Posted on 01/30/2008 2:22:39 PM PST by Antoninus
One of the most frustrating aspects of this election season has been the willingness of our allies in the conservative media to outsmart themselves by supporting liberal Republicans. Some of them latched on to one of these "moderates" from day one. The most egregious example of this tendency is Sean Hannity, who must feel a bit foolish for his slavish promotion of Giuliani, given Rudy's inglorious performance at the polls.
Hugh Hewitt also gets raspberries for becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Romney, Inc. One wonders if the FEC will be investigating Hewitt for all the free advertising he has given the Republican version of John Kerry. Personally, I'm more than a little insulted by Hewitt's shameless pumping of liberal Mitt under a micro-thin pretense of impartiality. I hope his audience share has suffered accordingly.
Other hosts, not nearly so audacious in their error (Rush Limbaugh most predominant among them), withheld their support from good conservative candidates until it was too late to do much good.
So now three weak sisters remain, with John McCain appearing as the most likely to limp to the nomination. Yet somehow, someway, the media conservatives have decided to rally around Mitt Romney who is perhaps the most liberal of the remaining three in terms of his record. With the sole exception of Michael Medved who, after a worrisome start, has been a level-headed, equal-access paragon of Republican impartiality throughout this extended campaign, the vast majority of media conservatives are now going after McCain hammer and tongs.
Which brings me to a quesiton that's been haunting me for the past month: What's so bad about John McCain that the supposed lights of the conservative movement would rather support a pandering, phony, northeastern liberal like Mitt Romney? I'm no fan of McCain, myself. Indeed, I've called him just about every name in the book over the past eight years. But at least with McCain, you know what you're getting and we can gear up for a serious fight after he gets elected.
With Romney, the GOP base is likely to be lulled into a false sense of security--until he goes Arlen Specter on us. Mitt had a strange propensity in Massachusetts to allow liberalism to advance on all fronts--and help it from behind the scenes--while putting on a dog-and-pony show of opposition. A crypto-liberal like Romney in the White House would be infinitely more dangerous to conservative causes than a mushy moderate like McCain. And given what has happened to the GOP in Massachusetts post-Romney, conservatives could be looking at another 40 years in the wilderness following a Romney term.
So why are these intelligent, plugged-in media conservatives willing to get on board the Romney bandwagon and reject McCain with extreme prejudice? It has to be more than mere political differences. Here's a theory that popped into my head to explain this phenomenon: the animus displayed by media conservatives toward McCain comes not from any true ideological difference, but mainly from fear that McCain would threaten their livelihood.
Last night, I got a bit of confirmation of this theory. A talkshow host who frequents a major forum posted the following:
McCain is a disaster...This should concern all conservatives, in and out of talk radio....At least the best in talk radio, and most of talk radios audience, have tried to stop this day from coming....But you go ahead and attack talk radio. I am sure McCain, with his great regard for the First Amendment and the Constitution, will be working with Kennedy, et al, to punish it.I'm not saying this statement is wrong. McCain has shown himself to be on the wrong side of this issue with his ludicrous campaign finance "reform" act. But let's remember, McCain & Feingold may have been the catalysts for this piece of legislation--but President Bush signed it. I don't recall too many media conservatives holding a similar long-standing grudge against the President for his part in limiting their speech.
I for one will not vote for a President should you and your kind vote MeCain the nomination.
Probably because they can read and do not rely on the MSM for their news!
Forget the conspiracies, McCain's dislike by conservatives is well earned.
>> I don’t recall too many media conservatives holding a similar long-standing grudge against the President for his part in limiting their speech.
Really? You must not have spent much time on FR over the past seven years.
McCain-Feingold, NCLB, and Medicare pt D were the three colossal errors of GWB’s first term.
The truth: the choices for presidential nominees are limited in 2008. Yes, Romney has flipped on issues, but he hasn't flopped back. His conversion could be sincere - so there's hope. He seems not to have a tin-ear and who can be persuaded to stay with conservatives agendas. At the very least, he probably will not actively support many of the liberal issues as president. McCain on the other hand has shown for decades his disdain toward conservatives. McCain has proven that he will consistently and actively support liberal issues on the national level. This explanation may clear up some of the confusion for this author.
Yep. He is just like Obama and Hitlery, all right.
Remember Nixon?
The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides
But there was one subject that was off-limits, a subject the Arizona senator almost never brings up and has never been open about -- his long-time opposition to releasing documents and information about American prisoners of war in Vietnam and the missing in action who have still not been accounted for. Since McCain himself, a downed Navy pilot, was a prisoner in Hanoi for 5 1/2 years, his staunch resistance to laying open the POW/MIA records has baffled colleagues and others who have followed his career. Critics say his anti-disclosure campaign, in close cooperation with the Pentagon and the intelligence community, has been successful. Literally thousands of documents that would otherwise have been declassified long ago have been legislated into secrecy.
Also see:
Regardless of the motivations of the talking heads, I will support none of the above. My motivation is to promote conservatism. The lesser of two evils days passed me by long ago.
There’s no conspiracy. McCain is nearly the spitting image of Hillary Clinton on issues. A conservative doesn’t vote to extend amnesty to illegals, suppress free speech and vote against tax cuts.
>Come out and say it publicly and make it clear that you are not simply making a political case for “anyone but McCain” but are also lobbying to preserve your livelihood.<
So what if they’re trying to protect their livelihood?
By doing so, they are also fighting for free speech.
It won’t just stop at talk radio, you know.
Once they get rid of talk radio as an alternative to the mass brainwashing known as MSM they will come after people like us on sites like this.
The only information we get will be what we’re allowed to get, in carefully measured, thoroughly sanitized doses. It won’t be much different than what MSM gives us now, but we will have no other means of obtaining information.
Information is power. They are always holding back on us in order to render us powerless.
I do agree that Hannity looked like a stupid high school cheerleader in his support of Guiliani. The rest is some kind of effort to minimize and marginalize conservatives or try to force us to vote for the “Democrat Nominee for Republican Presidential Candidate”.
>But in this election cycle, where so-called conservative hosts were in the tank early and often for liberal losers like Rudy and Romney, it made me wonder if we really have much of a media presence at all that is truly conservative.<
I still stand by my earlier statement, but am in total agreement with yours above. I was wondering the same thing.
How could they be conservative and push Rudy McRomneybee while Hunter and Thompson are in it?
Maybe they are pushing the “new conservatism” far more subtly than MSM. That would make them part of the problem.
But I am not relying on their statements when making decisions.
The only reason I am thinking of Mitt at this time is simply because I don’t want McCain to get the nomination. I don’t feel like I can go with Huckabee, because he may wind up with McCain. Ron Paul is right about a lot of things, but where he’s wrong, he’s really wrong!
So I feel kind of stuck with Mitt.
If it wasn’t so close, I would probably write in.
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