Mark Levin: I have no idea what philosophy Glenn Beck is promoting. And neither does he

I was invited to be the opening speaker at Saturday's CPAC session. I had accepted but then, to my amazement, I learned that the John Birch Society would be one of many co-sponsors. This takes the big-tent idea many steps too far for me. So, I withdrew. Apparently, others were not so moved. That's fine. But it wasn't for me. Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater, among others, chased the Birchers from the movement decades ago. And they're not a part of the movement. So, to give them a booth at CPAC was boneheaded.

I want to commend Bill Bennett for his wise piece this morning on the Corner. I agree with him.

I have no idea what philosophy Glenn Beck is promoting. And neither does he. It's incoherent. One day it's populist, the next it's libertarian bordering on anarchy, next it's conservative but not really, etc. And to what end? I believe he has announced that he is no longer going to endorse candidates because our problems are bigger than politics. Well, of course, our problems are not easily dissected into categories, but to reject politics is to reject the manner in which we try to organize ourselves. This is as old as Plato and Aristotle. Why would conservatives choose to surrender the political battlefield to our adversaries -- who are trashing this society -- when we must retake it in order to preserve our society? Philosophy, politics, culture, family, etc., are all of one. Edmund Burke, among others, wrote about it extensively, and far better that I possibly can. But all elements of the civil society require our defense. Besides, why preach such a strategy when conservatism is on the rise and the GOP is acting more responsibly?

Moreover, when he does discuss politics, which, ironically, is often, how can he claim today that there is no difference between the two parties when, but for the Republicans in Congress, government-run health care, cap-and-trade, card check, and a long list of other disastrous policies would already be law? The GOP is becoming more conservative thanks to the grass-roots movement and a political uprising across the country, which has even reached into New Jersey and Massachusetts. Why keep pretending otherwise? My only conclusion is that he is promoting a third party or some third way, which is counter-productive to defeating Obama and the Democrat Congress. These are perilous times and this kind of an approach will keep the statists in power for decades.

And what of his flirtations with Ron Paul's lunacy respecting America's supposed provocations with her enemies, including al-Qaeda? Why should such a fatal defect in thinking be ignored? Do we conservatives agree with this?

Finally, Beck is fond of congratulating himself for being the only or the first host to criticize George Bush's spending. This is demonstrably false. I not only attacked his spending, but the creation of the Homeland Security Department, the prescription drug add-on for Medicare, his "moderate" tax cuts, as well as his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, "comprehensive immigration reform," and so forth. And I was not alone -- Rush and Sean did the same, for example. And as someone who fought liberal Republicans in the trenches when campaigning for Reagan in 1976 and 1980, I don't need lectures from Beck, who was nowhere to be found, about big-spending Republicans. But this is not about me, or Beck, or Beck's past drunkenness (which he endlessly wears as some kind of badge of honor). It is about preserving our society for our children and grandchildren. Beck spent precious little time aiming fire at Obama-Pelosi-Reid in his speech, and it is they who are destroying our country.

On as a positive note, I am personally happy to see that Beck has cleaned up his public act -- as best I can tell, no more boiling fake frogs on TV or pretending to pour gasoline on someone -- and the rest of it. But I do think his speech, which contained nuggets of truth heard before and read elsewhere, including on Rush's show and in my book and many other books, may have distracted from some of the more compelling and coherent speeches at the event, including Marco Rubio's superb speech. I fear the media will see to this. I hope not.

There has to be a underlining reason why Mark Levin, who after years of bashing Michael Savage, has chose to go after Glenn Beck for nearly a year. Both are technically on the same page of opposing Obama, Democrats and Socialism. But it seems they disagree on specific things from time to time.

It has as much to do with their Point of View as their ideas for the future of Conservatism and the Republican party. Glenn Beck has a different way of doing his shows, radio and tv, than Levin or others for that matter.

