I’ll go against the grain here and agree with much of what Geharty is saying, with the caveat that without the leftist media out there covering for them, the Democrats would be exposed as the meanest, nastiest bunch of scoundrels this side of the Bolsheviks.
But . . . alas the leftist media is still in control of the dominant narratives in this country and it doesn’t help anything for conservatives to feed into the notion that we “hate” women, gays, blacks, Latinos, etc. It’s not true, at least for me. I truly believe that conservative ideas and policies will result in better lives for nearly everyone (except maybe Democratic politicians, union bosses and welfare cheats). I don’t see why we can’t express our ideas in the public realm in ways that reflect that.
Geraghty happens to be one of my least favorite pundits out there, but I’ll join you in agreeing that he actually has a point with all of his examples.
It is fine IMO to point out that Dem policies are intended to buy votes. To say that that’s why a majority of the electorate or large majorities of racial subgroups voted for Obama rather than Romney is indeed needlessly insulting those whose votes the GOP needs to win elections. It isn’t actually accurate about a number of Obama voters (e.g., any of the liberals in my family) and in Romney’s case it was a weak attempt to shift blame rather than accept the failings of his candidacy.
Rush does have a huge blind spot re: women, where he often and needlessly insults them and betrays his poor understanding of their priorities and motivations. His crude Fluke insults were a huge gift to Obama, as they reinforced suspicions that many women have about the GOP. Likewise, Akin and Mourdock.
Likewise for the idiot circulating the ‘Magic Negro’ parody at a conservative conference—and the idiot actually thought he should represent Republicans nationally?
I’m more than happy to see the argument made publicly that Islam is not simply a harmless ‘great religion’ and that its confluence with a primitive totalitarian political system means we must deal with it differently than such. But the needless use of the term ‘raghead’ immediately turns off those who might be willing to listen to the argument were it not stated so insultingly.
Finally, if I were gay and I happened upon one of too many threads here at FR discussing gay issues, for example, I would see too many posts from those vilely insulting all gays to want to consider further affinities in political philosophy.
It is IMO stupid (and unChristian) for our side to so often callously dismiss or outright insult groups whose votes we hope and need to attract at election time.
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