Whose Side Are They On?

Debra Saunders has a great column today on townhall.com discussing the anybody-but-McCain phenomenon on talk radio. Saunders points out that the vitriol over McCain's votes for things like campaign finance and immigration reform is unreasonable and more likely to land us a Democrat in the White House than it is to nominate a suitable candidate.

I've been saying this for a few days, as well. The constant drumbeat from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity and others isn't just that they prefer other candidates (scratch that: they all want Romney, no questions asked). It's as though they have become exactly what the left constantly accuses conservative talk radio of being: a single meme repeated endlessly.

Hugh Hewitt crowed Tuesday night about the effect of "12 hours a day of anti-McCain rhetoric" on the Michigan election. I have no problem with free speech, but at some point, when all the callers are echoing the same wording, it becomes a bit disturbing.

The exceptions I've found to the anti-McCain bandwagon have been Bill O'Reilly and Michael Medved. Both gentlemen allow for differing opinions on the candidates and don't spend their entire shows bashing John McCain. And they don't spend it extolling the virtues of one candidate to the exclusion of others.

Perhaps this is what is bothering me about the talk show mafia mentality I've seen developing since Mike Huckabee started garnering attention back in October: by constantly running down our candidates, it is far more likely to cause people--Republicans, independents, and Democrats alike--to not want to vote for the eventual Republican winner. To be honest, watching various talk show hosts (Hugh Hewitt is the absolute worst) gloss over Mitt Romney's flaws while using a microscope on John McCain makes me question if I want to vote for any candidate endorsed by this bunch.

Rush Limbaugh read the Debra Saunders column today on his program, then proceeded to rip it apart, claiming that "we don't want to compromise with Democrats; we want to defeat them." Well, I'm sorry, Rush, but there are enough Americans tired of slash-and-burn politics to create a landslide for Democrats in this election cycle if conservatives callously ignore their issues and concerns. Screaming that there is no global warming or that building a fence is the only answer to our immigration problem isn't going to win the votes of those citizens. Saunders is right: if ideological purity it more important than winning elections and making needed changes, then our punditocracy is headed in the right direction.