Poor Rush Limbaugh.
You'd think a guy with 20 million listeners--the highest-rated talk show in America--would have a little thicker skin. You'd think a guy who's been excoriated by Democrats for 20 years and lampooned by every major comedy outlet available would let a little criticism roll off his back.
You'd be wrong.
Evidently, pointing out the relentless drumbeat of anti-McCain propaganda coming out of talk radio is telling Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck and others to "shut up."
When Huckabee was coming out of nowhere in Iowa, we had numerous pundits on the left who write their conservatism to be read by liberals, jumping on the Huckabee bandwagon. And then McCain came out of nowhere in New Hampshire, and then they jumped on the McCain bandwagon. Romney wins in Michigan, and they didn't jump on the Romney bandwagon. They stayed on the McCain bandwagon. Then we go to Wyoming, and Romney won all the delegates there, and they didn't jump on the Romney bandwagon. They stayed on the McCain bandwagon and hoped for Huckabee. And then we get to South Carolina and Nevada. In Nevada, Romney cleans up, and nobody talks about it. "Romney is nowhere. He's off the charts. He should quit. Thompson should quit. He should get out of the race!" They remain on the McCain bandwagon. Now the people on the McCain bandwagon are telling those of us who aren't on the McCain bandwagon, to shut up. Just be quiet. We are supposedly damaging the Republican Party.
We are supposedly damaging the conservative movement. We should just shut up. Just sit by and watch all this stuff and let it happen and just be quiet. What is the point? By the way, it's aimed at people in talk radio. Why should we in talk radio "just shut up," and start supporting the front-runner of the moment?
I don't recall seeing anyone tell talk radio people to "just shut up." What has been discussed is the unprecedented, relentless negativity by various talk show hosts toward John McCain. What I'm talking about isn't simply that various hosts all discussed John McCain; it's that they all discussed the exact same complaints. If I were a liberal, I'd say there was a vast rightwing conspiracy going on.
Liberals frequently discuss conservative talk radio as being an "echo chamber." Most of the time, they're wrong about this. It's rare for every major talk show in the country seemingly to be talking off the same page, but the anybody-but-McCain meme looks a lot like it.
Aside from the exact words used (repeated from show to show ad nauseam), the fact that these same hosts gave passes to the flip-flopping non-conservative positions of Mitt Romney has become absolutely galling. It's one thing to point out that Romney switched his position on abortion. But Romney's switched positions on a number of issues including stem cell research, gay rights, and tax cuts. The DNC came up with a "Mitt Romney Flip-Flop Kit" detailing Romney's ever-changing positions and sold it on eBay. Shouldn't these supposedly rock-ribbed conservative talk show hosts be concerned about any of that?
Unfortunately, these guys give Romney a pass because he says what they want to hear...today...regardless of what he's said in the past. And keep in mind, Rush excoriated Mike Huckabee for his ever-changing (some would call it pandering) position on immigration (rightly so, I believe). Romney tried to run to the left of Ted Kennedy (not an easy thing to do) when he ran for the Senate. Yet we're supposed to accept without question his epiphanies concerning abortion, taxation, gay rights and other issues?
The biggest problem with Rush's rant is its disengenuousness. He knows better than the arguments he makes. Take this one:
The point is, McCain got fewer votes -- 42% in 2000; 33% of the vote Saturday night, 2008 -- and he wasn't running against his two top challengers, once you get out of these states where independents can go in and vote in the Republican primary.
He should have cleaned up. McCain should have gotten over 50% of the vote if this McCain movement is for real, but he got fewer votes and a much smaller percentage in 2008 than he did in 2000.
Rush is smarter than this. In 2000, there were only 3 presidential candidates still in the race by the time voters cast ballots in South Carolina: George Bush, John McCain, and Alan Keyes. The race was essentially a 2-man race with Keyes lagging behind. In 2008, there were five (six if you count Ron Paul) Republican candidates with still substantial support by the time of the South Carolina primary: John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. The reason John McCain got a smaller percentage of the vote in South Carolina was because there were far more candidates to choose from. This is a ridiculous and petty argument on Rush's part; he knows the history of the 2000 campaign and of this one. Arguing that McCain's support isn't "real" because the vote was more fractured is a logical fallacy worthy of liberals.
Then there's this:
Senator McCain's domestic record is not conservative, and we're being lectured by the media -- some who are hostile to conservatism, some who wear the conservative label -- to be quiet, to not be too hard on him, or whatever. Those of us who have been here since the beginning of the program in 1988, you know we deal here in ideas. Why should I be quiet about my ideas? Why should I be quiet, or anybody else on the radio who happens to espouse what I believe? Why should we be quiet? The primary is precisely the time to speak!
John McCain has an 83 out of 100 conservative rating from the American Conservative Union. Contrary to Rush, Laura, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt and others, this does not make him a liberal. In fact, it doesn't even make him a moderate.
The truth is, John McCain pissed off a lot of very conservative people--people like Rush Limbaugh who talk as though they own the imprimatur of conservatism--by agreeing with President Bush about immigration reform. He also believed in campaign finance reform, a point you can agree with or not. But some of the other arguments about John McCain are simply ridiculous.
As Michael Medved points out, John McCain has never voted for a tax increase. That fact puts him ahead of virtually every other Republican candidate out there including Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, Mitt Romney. Believing that spending cuts should accompany tax cuts makes McCain more conservative than the band wagon hangers-on who scream about McCain's lack of support for the Bush tax cuts.
But this, of course, is beside the point. The point is that no one has told anyone to "shut up" and claiming this is overly sensitive. I dunno, Rush. Maybe you could spend more time examining the failings of other candidates and less time bashing John McCain. If he's the Republican nominee, you might have to get used to a new brand of conservatism. You know, the kind supported by so many Reagan administration officials.
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