball of cotton, trying gamely to make my way out but don’t know which direction to start pushing. I am losing contact with those conservatives who find Beck anything more than a clown - and an irrational one at that. Same goes for those who worship at the altar of Rush, Hannity, Coulter, and the whole cotton candy conservative crowd. I can’t take those people seriously. The fact that they are popular mystifies me. Our heroes 20 years ago were Reagan, Buckley, Kirkpatrick, Kirk, Goldwater, Martin Anderson, and others who didn’t see conservatism as a meal ticket but as something to think about, to write about and contemplate man’s place in the world and his relationship to government and God.

Is it really a question of elites versus the rest? I hardly think my little blog catapults me into that exclusive club. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I’m too stuck in my ways. Perhaps I have stagnated while the rest of the conservative movement has gone on without me. As I said at the beginning, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

UPDATE

How do I know that many who visit this site have the reading comprehension skills of a three toed sloth?

Three or four comments already informing me that Beck recently had on a writer from Popular Mechanics to debunk the FEMA camp conspiracy theory. Guess they missed this above:

I was relieved to hear that he brought in a writer from Popular Mechanics to debunk the FEMA camp story recently but that doesn’t change the fact that Beck lacks the ability to think rationally.

Now the rest of you don’t have to tell me what I’ve already written.

An interesting discussion piece in today’s Washington Times by Big Hollywood’s Andrew Breitbart that tries and make the case that Americans today, compared to the “Greatest Generation” that fought World War II, are a bunch of weak willed wimps, enamored of wealth and privilege while being frightened of our own shadow. In short, we are a bunch of self-indulgent philistines who lack the capacity to deal with the numerous crisis in our midst.

We’ve all heard this rant before - as I’m sure the “Greatest Generation” heard it from their elders back in the 1930’s and the generation before them, and on backwards to the founding of the republic where as early as Washington’s administration, ministers were bemoaning the loss of the “revolutionary spirit” and the desire by a majority of the populace for “material possessions” rather than seeking spiritual uplift. I guess it goes without saying that the more things change, the more likely the previous generation sees a danger that American values are threatened.

The question: Is it truer today than it was in the past? Has something “gone out” of America in the last decade or two?

Breitbart cites 9/11 as clear evidence that something has:

Signs of our collective weakness emerged after 9/11 when only part of the American population took seriously that we were at war with an evil and motivated enemy determined to destroy our way of life. Since then, al Qaeda has refused to quit despite debilitating losses.

Clearly, our national will is wilting away.

Following the tragic lead of Europe, too many Americans no longer want to engage our external threats head-on. And on the domestic front, we are confronting the economic crisis of our lifetime with the same full-steam-ahead spending-spree mind-set that got us into the mess to begin with.

We say: Let’s create more government dependency, reward the incompetent and print more money.

That’s doubling down on stupidity.

We are a trust-fund nation (picture Tori Spelling in the Lifetime Channel role of her career) whose BMW has run out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert after a pointless 115-miles-per-hour joy ride. The credit cards are maxed out. We’re out of cell phone range. And dad, who just got taken by Uncle Bernie Madoff, wouldn’t take the call anyway.

I would say that Mr. Breitbart is off base. Much more than a “part” of the population wants to confront al-Qaeda. The question up for debate - and still being debated - is what is the best way to go about doing that? There are those of us who believe that we must hit them militarily and keep hitting them no matter where they hide. Many others believe that this strategy “creates more terrorists” and wants to see a more studied approach to the threat that would rely almost exclusively on intelligence and law enforcement actions to break up terrorist cells before they can strike.

Is one approach “wimpier” than the other? Is the law enforcement path less in tune with our values and national character? I have been struggling with this question since 9/11 and I still don’t have an answer as far as which path would keep us safer although the biggest drawback to the law enforcement/intelligence argument is that it isn’t proactive enough, that it presupposes we will be hit and that the response to terrorism should be grounded in bringing the perpetrators to “justice.” In the nuclear age, this is myopic in the extreme which is why I come down on attacking al-Qaeda and keeping them constantly off balance and unable to mount a serious attack.

But that’s not the question. Breitbart is positing the notion that people who oppose this kind of war lack intestinal fortitude and other qualities that made the World War II generation the “Greatest.” I reject that idea as silly - turning a political/policy argument into a litmus test for who better represents the “real America.” (Liberals and others who support the police/law enforcement approach are equally silly when they accuse those of us who support a more proactive approach as being “warmongers.”) Ideally, a combination of the two policies would probably work best although it is never that simple.

