Posted on 02/24/2010 12:59:45 PM PST by writer33
Virtually unknown a year ago, Glenn Beck has rapidly risen to the top of the right-wing punditocracy. Witness his keynote address at CPAC, where the Fox News titan assailed Republicans and Democrats alike and called for a return to bedrock conservative values. Though conservatives bloggers were nonplussed by Beck's attacks on the right, most praised at least some elements of his speech.
where were these “conservatives” when the progressives were running up a huge tab and cutting taxes? where were they when the Republican party was handing out pork like candy? why didn’t they stand up and say “this has to stop”? why did they put their hands out and say “please, may i have more”? beck is not saying that all repubs and dems are alike. he is saying that the big spenders and progressives are right there in both parties and we the people are sick of them. as a recovering democrat maybe i see this more clearly than born republicans, but it is there. beck is right, in the arena of spending us into oblivion, and financing “social equality” some of the repubs are just the same as the dems. they are progressives and they are supporting the same things.
Thanks. Very scary.
Beck has 100 times more charisma than Levin. And I like them both.
I don’t understand why conservatives are hitching their stars to either talk show hosts or (especially) Republicans of any stripe. Neither are being honest. It will take severe cuts in both Medicare and Social Security, just to tread water. In order to actually pay down the debt and extract the country from socialism, it is going to take much more drastic cuts.
I’m tired of Republicans stating or implying that serious work can be done by finessing present spending. Once that I see and hear a group of them calling for massive castor oil and tough love to the American people and showing an ounce of honesty about the debt, I might bother to work for them again. Until that day, I’m sitting on the sidelines while the country goes bankrupt. It might actually be better to have that happen sooner under Democrats than a little later under Republicans.
Yes and that was off the cuff too when Bev d’Becker called in said Rush never criticized the Repubes, I was laughing all afternoon.
It appears to me that Beck’s natural constituency is the one world government, CFR, Jewish bankers want to take over the world conspiracy kooks. By their own criteria, no one will ever be acceptable as they are all part of some diabolical plot.
A number of these people defending Beck are not Republicans, in fact they have an intense hatred for Republicans.
Bingo! And we have a winner!
Rush is using the “Republicans suck” phrase to make fun of those who use it on a daily basis.
Rush did not say anything bad about Glenn Beck. They are both great men and I hate to see anyone lie about them.
>A number of these people defending Beck are not Republicans, in fact they have an intense hatred for Republicans>
and this is the botom line.
Have been saying this right along.
But by siding with the MSM in their attempt to get us at each others' throats, you have become a useful idiot to them and an accomplice.
If not, please tell me what GOOD you accomplish with your inside attacks so that I can fell all warm and fuzzy about it.
The liberals have to be laughing up their sleeves at us for all this infighting and doubly so because they were able to start it.
I love Rush and have listened to him for 20 years, but he is coming off as a smug Republican water carrier. (Which he admitted after the Stimulus was passed.)
Levin I loved and listened to everyday, but he is now coming across as a nasty, petulant cretin.
Enough, already from all of them! Put down your egos and go after the liberals, progressives, statists, whatever you want to call them! Why get in a catfight about a label, for crying out loud!!
“Illustrating absurdity by being absurd. (For those of you in Rio Linda)”
Ya, right. More like some bug is up his ass.
I’ve been listening to Rush for sixteen years. I think I know that ploy when he uses it. Today was not the case.
GB NEVER equated the true conservatives in the GOP with the Dems.
I admire him for continuing to hold the GOP to account. We all should know how conservative they sound during the election season. Most of them don’t mean it, and Beck knows it.
It’s time they realized they need to earn our respect on a daily basis. Sounding conservative before a TV camera is not good enough.
I’m still waiting for this Libertarian bogeyman that will destroy Repub chances for the next generation. I haven’t seen it from Beck or anyone else.
But they need to realize it is a serious possibility if they don’t man up and start governing like this country was meant to be governed.
You over there- those people are NOT hopeless Country Club GOP apologists.
You over there- those people are not insane Libertarian anarchists.
Rush and Levin need to be able to draw some distinctions, and keep their eye on the damn ball.
okay, that is a shot across the bow to pubbies. They still have the time to change it. I can’t think of a better way.
see #101 and answer the questions.
Glenn Beck delivered the keynote address at CPAC Saturday, receiving roughly a dozen standing ovations as he utilized his trademark chalkboard to present what he called the progressive “cancer... eating our Constitution.” Beck did not constrain his criticism to the Obama administration or the Democratic party. He called out Republicans as well:
“I’m so sick of hearing people say, oh, well the Republicans are going to solve it all. Really? [They are] just progressive-lite. That’s like somebody sticking a screwdriver in your eye and [you] saying, ‘Stop! Stop!’ And somebody else pulls it out and then puts a pin in your eye. I don’t want stuff in my eyes! Stop stabbing in the eyes!”
