Is Glenn Beck Good for Conservatives?

The ostensible subject of their debate at FrontPage Magazine is: "Is Glenn Beck Good for Conservatives?" But David Horowitz, after an opening compliment of David Frum, makes clear, in scathing language I have never seen him use against another conservative, that the real problem and the real subject of the discussion is not Beck, but Frum himself. (I've abridged Horowitz's comment, but the whole thing is worth reading, as he goes into detail tearing apart Frum's pious claim that Frum in the past has defended conservatives from liberal attacks.)

... But it is the intemperate nature of some of your attacks and the venues you choose to launch them in (Newsweek for a no-holds-barred assault on Rush Limbaugh for example) that I find unacceptable. I also have a problem with the very premise of your efforts. I don't agree that conservatism is a "very troubled" movement; I don't think conservative intellectuals are subservient to an entertainment complex, and I don't think that Fox News has helped to "trap conservatives in a cycle of shrillness, rage, and paranoia that is radically off-putting" to voters. I think this is a slander of Fox and conservatives more suitable to Huffington Post than a conservative website. Fox is a tremendous asset to the conservative movement precisely because it sets the record straight to a mass audience that leftists have so maliciously distorted.... I also have a problem with your basic presumption that Republicans must clean their house before they can appeal to centrist voters and defeat the left. This implies that the left's attacks on conservatives have merit and will be blunted if we purge our ranks of embarrassments to our cause--the shrill, the enraged and the paranoid--who in your mind--seem to be Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and now Glenn Beck. Did you notice that these are also our most powerful and feared and charismatic conservatives?

Years ago, at the birth of the modern conservative movement, Bill Buckley performed a purge in this vein, declaring no quarter for racists and anti-Semites and also conspiracy nuts like Robert Welch who thought Eisenhower was a card-carrying Communist. This was an important and necessary service to a young movement. It was repeated 15 years ago when Buckley came down hard on the anti-Semitic writings of Joseph Sobran and Pat Buchanan, and that was important too (and I recall that you played a forthright role in that effort). But Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are not racists or anti-Semites (nor are they paranoid or shrill) and it is your attacks on them that are reckless--untempered as they are by your usual good judgment--and that sound very much like the attacks from our enemies on the left.

Before I get into details let me apologize for the use of the term "armchair aristocrat" to describe you. It was a strained metaphor and probably inept. I was not referring to your pedigree or pocketbook. I was attempting to encapsulate the idea that there are conservatives--you are one, David Brooks is another--who think that if everyone on our team only behaved better, there would be no targets for the neo-Stalinist left to attack. Not a chance. If they were able to demonize George Bush as a liar, a murderer, an idiot, and a religious nut they can do that to anyone. So-called liberals have shown themselves to be shameless, unprincipled, bigoted, intolerant and determined to personally destroy any conservative whom they consider to be politically effective and therefore dangerous to their agendas. That's where we really differ. If you understood this or believed it, you would not attack a Glenn Beck in the scorched-earth manner in which you did.

You accuse Beck of being motivated by money and fame and not out of concern for his country: "Glenn Beck is not the first to make a pleasant living for himself by reckless defamation." This is a slippery slope my friend (writing a cover story attacking Rush Limbaugh for the leftist Newsweek isn't about money and fame? And how is it that you didn't keep your criticism within the conservative family, if the family is whom you're really concerned about?) But it is also a ludicrous charge. Since when has going after a Communist in government been a path to money and fame in our "liberal" era, rather than to almost certain demonization as a McCarthyite and marginalization as a crank? It's been fifty years, as I recall, since someone did that successfully. Was Beck's successful crusade against Van Jones "reckless defamation?" His crusade against Acorn? You have one case to hand in which you charge him with getting something wrong. But instead of sticking to the example, and correcting him, you want to use it as a hammer to crush his skull. That's my problem with what you have written.

Here's the way you sum up your attack on Glenn Beck: "We conservatives, are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country." Would that you had written this about Jimmy Carter, or Al Gore, or Al Franken, who are unscrupulous and disgraceful and do damage our country. If you had done that, it would have been appropriate. As an attack on Beck it is a reckless slander of an American patriot, and damaging to the country and the cause.

I noted in my original post that I didn't recall you defending conservatives who have been maliciously misrepresented and maligned by the left with the same passion you reserve for a moderate leftist law professor who never to my knowledge has stuck his neck out for conservatives when they have been maligned by his friends (you may correct me if I am mistaken)....

In fact, this is an exemplary case of exactly what I think is wrong with the conservative movement in contrast to what you think. Franken is now a U.S. Senator in part because conservatives of whom you are typical want to conduct politics by the Marquis of Queensberry rules when the other side is in it as war in which destruction of the enemy is the game. Franken calls us evil. You call him mistaken (and unfunny). And you want other conservatives to do the same. The more conservatives who follow your advice the more we will lose. Personally, I am thrilled with what is happening now in the conservative movement--our aggressive media like Fox and talk radio, the emergence of enraged conservative masses--the tea baggers--as leftist half-wits like to dismiss them. It is this energized, unapologetic, in-your-face (but also civilized and intelligent) conservative base on whom the future not only of the movement but the country depends.