But the argument over how to confront terrorism after 9/11 is symptomatic of something much deeper and Breitbart continuously misses the boat when he lays out arguments like this in describing the Baby Boom generation:

We are a trust-fund nation (picture Tori Spelling in the Lifetime Channel role of her career) whose BMW has run out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert after a pointless 115-miles-per-hour joy ride. The credit cards are maxed out. We’re out of cell phone range. And dad, who just got taken by Uncle Bernie Madoff, wouldn’t take the call anyway.

The silent generation, which learned valuable lessons from the Depression and World War II, is not here to guide us through these difficult times. The narcissistic baby boomers, who probably think this song is about them, are now firmly in charge. And that’s the rub.

It’s a clever metaphor but hardly the point. Mr. Breitbart hasn’t been paying attention because what he is describing is nothing new. Since the mid 1980’s, Americans have been in hock up to their eyeballs and the economy has been wholly dependent on how willing consumers have been to pile on personal debt. There is nothing new in Americans buying more house than they need or can afford nor is there anything earth shattering in the extraordinary number of citizens who try and escape their bad personal financial decisions by declaring bankruptcy which has been on the rise for a quarter century. It’s not just the boomers who have become irresponsible but their children and now grandchildren.

We are coming up on the 64th anniversary of the end of World War II. In those 64 years America has seen the rise of democratic socialism in the form of a very large and intrusive welfare state that has destroyed the notion of “self reliance” and substituted dependency for the underclass. What of the rest of us? Are we, as Breitbart suggests, a “trust fund nation?” Andrew must lead a very sheltered life. I look around me and see my neighbors struggling - in good times and bad - to make their way through life, raising their children, finding happiness wherever they can, and still believing in an America that he and I would definitely recognize.

These and tens of millions of other families outside of Andrew’s Hollywood bubble have not abandoned the ideals of prudence, independence, self-reliance, and the American way of life. They have not given up on helping their neighbor. They refuse to yield on moral questions about which they feel passionately. They haven’t completely lost faith in our institutions although the last several years has tested that faith.

There is a small percentage of irresponsibles who do not share these values and have totally abandoned them. And yet Mr. Breitbart sees fit to lump the rest of us in with these profligates? Is it because so many voted for Obama?

When the going gets tough, the weak go on Leno.

I can’t get out of my head that the leader of the free world gave the British prime minister 25 films on DVD that don’t even work in U.K. machines.

I can’t wrap my head around the fact that the commander in chief tried (for a minute anyway) to require injured warriors to pay to have private insurers take care of their treatment.

I can’t believe the president would allow the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dictate the terms of his budget - and Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, the symbols of government kowtowing to Wall Street - to be spokesmen for his financial bailout.

And did President Obama really produce a YouTube video to appease President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs of Iran?

Yes, he did.

These aren’t beginner’s mistakes. These are his core incompetencies.

So because we voted an incompetent into office, this proves that our “national will is wilting away?” Pardon me if I am completely unimpressed.

What Mr. Breitbart is really railing against are our elites. Many of them have indeed become overly cynical, hypocritical, greedy, grasping and acquisitive. There has been a massive failure of leadership in America - both parties, the business world, in organized labor, the intelligentsia, and most especially, the political class that includes politicians, bureaucrats, big media, and the loosely defined gaggle of academic intellectuals, policy wonks, and think tankers who play such a large role in actually governing the country. To say that they have all let us down is an understatement. Be as partisan as you like but no one can escape blame for our current mess.

It seems our elites have got it in their head that once they reach a certain level of achievement in America, they have a license to rob, cheat, and steal everything that isn’t nailed down. This sense of entitlement is perhaps the most damaging aspect of modern America. And I would say to Mr. Breitbart that this is a cross-generational phenomenon and not confined to the boomers. The president of the United States is making the argument that it is “greed” that is to blame. Such simple minded idiocy we might expect from a sophomore in high school (or a liberal). Greed is a symptom of the much larger problem that we refuse to face; a loss of faith in our institutions and, more directly, in each other.

At bottom, we don’t know who we are anymore. The old verities - as comforting as an pair of old shoes - don’t describe what we have become the last 50 years; a modern, industrialized nation, wired from one end of the continent to the other, that has destroyed regional differences (which played such a huge role in our development) and united us as we have never been united before. What does “self reliance” mean when we depend so much on government for such mundane things as making sure we have clean water to drink or safe highways, or bridges that won’t collapse, or prevent us from buying products that might kill or injure our children? You can claim “self reliance” all you want but how meaningful is it when you can’t even turn on the faucet without the help of government?

