Redstate

By goldenboy Posted in Elections — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The drama of my continuing love/hate relationship with Rush is starting to wear me out. After listening to the second hour of his show today at lunch, I really felt sad and disappointed. Not because I have disagreements with McCain, but because I am becoming convinced that Rush is doing everything in his power to demoralize Republicans in the run-up to this election.

Rush takes such cheap shots against McCain that it calls into question his credibility on other issues. Today, for example, he actually played McCain’s speech to compare the intensity of applause between McCain’s introduction and his policy proposals.

Clearly, the rhetorical device used by McCain did not allow for intense applause. McCain was delivering bullets followed by brief applause. The applause lines were spread thin because of the pace of presentation. And besides, SO WHAT. Talk about nit-picking...

This shows real desperation on Rush’s part. He frequently sounds like a teenage girl sending mean e-mails to another girl who stole another girl's boyfriend. And then Rush pulls a play from democrats by accusing McCain of the very thing he is doing—demoralizing the base.

Rush is doing his best to strangle McCain’s campaign in the cradle, and in the process violating Reagan’s dictum that republicans shouldn’t attack one another (especially in a year like this!)

Why would he do that, you ask? Not because Rush is a secret lib or anything tin-foiled as that, but because I think he is really afraid that McCain will alter the GOP for ever. I also sense that Rush’s pride was hurt when McCain won the nomination, and he fears his influence will be diminished if the party moves to the left.

First, I do not believe for a second that McCain will move the party to the left. This is an odd-ball year for republicans and I really think McCain’s the best shot. This is McCain’s last hoorah, and his domestic agenda will make no impact with the democrat congress.

He will retire from politics in less than a decade, so we need McCain the warrior in the next four to eight years, not McCain the reformer. Fact is, we need McCain the warrior much more than McCain the reformer. Opinion leaders on the right shouldn’t be doing their best to destroy his chance to give us that leadership.

If conservatives are marginalized and conservatism discredited, it won’t be because of a McCain presidency. It will be because conservatives were unwilling to acknowledge their ideological cousins on the right at an important time, and ended up doing to themselves what the Sunnis of Iraq did in the Iraq elections,which was sitting them out and marginalizing themselves.

Rush and the other talk show hosts need to know that with great audiences come great responsibility, and having hurt feelings doesn’t mean you have to scuttle the ship so that everyone else feels your pain. We get it Rush, Mike, Sean, Glenn… It’s time to take stock and start thinking beyond the microphone.

The stakes are so high with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, AQ, and even China trying for martial parity and world influence. We don’t have the luxury of rebuilding the party for the next 20 years while the doves among us leave things to rot to hell.

By then there may be a lot of smoke and rubble about, and the last thing Americans will be thinking about is listening to the radio.