Beck also said, “The Republicans right now are giving us many of those same [progressive] choices – not all of them – but some of them. We have a guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.” Beck went on to out Roosevelt as a progressive.
Beck compared the condition of the Republican party to that of a drunk at the end of a raucous night of debauchery. Like an alcoholic who hits rock-bottom, the Republicans must admit they have a problem before recovery can occur. This comparison, and the broader accusation of progressivism in the Republican party, has come under attack by conservative colleagues.
Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program Monday, “I would not have said that the only people who can stop Obama, the Republicans, should be excoriated for being just as bad. I don’t know how you could say, after hearing Marco Rubio, that the Republicans are just as bad as [Democrats]. It would never occur to me to say that. I don’t know what the objective would be.”
Former Secretary of Education and morning talk show host Bill Bennett was more specific and derisive in a column posted at National Review Online:
“To say the GOP and the Democrats are no different, to say the GOP needs to hit a recovery-program-type bottom and hang its head in remorse, is to delay our own country’s recovery from the problems the Democratic left is inflicting. The stakes are too important to go through that kind of exercise, which will ultimately go nowhere anyway — because it’s already happened (Bennett earlier cites examples like Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann).
“The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are. There is a difference between morning and night. There is a difference between drunk and sober. And there is a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they don’t exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous.”
Both Bennett and Limbaugh misread Beck’s point. Beck clearly articulated the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. His analysis suggests a difference insufficient to satisfy principled conservatives. Beck is calling for more than rhetoric, more than speeches from individual politicians. Beck is looking for broad and consistent action. He is looking for Republicans at large to embrace principle over politics.
Scott Brown, the celebrated new senator from Massachusetts, just voted for Obama’s “jobs bill,” which has been widely analyzed as yet another stimulus package. In Minnesota, 15 Republican state senators recently went along with the Democratic majority to pass a $1.2 billion bonding bill which includes funding for volleyball courts and gorilla cages among other pork barrel projects. The actions of the GOP at large do not match the rhetoric of figures like Rubio or Bachmann. In some cases, like Brown’s, individual Republicans literally say one thing and do another. This is what Beck speaks to. This is the behavior for which he demands repentance.
Presumably, Bennett regards Beck’s message as “dangerous” because the electoral failure of Republicans means the electoral success of Democrats. Yet, this is precisely Beck’s point; it does not matter if the GOP emerges from 2010 victorious if they merely “suck less than the other guys.” Republicans need to become a true alternative to progressives. It is not sufficient to be Republican.
Curiously, Bennett cites the Tea Party movement as evidence Republicans have seen the error of their ways, as if the movement emerged from the party. As recent posts at the New Patriot Journal declare and demonstrate, the Tea Party movement is not a Republican proxy. It contains Republicans. It is not of or about Republicans. If anything, the movement has emerged in response to Republican hypocrisy as much as any Democratic policy. The movement is not about party politics. It is about principled governance and citizen activism.
This concept of principle over party seems to genuinely confuse Limbaugh. When he says he does not know what the objective of excoriating Republicans is, he demonstrates a vision obscured by a partisan lens. If you do not like Obama, Limbaugh’s paradigm demands you love Republicans. The Tea Party, like Beck, rejects that false dichotomy. Contrary to Bennett’s perception, the true danger in 2010 lies in trusting Republicans without holding them to account. Voters cannot find comfort in a slower march off the same progressive cliff.
Mark Levin is a useful idiot of the left, for criticizing Beck.
You're stooping to never before seen lows and it's frankly pathetic to watch.
You can't pretend to be a conservative cheerleader and then knock only McCain...Which BTW by doing so for so many years, you might have played a roll in his defeat...Deep down inside you know that.
And your criticism of Glenn Beck is........?
There are posers on any message. But it would be faulty analysis to claim that many rock solid conservatives aren't aghast at what happened to the budget and debt during majority Republican rule between 2001 and 2007. Look up my body of work on this site. My main goal is to take out socialism, root and branch. What Republican by name is proposing that? Instead, all I hear are minor or half-measures, and a lot of Bears vs. Packers, Red Sox vs. Yankees rah rah political BS masquerading as statesmanship. That's why committed anti-socialists are casting around for anything and anybody at the moment. There are two political alternatives. If the Republicans gain power and govern like 2003 Republicans again (as I expect), the country is in a financial plane crash anyway. I've gotten to the point where where I've accepted my fate, and it doesn't matter whether the pilots are blue or red. We're 600 feet off the ground going nose down.
Plagiarize much?
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