Why .. didn’t you get it.

The story was a comment on what David Horowitz said to David Frum.

David Frum calls himself a “conservative” .. but he’s really a RHINO - and David H certainly took David F to task for his misguided and wrong-headed statements about other conservatives .. and namely Glenn Beck.

I loved it!!

Personally, I am thrilled with what is happening now in the conservative movement--our aggressive media like Fox and talk radio, the emergence of enraged conservative masses--the tea baggers--as leftist half-wits like to dismiss them...after fifty years of hearing and watching as conservatives were called racists, intolerant, mean-spirited, and portrayed as wanting to starve old people and little kids, all the while trying themselves to be civil and reasonable, I say it's about time.......

Personally, I am thrilled with what is happening now in the conservative movement--our aggressive media like Fox and talk radio, the emergence of enraged conservative masses--the tea baggers--as leftist half-wits like to dismiss them. It is this energized, unapologetic, in-your-face (but also civilized and intelligent) conservative base on whom the future not only of the movement but the country depends.

Amen!

In a way these sorts of “conservatives” deal with Liberals the same way that Liberals deal with evil dictators or terrorists who mean to totally destroy us if they can. Which is to say, just be nice and polite so they will eventually see the light and love us for our goodness - meanwhile, in both instances, the opposition is out for total victory and blood if need be.

The McCain/Palin ticket was up ++8 pts. days prior to September 18th, 2008.
So the RomneyTeam attacked Gov. Palin and her children to throw Election2008.

"Frum was indeed a critic of Palin, calling her nomination a "huge mistake" during an October 13 Early Show appearance."

David Frum: "Two of our most plausible candidates for president in 2012 are leading Mormons: Mitt Romney and Utah governor Jon Huntsman."

David Frum: "I have a lot of regard for Mitt Romney as a man and politician.
Let me say for the record: If Romney emerges as the Republican nominee, I will support him without qualm."

Late in October, The American Spectator's The Prowler revealed:
"Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House,
have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election.
'Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012,'
says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin.
'The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney.
He's in charge on November 5th.'"
The Prowler added: "Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a 'diva' and was going off message intentionally."
The Romney supporters in the McCain campaign had access to internal polling which indicated well in advance of the November 4 election that McCain had no chance to win.
So they began working to position their man Mitt for a run in 2012. Just two days after the election,The Palmetto Scoop reported:
"One of the first stories to hit the national airwaves was the claim of a major internal strife between close McCain aides and the folks handling his running mate Sarah Palin."
"I’m told by very good sources that this was indeed the case and that a rift had developed, but it was between Palin’s people and the staffers brought on from the failed presidential campaign of former Gov. Mitt Romney, not McCain aides."
"The sources said nearly 80 percent of Romney’s former staff was absorbed by McCain and these individuals were responsible for what amounts to a premeditated, last-minute sabotage of Palin."
These aides loyal to Romney inside the McCain campaign, said The Scoop, reportedly saw that Palin would be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2012 or 2016, which made her a threat to another presidential quest by Romney.
Erick Erickson, who organized Operation Leper, said:
"Here’s what I think: I think there are some staffers on the McCain campaign who seriously screwed up the roll out of Sarah Palin, to which Governor Palin herself objected.
These staffers are now out trying to finish her off thinking, as typical D.C. types do, that if they don’t do it to her, she’ll do it to them. They just never understood who Palin is or what she is about."
"Likewise, I do think there are some staffers and others who expect Mitt Romney to run again in 2012,
they decided McCain could not win, and decided to undermine Sarah Palin and her chances hoping it would ingratiate themselves with Mitt Romney."

"Who's the Palin Leaker from the McCain Campaign? (Mark Wallace, Romney pimp)
National Review Online The publication of a Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin
appears to have opened old wounds in the McCain campaign.
... the source of the “Diva” leak was Nicolle Wallace’s husband."

Who benefits most from Sanford meltdown? Californian (that's right) Mitt Romney

"Peeking Out From the McCain Wreckage: Mitt Romney"

"Someone's got to say it: IS MITT ROMNEY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBAMA'S VICTORY?"

"Vanity: Team Romney Sabotaged Palin and Continuing to Do So?"

"Romney Supporters Trashing Palin"

"Romney advisors sniping at Palin?"

I invariably distrust writers/scribblers whose columns mainly deal with people they don’t like in their own movement. There is the faint whiff of elitism in their writings which makes me suspect jealousy plays a key role in their criticism. The plain fact is that the Limbaugh’s and Beck’s of the world have done far more important work for conservatism that a raft of David Frum’s or David Brooks’s. The latter two’s “work” on behalf of conservatives seems to be more counterproductive than productive.

Bob017 the title you created "David Horowitz rips into David Frum" was not the published title and had to be changed.

Please do not make up your own titles nor alter any published title. We're trying to reduce the number of threads we have to pull. Just use the published title found above the published article. Thanks.

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