We have yet to translate these American values into modern nomenclature. The values aren’t anachronistic, only the way we define them. This is something I have been preaching for many months as I have struggled to redefine conservatism for my own aggrandizement. I’m not sure how to go about doing it, only that it needs to be done. We are, most of us, looking at an America through a spyglass that is giving us a view of the past, not an America is it exists today. And the biggest rub is we wouldn’t know how to describe it even if we could see it. There are no touchstones, no signposts that can aid us in coming to grips with this brave new world.

The practical effect of this is it has unmoored so many and set adrift the idea of a shared American experience so that morals and values become meaningless. This leads to excesses in our culture, hedonism, a catering to our own pleasures, and a destructive selfishness that goes beyond simple minded ideas of “greed” and warps the fabric of our national polity.

All of this, for lack of leadership.

Breitbart believes he has the “answer:”

The last time I felt this hopeless was when the Democratic Party and its cohorts in the media sold us on the false premise that we lost the war in Iraq. In the process, they also sought to demonize the very man that led us out of our peril.

His name is Gen. David H. Petraeus.

Less than two months into the Obama presidency, which appears to be lost somewhere in the Mojave Desert, I have decided to try to soothe my anxieties by placing my hope in a political surge.

In the election of 2010, Republicans should run heroic veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom who exhibited the will and fortitude to defeat the enemy and to rebuild a torn nation, even while too many of their fellow countrymen wrote them off.

And in 2012, the man President Obama’s staunchest allies called “General Betray Us” should come in with guns blazing and defeat the man whose only weapon to lead us to victory is a teleprompter.

Generals make lousy presidents, generally speaking and politically inexperienced generals have been disasters. The exception is Eisenhower who lived and breathed politics for 3 years as Supreme Allied Commander, working the miracle of keeping a coalition together that featured ultra-capitalist and ultra-marxist states, not to mention maintaining a good relationship with some of the prickliest, most outsized personalities in world history including FDR, Churchill, Stalin, and DeGaulle. Ike was born to be president and made a damn fine one.

But Petreaus? He may in fact be an improvement as far as leadership is concerned over the current occupant of the White House (whose interview on 60 Minutes was almost surreal in the way he giggled about economic disaster), but it is ridiculous to believe the good general is the answer to a prayer. General Petreaus would almost certainly be just as dependent on a teleprompter as President Obama given his extraordinary lack of experience in the political arena. And the fact that Obama depends on the device isn’t the problem; it’s that we were sold a bill of goods on how articulate he was without one. How Petreaus would be an improvement in that regard is immaterial to whether he could do a better job with the economy. Since we don’t have a clue what the General thinks on that issue, the whole idea of him running for president is moot.

None of this deals with the core problem I mentioned above - of an America that is in the midst of a gigantic upheaval of which we have yet to come to grips. I imagine time will be the balm that soothes our distress. This is generally true of all big historical changes. But in the meantime, we are apparently in for a very rough ride, being led by a president with his own ideas of what values and traditions are important in America. He will decide which are important enough to save and which should be tossed under the bus.

I am still trying to digest what everyone agrees was an important speech by Rush Limbaugh to CPAC attendees on Saturday. It was, perhaps, the most entertaining political speech I’ve ever heard. But a speech that will last for decades and make an impact on the conservative movement? No one knows. But we can try and judge it based on some solid principles of what makes a good political speech.

I have often pointed to Theodore H. White’s definition of what goes into the making of a good political speech - the moment in history when the speech is given, the background or “framing” of the speech, and the words themselves. In these respects, Limbaugh hit a stand up double and, with a little more effort, may have stretched it to a triple. The moment in history was ripe; conservatism at sea, rudderless, and uncertain of itself in the age of Obama. The backdrop - the CPAC convention with just about everyone who is anyone in the conservative movement present and paying attention (exceptions include some more moderate conservatives frozen out by the movement) as well as mass media coverage. But the words themselves meandered aimlessly at times as Limbaugh treated the address more like an extended monologue from his radio show rather than a well crafted, carefully thought out political speech.

Newt Gingrich also spoke to a large, enthusiastic crowd at CPAC but didn’t get half the coverage of Limbaugh despite a speech that, in many ways, was even more important than Rush’s tour de force. The difference in the two speeches was striking. Rush eschewed a teleprompter - to his detriment I think while Newt used the device to say exactly what he meant to say. Meanwhile, Gingrich had his ideas bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, churning and frothing on the surface until they were laid out like a picnic lunch, cogently and coherently by a master conceptualist. Limbaugh’s speech was more volcanic- erupting against Obama and the Democrats emotionally while flowing effortlessly from pop culture conservatism to a more thoughtful but still generalized critique of the Obama administration.