Beck is a bit of a Libertarian-Conservative hybrid. He doesn’t want to be suckered into choosing and endorsing candidates and that is good because he has said that people let him down. Such was the case with Scott Brown. His win was great, but as you can see Scott is a liberal and now even Rush Limbaugh is against him and speaking out against him.

Glenn may have made the mistake of bashing Scott a bit to early, as in right after he won, but he said that the actions of Scott didn’t look like he was solid against Obama. For one thing Brown was a fan of McCain and supports Abortion. It is the best you could do in that state and therefore Beck may not want to get involved in picking people he is not sure of or the lesser of two evils. Glenn has said before that he can’t trust politicians to do the right thing so he can’t come to endorse them.

Beck probably doesn’t want to play the games of politics. Whether it is having to choose between two tea party conservatives in a race or having to pick the least rinoish or making enemies with his picks. For example, he has kept a cordial relationship with Sarah Palin despite not agreeing with her on McCain or Fiorina, but he likes her.

But likewise Glenn Beck seems to like Steve King of Iowa, Chuck DeVore of California, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Chris Christie of New Jersey and others including Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin. He has praised all of them before and had some of them on his tv show.

Beck’s focus is also on teaching history on his television show. He doesn’t do news unless he wants to comment on it. For a while, he focused on what was wrong with Obama’s policies and then with his ideology and helped expose Van Jones and Anita Dunn among many others. Now Beck is doing a variety of different shows with a focus on history among other things on tv. On radio he has three hours to go into the news and discuss his ideas.

He has gotten on both Libertarians and Conservatives’ nerves because he bashed both Trutherism and Birthism as well as going after a Libertarian favorite Alex Jones.
If anything, Beck made the mistake of endearing both Conservatives who agree with Mark Levin and Libertarians who agree with Alex Jones last year. To me, it seems he was walking a tightrope. He finally said stuff that angered both sides. He, however has his own core of fans. Every book he shows on his television show or talks about on his radio or tv shows or writes is a best seller.

Mark Levin is a straight true Republican Conservative. He wants to endorse candidates so that people can donate to them and so that people know whop is worth voting for. But Levin knows these people better and Levin does the tough work of picking candidates to endorse and he is good 96% of the time with his picks, but I don’t agree him at least with one race which is the Senate race in my state of Kansas, but be that as it may for it is two conservatives and Jerry Moran is my choice, but I am not holding his endorsement of Todd Tiahrt, he voted for Amnesty, against him. Everyone who is the most conservative in the Kansas State Congress is for Jerry Moran. But anyways. I digress. It is a tough race and Moran leads.

Levin is a fan of Hannity. Which will rub people here wrong, I guess. Because while Levin comes on FR and is a fan of FR, Hannity trashed this website. Still both men have a friendship. While Glenn Beck seems to have a friendship with Libertarian John Stossel and also with Bill O’Reilly.

Levin only has three hours on radio to use and no tv show. As such he has less hours to use. Levin writes books but he takes longer time to do the books. His books also do very well. And that is good. But he has a need to feud with others on the right.

But then again Beck was busy Feuding with Obama last year and became the number one enemy. He kind of is up there with Rush as a villain of the left. Mark Levin is out there, but is not a number one villain. I mean, Beck is deeply hated as is Rush Limbaugh and even Sean Hannity because Hannity exposed Rev. Wright. Levin, while his book Liberty and Tyranny did anger Liberals a lot, did not get into a feud with the Obama administration. Doesn’t mean he is hated, but no more than Laura Ingraham.

Just go to Crooks and Liars or Media Matters and you’ll see who they go after... Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity.

And thus the dumb liberals don’t monitor everyone on the right such as Levin, Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, Herman Cain and so on.

And so both guys have differences. beck has bashed Bush for bad things he did, but so did Michael Savage and Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. So Levin, can’t claim he was not alone in his anger anymore than Beck.

Levin is great in his way and Beck in his way.

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