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Contact Jim: jdipeso@rep.org (253) 740-2066 / 2009 Archive / 2008 Archive / 2007 Archive / 2006 Archive / 2005 Archive
Limbaugh Is Not a Conservative
March 4, 2009
Democrats are gleefully branding Rush Limbaugh as the de facto leader and spokesman of the Republican Party.
Limbaugh is reveling in their scourges and preening as the self-anointed arbiter of all things conservative.
Republican leaders who dare to cross Lord Rush feel compelled to call him a day or so later with abject apologies. The latest was newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
Big mistake. Steele shouldn’t apologize. Limbaugh should apologize, for making Steele’s job of rebuilding the party harder than it already is.
To be competitive again, Republicans must be a party of ideas. To be a party of ideas, Republicans must return to the principles of traditional conservatism. That includes reclaiming the GOP’s heritage as the party of conservation.
Limbaugh may think that he is the embodiment of conservatism, but he is nothing of the sort. His egotism and libertine disregard for conservation have nothing to do with the intellectual tradition of conservatism that was developed by Edmund Burke, expanded by thinkers such as Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, and put into practice by leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan.
Even if party leaders don’t care about such philosophizing, Limbaugh’s vaudeville act is causing practical political problems.
To win elections, Republicans need 50 percent plus 1. To get to 50 percent plus 1, Republicans must add to their coalition, not subtract from it. Constituencies that Republicans need to do a better job of reaching and persuading – youth and center-right independents, for example – don't have much use for Limbaugh’s polarizing bombast. He reinforces the worst stereotypes of Republicans as obtuse and extreme.
As conservative activist and writer David Frum has warned repeatedly, Republican leaders who follow Limbaugh as their pied piper are moving full-speed ahead down a dead-end road.
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