The juvenile confrontation yesterday between Limbaugh and RNC Chairman Michael Steele, placed in the context of Limbaugh’s extended remarks at CPAC, would lead one to believe that there is the possibility of a civil war erupting in the GOP between the grass roots and the elites. That may yet happen. However, I think it much more likely that war will break out between movement conservatives like Gingrich and “party men” like Limbaugh.

Who is Rush Limbaugh? And why did the only other speech of note at the conference - New Gingrich’s much more thoughtful but flawed critique of conservatism - not receive the massive attention devoted to Limbaugh?

Because Rush is on radio? I’m sure that’s part of it. But beyond that, one speaker gave the audience largely what they wanted to hear, putting into words the feelings and fears of listeners while the other engaged the minds of his audience by relating some uncomfortable but necessary truths. In that kind of competition, the appeal to emotion wins out over the appeal to intellect every time.

Limbaugh does not fit any of the comfortable definitions that liberals and the media love to apply to conservatives. Calling him a mere talk show host is simply wrong and reveals the ignorance of anyone who tries and make that claim. Limbaugh has crossed the cultural divide and, like Obama, become more than a political figure (or entertainer) and achieved a peculiar kind of celebrity. Ross Douthat believes a more appropos comparison is with Oprah Winfrey, someone who crosses easily between the entertainment and political world. In this respect, the irony is that both men start from the other side of that divide. Limbaugh, the entertainer has passed Obama while on the way to achieving his status as political bellweather of the GOP. Meanwhile, Obama was moving the other way, from political force to cultural celebrity. Loved by their legions of supporters, despised by their opponents (with both men generating a hate from their opponents that mirrors the passion of their supporters), the deliciousness of this parallel between the two men shows both the strengths and weaknesses of our political culture.

But Limbaugh’s status is a millstone around the neck of conservatism. Despite his obvious gift of a sharp mind and his presenting the clear impression that he has given a considerable amount of thought to the nature of modern conservatism, Limbaugh nevertheless has a rather narrow and even shallow view of what conservatism is and where it stands right now.

Limbaugh’s speech appealed to the heart, rather than the head.

For those of you just tuning in on the Fox News Channel or C-SPAN, I’m Rush Limbaugh and I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed. [Applause] Also, for those of you in the Drive-By Media watching, I have not needed a teleprompter for anything I’ve said. [Cheers and Applause ]  And nor do any of us need a teleprompter, because our beliefs are not the result of calculations and contrivances. Our beliefs are not the result of a deranged psychology. Our beliefs are our core. Our beliefs are our hearts. We don’t have to make notes about what we believe. We don’t have to write down, oh do I believe it do I believe that we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively. Some of us just haven’t had the inspiration or motivation to do so in a number of years, but that’s about to change. [Cheers and Applause]

Limbaugh struggles to move beyond these show biz tropes when he gets into what he describes as a definition of conservatism:

Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. [Applause] When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government. [Applause]

We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. [Applause] We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness. [Applause] Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you.

Aside from the small matter that the quote about “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” appears not in the preamble to the Constitution but the Declaration of Independence, that is a very nice start to explaining what conservatism means.

But after telling the audience he was going to define conservatism, Limbaugh flits away off to another red meat topic guaranteed to light a fire under his listeners. His bragging about not needing to write down what his principles are because “we can tell people what we believe off the top of our heads and we can do it with passion and we can do it with clarity, and we can do it persuasively,” may be true as far as it goes but I am reminded of Francis Bacon’s admonition “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” Judging by Rush’s speech, he was anything but “exact.”

But this didn’t seem to bother his thousands of admirers as he hammered away gleefully at Obama and liberals. Here, Rush shows he’s somewhat familiar with Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s critique of the effect of the welfare state on Black families and gets to the nub of the Obama revolution; dependency:

They do believe that they have compassion. They do believe they care. But, see, we never are allowed to look at the results of their plans, we are told we must only look at their good intentions, their big hearts. The fact that they have destroyed poor families by breaking up those families by offering welfare checks to women to keep having babies no more father needed, he’s out doing something, the government’s the father, they destroy the family. We’re not supposed to analyze that. We’re not supposed to talk about that. We’re supposed to talk about their good intentions. They destroy people’s futures. The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It’s not change, and it’s not hope. [Applause] Spending a nation into generational debt is not an act of compassion. All politicians, including President Obama, are temporary stewards of this nation. It is not their task to remake the founding of this country. It is not their task to tear it apart and rebuild it in their image.

