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Jewish World Review
March 5, 2009
/ 9 Adar 5769
Rush to Rush
By
Bob Tyrrell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Rush is the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the
Republican Party," Paul Begala is quoted as saying by The Washington
Post. Begala is asseverating on Rush Limbaugh, the most popular radio
commentator in the country, but alas, one who disagrees with Begala. I
think it speaks volumes about Begala's obliviousness that he would bring
up physical traits in attempting to make some political point. Has he
beheld himself in a mirror lately? Even friends know him as "The Skull,"
owing to his cadaverous countenance.
You may only have seen him on television. I have had the gruesome
experience of seeing him in the flesh. We were in the makeup room being
cosmeticized for appearances on a cable television show. The artiste
attending to the crevices, the gullies and the bumps of Begala's
unfortunate face had to apply so much makeup to it that when he left the
makeup room, it looked as though he was wearing plaster of Paris. During
the ensuing debate, he may have laughed at one or two of my jokes, or he
may have frowned. It was impossible to tell. His ghoulish features were
covered up completely.
The point Begala has been trying to make about Limbaugh is the point
that apparently an entire phalanx of Democratic operatives — including
President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — is trying to
make, namely, that Limbaugh wants the president to fail. Of course,
these Democrats are practicing a deception on their audiences. What
Limbaugh clearly wants is for the president to fail in his apparent goal
of bringing social democracy to our shores (through his nationalization
of much of the economy and his onerous tax increases). Limbaugh wants
this effort to fail because it would prevent economic recovery and the
prosperity that has been allowed us by free market economics. The whole
controversy is a hoax. Yet now it is reliably reported that as many as a
dozen top Democrats, some on the White House staff, are continuing this
hoax and expanding it by trying to make reaction to Limbaugh an issue
for the Republican Party to pronounce on.
Supposedly, if one declares admiration for Limbaugh in public, one is
politically an extremist. Alternatively, if one scorns him, one is
civilized to the utmost. The consequence is discord within Republican
ranks and — so Democrats believe — growing strength for the Democrats.
Truth be told, here is but more evidence of my deeply held belief that
politics for many — whether they be Republicans or Democrats — is a
form of neurosis. Come election time, only the nuts will care about
which side you lined up on in this deviously confected hoax.
Yet the controversy demonstrates anew the validity of O'Sullivan's Law.
The eponym of this law is John O'Sullivan, former aide to Lady Margaret
Thatcher and former editor of National Review. According to O'Sullivan's
Law, in American culture if one is not firmly conservative, one will
fall prey to the liberals who dominate the culture, polluting it with
their left-wing politics and creating what I call Kultursmog.
In the smog , various timid conservatives have
allowed themselves to become instrumentalities of the Democrats' hoax.
Thus, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele has
called Limbaugh's commentary "incendiary" and "ugly." Has Steele
listened to Begala lately? Another timorous conservative is David Frum,
who always is identified as one of the ex-writers for former President
George W. Bush who assisted in creating the phrase "axis of evil." How
many writers are needed to create a three-word phrase? Frum is going
along with the Democrats' misleading claim that Rush wants the president
to fail. Perhaps Frum believes that social democracy is an improvement
on free markets.
My favorite among the timid conservatives is this Kathleen Parker, a
conservative columnist who apparently rose without a trace. Until this
autumn, I never had heard of her, and to this day, about the only time
one does hear of her is when she is puffing liberal gases into the Kultursmog . In the autumn, she was one of the
conservatives sternly critical of Sen. John McCain for his choice of the
pulchritudinous Sarah Palin as a running mate. Now she is equally stern
in her criticism of the pulchritudinous Limbaugh.
Her presence in the mainstream media is another example of how the
political culture works. Conservatives become acceptable when they
disparage conservatives. Rush Limbaugh never has taken the coward's way
out — and he is very amusing.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
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