Posted on 02/26/2016 9:18:04 AM PST by Citizen Zed
For years, I've argued that talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and websites like Breitbart.com pose a significant threat to movement conservatism. All movements are vulnerable to populist excesses and the self-destructive impulses of their core supporters. Good leaders can help to mitigate those pathologies. Bad leaders magnify them.
Within movement conservatism, hugely popular intellectual leaders abandoned the most basic norms of decency, as when Mark Levin screamed at a caller that her husband should shoot himself; stoked racial tensions, as when Rush Limbaugh avowed that in President Obama's America folks think white kids deserve to get beat up by black kids on busses; and indulged paranoid conspiracy theories, as when Roger Ailes aired month-after-month of Glenn Beck's chalk-board monologues.
Erick Erickson now complains that many Republicans are supporting "a man of mountainous ego" who "preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies." But this is what happens when millions of people spend a decade with Bill O'Reilly in their living rooms each evening and Ann Coulter books on their nightstands for bedtime reading.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
What a bunch of sanctimonious blather.
Movement Conservative died when Buckley died and his heirs, like Rich Lowry, decided they were more interested in the perks of access and power then the principals of limited Government Conservatives. They got corrupted by the Machine. They have no one but themselves to blame for their collapse
The conservative movement got comfortable with making money and making as few waves as possible so they can keep making money.
Now that the people are moving, they are now acting offended and miffed, and accusing us of being sheep.
I wonder if the writer ever listened to a single full broadcast of Rush or read a single book by Coulter.
Most likely not.
Just repeating the pre-digested pap he gets at his Washington cocktail parties.
Erick Erickson is “a man of mountainous ego” who unlike Trump has not actually created anything to match his titanic ego.
This is pure crap. It’s blaming the rise of Trump on the GOP being “too conservative” and xenophobic, when the truth is that the rise of Trump can be traced to the GOP position on immigration. Absent that one issue, Trump gets no real traction.<p.
I can’t stand the guy, but I can still see reality.
I was going to comment but the stench coming off this steaming pile forces me to cut it short and jump to another thread!
The sooner that people realize THIS IS THE REASON people such as myself are supporting Trump, the better off we'll all be.
She says all that like it’s a bad thing...
We are SICK AND TIRED of the ignorant, politically correct “bipartisanship” nonsense from the GOP. We are SICK AND TIRED of being told one thing during the campaign, then getting the opposite once the traitors get elected. We are SICK AND TIRED of being on the losing team, when we know we can win. THIS is what has created Trump. We want a winner. We want someone that’s not goona pull punches simply out of fear they might hurt a special interest donor. We want someone that will stand for the little guy and make things better. The GOP has FAILED at all of this.
For decades the citizens have been demanding the illegal alien inundation be stopped.
The only answer from politicians of both parties was another amnesty.
The last one resulted in 10 times the number of illegal aliens.
We are still waiting 30 years later for the promised enforcement.
Every election since the last amnesty, The Cheap Labor Express has managed to manipulate the process to force us to vote for amnesty candidates.
The RNC/GOP is directly responsible for Trump’s rise by purposely working against their voters.
I’ve basically said what this guy has said for years.
Since laying blame upon the wrong people, nothing else this person might have to say seems even remotely possible to make me waste time to see what that might be.
...steaming pile..
That would be Mccain, Dole, Romney. And another RINO this year
had the conservatives not said ENOUGH!
It couldn’t be because conservatives have been treated like second class citizens and lied to and betrayed by the GOP for decades, could it?
The power of psychological projection on the Left is amazing.
Pheuy! This is what happens when people think more of the Kardashians than the Constitution
I think enough of the Constitution that only natural born citizens should be President.
Barry Soetoro/Barack Hussein Obama was proof enough for me of the wisdom of requiring someone who is a US citizen and nothing else.
He told us he was born a British subject.
No way would the founders have thought him eligible.
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