(Crowd chanting “USA”)

It is not their task, it is not their right to remake this nation to accommodate their psychology. I sometimes wonder if liberalism is not just a psychosis or a psychology, not an ideology. It’s so much about feelings, and the predominant feeling that liberalism is about is about feeling good about themselves and they do that by telling themselves they have all this compassion. You know, if you really want to unhinge a liberal it’s hard to do because they’re so unhinged now anyway, even after — but all you have to do is say you know that the things you people do, the things you people believe in are cruel. That’s the last way they look at themselves. They are the best people on the — they’re the good people. You tell them that their ideas and that their policies are cruel and the eggs start scrambling.

But it was Rush’s references to Reagan that put him at odds with reformers like Gingrich. Limbaugh believes talk of “change” is treason. There is nothing wrong with conservatism that wouldn’t be cured by transplanting the Reagan agenda to the present:

Conservatism — for us to make the decision that we’ve got to figure out policies, to get the Walmart voter — psst, we’ve got most of them already, is the bottom line. Conservatism is a universal set of core principles. You don’t check principles at the door. This is a battle that we’re going to have. And there are egos involved here, too. When the situation like ours exists, there are people who want to lead it. They want to redefine it. Their egos are such that they want to be the next X, whoever it is. So there will be different factions lining up to try to define what conservatism is. And beware of those different factions who seek as part of their attempt to redefine conservatism, as making sure the liberals like us, making sure that the media likes us. They never will, as long as we remain conservatives. They can’t possibly like us; they’re our enemy. In a political arena of ideas, they’re our enemy. They think we need to be defeated. Why do you think — you all in this room know this. For those of you watching at home, my first address to the nation — [Laughter] — I’m sure you paid close enough attention, that you knew at one time Senator McCain was the favorite Republican of all the cable news networks and the Sunday shows. And they would just — I mean their tongues would be on the floor. The media people (panting) when they knew McCain was coming. And they would treat McCain as the greatest guy in the world. Did you wonder why? You were told he was moderate. He was not strict. He was not an authoritarian, he was able to walk to the other side of the aisle, able to get along with the enemy. And everybody wants love and bipartisanship.

That’s not why they invited Senator McCain. They invited Senator McCain because he happened to be the loudest at criticizing his own president and his own party and that’s what they want, is people from our side — and there will be factions in our movement, folks, who are going to make an effort to say we have to grow, we can’t stay stale, I think I heard the term used the other day. Nothing stale about freedom. There’s nothing stale about liberty. There’s nothing stale about fighting for it. Nothing stale whatsoever. [Applause] Freedom. Are you getting tired of standing up, I don’t blame you. By the way for those watching on TV you think the standing — people are just tired. They’ve been up and out of their chairs 100 times here. [Applause] Thank you. Freedom — freedom is the natural yearning of the human spirit as we were endowed by our creator. And the United States of America is the place in the world where that yearning flourishes, where freedom is expected because it’s part of the way we’re created.

I will say frankly that this is the nuttiest part of Limbaugh’s speech. There is probably no one answer to what ails conservatism but there is widespread agreement among profressionals that people like Rush, who wish to repeal not only the Great Society but also the New Deal, are anachronisms. It is not going to happen - ever. The question then becomes do conservatives chase a will o’ the wisp goals that guarantee them permanent minority status or do they apply conservative principles to government as it is and not as we would wish it to be?

I am a broken record saying this as my regular readers know. Since I began promoting this course of action, several commenters have made some excellent points that reveal glaring weaknesses in this formulation. To wit.

* There is a danger that anything proposed by conservatives in Congress would be seen simply as “liberal lite” and voters would give the GOP no credit for dealing with reality.

* The nature of the opposition would make any effort to apply conservative principles to governance moot.

* There is also a danger of throwing our principles under the bus in an effort to compromise.

* The American people are basically conservative and all we have to do is become more conservative ourselves to win.

