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To: Sam Hill
Let's see... Limbaugh's a drug addict, Coulter's a bigot... Who shall we destroy next to improve the conservative movement?

  1. Michael Savage
  2. Pat Buchanan
  3. Lou Dobbs
  4. Bill O'Reilly
  5. Tom Tancredo...

Do you want the whole list? (half kidding)

Seriously. I have no problem at all with knocking the pegs out from under wingnuts, ego maniacs, demagogues, pandering populists, rabble rousers, intellectually dishonest pundits, etc.

Just because there's a shameless double standard which often protects extremists and nuts on the left from marginalization and public rebuke (the anachronistic but still effective "red baiting" taboo) doesn't mean that we shouldn't police our own ranks and demand higher standards of those that deserve our support as conservatives.

I happen to believe that one of the reasons conservatism has thrived is because we've done this in the past. I don't think it's a coincidence, for instance, that the conservative movement started to take off in the late 60's after Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater and others decided to disassociate themselves from and marginalize the previously influential John Bircher wingnuts.

No, I don't think Coulter is anywhere near as extreme as the Birchers, but she is rude, unconvincing to anyone not already convinced, intellectually dishonest and often false or slovenly in her research. At best she's serviceable as a kind of rodeo clown (irritating leftists and making them charge in the wrong direction).

118 posted on 03/05/2007 12:52:03 PM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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To: Stultis

Great post, Stultis!


137 posted on 03/05/2007 4:12:09 PM PST by ohioWfan (PRAY for our President and our troops!!)
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