A Second Hand Conjecture

Had the radio on driving to get coffee. Rush Limbaugh was denouncing sexism and patriarchal privilege. McCain ad comes on pitching expanding embryonic stem cell research. Boy, haven’t things changed in the Republican party? For the better, says me.

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Nick Curran at Radar has put together a Top Ten Eighteen list of McCain’s enemies in the GOP. It’s kind of entertaining.

01. Ann Coulter
02. Rush Limbaugh
03. Jack Abramoff
04. John Cornyn
05. Tom DeLay
06. Matt Drudge
07. Rick Santorum
08. John Dowd
09. National Review
10. Grover Norquist
11. Michelle Malkin
12. David Bossie
13. Laura Ingraham
14. Sean Hannity
15. RedState
16. David Keene
17. Gun Owners of America
18. Thad Cochran

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Michael Goldfarb denounced Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives as “disgraceful” today, for their open criticism of John McCain’s record and views. He labels it the result of a psychological condition he and other McCain apologists call “McCain Derangement Syndrome”:

I understand that some conservatives are uneasy about a McCain nomination, that he isn’t their first choice to carry the party’s standard. But there’s something truly unhinged–and at times spectacularly disgraceful–about the response of some on the right to this increasingly likely prospect.
(The Weekly Standard)

I can only echo his editor, Bill Kristol, who after Bush’s hopelessly misguided selection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, lamented: “And what elected officials will step forward to begin to lay the groundwork for conservative leadership after Bush?” Apparently no one, since John McCain will be the non-conservative nominee of the Republican party. Far from the silent acquiescence Michael advises, I wish there was as much public indignation and outrage now as there was then. Were there, perhaps we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.

I would also remind those McCain defenders who are urging a tactical silence for political purposes, that deep conservative opposition to McCain was not a secret until Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the subject last week. The Democratic opposition was not under the impression that conservatives loved the man, and it would not have been possible to conceal a lengthy history of dissent against him within the party. Nor is the current criticism being leveled against him (that he is not conservative), anything the Democrats could possibly use to their advantage, as they’re even less so.

I might also ask more generally, how it is somehow acceptable to urge conservatives to forfeit their views, but not to demand that the candidate they are supposed to elect to represent them, forfeit his own instead? We do not represent John McCain, he wishes to represent us. If he doesn’t represent us, then we should say so. For silence is the one thing no representative democracy can tolerate or long survive.

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Do you remember in the 80s when there were these bizarre quasi-political trash shows with psychopathic screaming hosts on television and the radio? They were something like a combination of Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Springer. Here’s video of two of the worst getting into a fight over who is more “conservative.” Wally wins, but his only redeeming virtue now and then was that he was the father of Rebecca De Mornay (and this will always be her song as far as I’m concerned). Edit. Ah, the scene.

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