This will not be an easy or quick route back to power. But I believe a recognition that for conservatism to be vital it must be brought into the 21st century where appeals to the heart fall by the wayside and calls for new thinking dominate. Here’s Gingrich at CPAC (unfortunately I have been unable to acquire a transcript of this speech and only have these extended excerpts):

The great irony of where we are today is that we have a Bush- Obama big spending program that was bipartisan in its nature. Last year the Bush-Obama plan had a $180 billion stimulus package in the spring which failed. It came back with a $345 billion housing package in the summer which failed. It then had a $700 billion Wall Street spending package in October which failed. It had a $4 trillion Federal Reserve guarantee which failed… We got big spending under Bush, now we got big spending under Obama. And so we have 2 new failures. The lesson I draw from this is that we have a party of the American people… that was led by Ronald Reagan and on the legislative side reached its peak with the Contract with America and the election of a majority actually dedicated to reforming welfare, cutting taxes, and balancing the budget. And there is a party of big government and political elites and tragically in the last few years the Republican party became the right wing of the party of big government and political elites. And that is why there is a Bush Obama continuity in economic policy which is frankly a disaster for this country and cannot work.”

I find it fascinating that both men invoke the name of Reagan in two entirely different theaters. Rush points to Reagan’s core beliefs as set in stone - despite the fact that 48% of Americans already pay no taxes at all. How across the board tax cuts would generate the trillions in revenue to offset the damage already done by Obama goes unanswered.

On the other hand, Gingrich takes the Gipper’s desire to reach out to Democrats and independents and uses it as a model for a conservative comeback. Note also that where Rush almost exclusively talks of Republicans, Gingrich speaks more generally about conservatives.

I consider this the most important statement made during the entire week:

And so it is time to recreate the party of the American people and to recognize that that is a much bigger party than the Republican party. In every major political speech Ronald Reagan reached out to Democrats and Independents as well as Republicans, and he understood to govern in America you have to bring people together in a tripartisan majority. We are bigger than the Republican party, we stand for principles that transcend the Republican party, and we’re going to fight for the principles that lead to economic growth and jobs.”

It is implicit in forming this “tri-partisan majority” that some aspects of the welfare state as well as regulatory agencies are remade to function according to conservative principles and not done away with entirely as many Limbaugh conservatives would like to see. Too many Americans benefit from these government programs for the Middle Class to abandon them in favor of some nebulous promise that suffering by denying oneself benefits from government is somehow enobling. In a modern state of 300 million people, the Jeffersonian “yeoman farmer” model of the republic is a fantasy that, if it ever was true, hasn’t been so for more than 100 years.

Limbaugh, the Iconoclast vs. Gingrich the Conceptualizer. That is where the movement will cleave most noticably. One side living in the past, fantasizing about recapturing conservative greatness by stroking Reagan’s name and accomplishments as if they were a magic talisman designed to wipe away the modern world and lead us back to some ancien regime where everyone bagged their own meat, built their own houses, and churned their own butter. The other, dealing with life in America as it is in the 21st century - an enormously complex clash of interests where conservatism must find a comfortable place in which to compete in the great marketplace of ideas.

It will be a lovely little war.

Both of them should stick a sock in it.

When Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican party, so violently disrespects mega star talk show host Rush Limbaugh, one has to wonder what sh*t for brains political outfit elected this numbskull to any position higher than Front Door Greeter.

Rule #1 in politics; never hand your opponents a club with which to beat you over the head. Rule #2 is “Don’t eat your own.” Steele broke both those rules and a few others by essentially adopting his opponent’s narrative regarding Limbaugh and opening a wound in the party and among conservatives that will not be easy to heal:

“Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh’s whole thing is entertainment,” Steele said. “Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly.”

Last month, Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, was elected chair of the RNC. He is the first African-American to lead the Republican Party. At the time of his election, Steele said that “Rush will say what Rush has to say; we’ll do what we have to do.”

And I’m very happy to report that at least Steele knows who signs his paycheck:

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele is taking issue with the notion that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the GOP, calling the conservative radio talk show host an entertainer whose comments can be ugly.

Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview with CNN that he, rather than Limbaugh, is “the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”

Greg Sargent, pushing the newest liberal talking point that Republicans want Obama to fail (while failing to point out that many on the left spent the last 6 years celebrating casualties and hoping for a defeat of American arms in Iraq while gleefully predicting a recession was just around the corner every month) reports that Steele isn’t apologizing:

The problem for Steele, of course, is that by hitting Rush — and provoking a response from the talk show host — he’s left himself in the unenviable position of having to answer Rush’s implicit demand that he say whether he’s With Rush Or Against Him when it comes to Rush’s desire for Obama to fail. It’s not a good position to be in: Either Steele distances himself from Rush and angers the base, or he throws in his lot with the GOP’s pro-failure brigade and makes it easier for Dems to paint the GOP as petulant, partisan obstructionists.

Amusingly, either choice would help Rush: The first gives him a potent rallying point, and the second demonstrates his power over the party. What’s more, all this underscores again the astonishing degree to which the interests of Rush and Democrats are aligned here, since both Rush and Democrats want Steele, and every other Republican, to publicly make exactly the same choice.

This is news. Limbaugh, the meglomaniacal, power hungry entertainer demanding Steele give him a Bushesque statement of being “with him, or against him.” Could that be true?

Only if you’re a liberal and have the mind of sofa. The rest of us prefer reading what Limbaugh actually said:

I hope the RNC chairman will realize he’s not a talking head pundit, that he is supposed to be working on the grassroots and rebuilding it and maybe doing something about our open primary system and fixing it so that Democrats don’t nominate our candidates,” Limbaugh said, his voice rising. “It’s time, Mr. Steele, for you to go behind the scenes and start doing the work that you were elected to do instead of trying to be some talking head media star, which you’re having a tough time pulling off.”

Steele, Limbaugh said, had “taken the bait” by the media.

Limbaugh also offered a harsh assessment on the state of the GOP.

“I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be,” he said. ” I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in the sad-sack state that it’s in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit. I might get out the hari-kari knife because I would have presided over a failure that is embarrassing to the Republicans and conservatives who have supported it and invested in it all these years.”

The talk show host also schooled the RNC chairman on political truths - when in the opposition, oppose:

When you send those fundraising requests out, Mr. Steele, make sure you say, we — we — we want Obama to succeed. So people understand your compassion. Republicans, conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, sick and tired of being lectured to. And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you’re going to have a tough time rebuilding your party.

Allah has the real politik speil on where Steele and Eric Cantor (who also dissed Limbaugh) are coming from:

My point then, and Ace’s point today, is that pandering to centrists is a political fact of life for politicians. Steele and Cantor, when forced to choose between criticizing Limbaugh and having to explain his “I hope he fails” rhetoric over and over again, will take the former every time: Right-wing partisans will turn out against Obama anyway in four years but the middle has to be wooed, and defending a sentiment about failure in the current political climate while The One’s busy framing himself as Mr. Nonpartisan does not a winning “moderate” message make. No wonder Gibbs is urging the media to keep asking Republicans whether they agree with Limbaugh. If they say yes, they’re vindictive partisans and if they say no they’ll get hammered by Rush on his show.

Fine, as far as it goes. The problem is that it isn’t a question of “pandering to centrists” by politicians but perhaps missing an opportunity for a counterattack.

One of the major complaints I heard all week at CPAC was the timidity of Republicans and conservatives in the face of Obama’s political dominance. Limbaugh’s point about “hoping Obama fails” is not that he wishes ill for the country but rather what kind of nation will emerge if he succeeds.

From the Limbaugh CPAC address:

As I say, we want the best: Happiness for everybody. Now, about my still-to-me mysteriously controversial comment that I hope President Obama fails. I was watching the Super Bowl. And as you know, I love the Pittsburgh Steelers. [Cheers and Applause] So they have this miraculous scoring drive that puts them up by four, 15 seconds left. Kurt Warner on the field for the Cardinals. And I sure as heck want you to know I hope he failed. I did not want the Cardinals to win. I wanted Warner to make the biggest fool of himself possible. I wanted a sack, I wanted anything. I wanted the Steelers to win. I wanted to win. I wanted the Cardinals to fail.

This notion that I want the President to fail, folks, this shows you a sign of the problem we’ve got. That’s nothing more than common sense and to not be able to say it, why in the world do I want what we just described, rampant government growth indebtedness, wealth that’s not even being created yet that is being spent, what is in this? What possibly is in this that anybody of us wants to succeed? Did the Democrats want the war on Iraq to fail!

CROWD: Yes!

RUSH: They certainly did. They not only wanted the war in Iraq to fail, they proclaimed it a failure. There’s Dingy Harry Reid waiving a white flag: [doing Harry Reid impression] “This war is lost. This war is” — [Cheers and Applause] They called General Petraeus a liar before he even testified. Mrs. Clinton — [Crowd Booing] — said she had to, willingly suspend disbelief in order to listen to Petraeus. We’re in the process of winning the war. The last thing they wanted was to win. They hoped George Bush failed. So what is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed? [Applause]

What’s wrong with a comeback when asked if the GOP wants Obama to fail that includes the notion that Republicans want the American people to succeed but think Obama’s policies are dead wrong? How hard is that to explain? Are these guys so inarticulate that they can’t lay down basic Republcan/conservative principles in a couple of well chosen sentences? Jesus Christ! Would someone please get some 3 X 5 note cards and write down basic talking points for these ignoramuses? Makes sure they’re in words of two syllables or less.

Now as my readers know, I am no fan of Limbaugh. His “show biz conservatism” is a mile wide, an inch deep, and takes forms that while not “ugly,” certainly move the idea of hyperpartisanship to a whole other level. And Limbaugh’s response to Steele was a tad overwrought (Allah rightfully points out that Rush should have a thicker skin by now.)

That being said, with Obama’s agenda on the march to permanently alter America, in the only way he knows how, Rush is trying to stop it. And it’s an open question as to how hard Steele is working to block these transformative, risky, adventurous, and ruinously expensive measures coming down the pike.

If Steele wants to lead the GOP, get out front and lead then. Don’t pull rank on Limbaugh because you only magnify his importance - at your expense. If you spent less time on talk shows agreeing with Democrats who are savaging the party you are supposed to be leading and more time, like, you know, actually opposing what they are trying to do, that would prove your qualities to conservatives who are feeling a little put out by being told that their party convention resembled a Nazi gathering.

The country is going to hell in a handbasket economically, the Democrats are tearing at the Founding Fabric of the nation, our grandchildren are going to be working for the federal government with every dime being taken to service an unserviceable debt, and the world’s bad guys are looking at Obama and feeling pretty damned good.

Meanwhile, Steele and Limbaugh act like two little boys in the schoolyard who unzip, whip it out, and claim their’s is bigger.

Great. Just great.

I’m sitting in the darkened study of my sister’s beautiful home in Bethesda this morning looking forward to a long day of renewing old acquaintances, making new friends, and participating (more like observing) the goings on at CPAC.

I had an interesting discussion last night with my 17 year old cousin about the problem with conservatism today and was surprised that he pretty much nailed the reasons conservatism is in such bad odor with the public and specifically, with his generation. He sees nothing positive coming from conservatives like Hannity, Coulter, and Rush (just picking three examples). What he sees - and I am forced to agree with him - is an overarching arrogance that brooks no discussion and has little room for disagreement.

We may not like it, but my cousin’s generation - and a couple of previous ones - have been educated differently than many of us. They have been taught that moral questions have many sides, that there isn’t one way of looking at the world. When they hear conservatives referring to the opposition as “unpatriotic” it turns them off - they aren’t sure of their own feelings about America themselves.

Clearly, if conservatives wish to attract the young, a better job of educating them outside of the classroom must be done. They will never learn about conservative principles in school - not only because education is dominated by liberals but because the study of most any western philosophy would be anti-diversity.

So the only exposure to conservatism that most children receive comes to them via the Coulter/Hannity/Limbaugh’s of the movement. Entertaining though they are, their very shrillness and presumption of being in the right turns off most kids who have been educated to eschew such certainties.

But isn’t “question everything” the mantra of any good student? I would hope so. However, at some point, questions must harden into a belief system. And when that process begins, the young have little or no idea what classical conservatism is all about because show biz conservatives either don’t know themselves or find it profitable to abandon reason for ranting.

The perils of educating the young in such a way is that enlightenment values get thrown under the bus in obeisance to a nebulous doctrine where ideology rather than philosophy is encouraged. “Diversity” is a wonderful thing - except in teaching competing ideas. And appeals to “thinking with the heart” are substituted for reasoned thought and a rational, objective examination of the issues.

What’s missing? Historian Page Smith, when writing about the Constitutional Convention referred to a “classical Christian Consciousness” that dominated the gathering. This conservative school of thought posits the idea that man is basically evil, that he is stained with original sin and that therefore, governments must be instituted that restrain his baser instincts and protect others from those who would seek to dominate.

But Smith went on to describe the emerging enlightenment values that were also present at the convention. The enlightenment saw man as basically good, capable of perfection with the application of scientific principles to government. This tug of war - roughly between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians - ended up with the creation of a document that reflected both sides.

The two great classic philosophies have largely been subsumed by today’s ideological battles. In their name rages a war where one side seeks to dominate the other by any means necessary. I would like to see conservatives try to reclaim some of that classical heritage by becoming more thoughtful, less ideological, and perhaps less doctrinaire - especially since that doctrine is, in my opinion, woefully out of touch with modern realities.

CPAC was not set up to deal with these questions. But it just might start a conversation that would lead to an understanding that for conservatism to become competitive in the marketplace of ideas again, it must acknowledge its shortcomings and work toward reforming itself to better reflect what America has become rather than the way America used to be.