Bring it down...
Yeah, it should come as no surprise that my first real post that I write for this rejuvenated version of the wire comes courtesy of the warm glow of schadenfreude in watching the GOP eat itself...
So I'm cruisin' the mightee-tubeses o' teh intewebz looking for something to distract me from the fact that my own Democratic Party is currently suffering major potential systemic wave form collapse in both policy and politics when I stumbled across what is quickly becoming a very public and nasty knife fight on the Republican right.
This is something not so much resembling the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates but more the GOP version of a rappers beef.
Here's the link: Why Rush Is Wrong, by David Frum
Go read, it won't take long.
Back? Good.
Here's some background: David Frum has been one of the Right's leading apologists and chief intellectual bottle washers for about 20 years, really coming into his own during the reign of George II. And here's where I find this a useful object lesson... Dr. Frumenstein is just now coming to grips with the fact that the creature he helped create then wantonly unleashed on the American public and political landscape has slipped its leash and he is utterly powerless to do anything about it.
Look, here are a couple of the nut-grafs:
"He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise—and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important."
Hey... maybe you should of thought of that while you and Komrade Karl were out mining those votes for all they were worth in 2000 and then publicly whipping them up into a grief-driven hate-inspired psychosis in the wake of 9/11. Hey Dave remember this little gem from Komrade Karl in 2005?
"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
Tell me Mr. Wizard, what part of the "public face" of the party were you guys in the Communications Bullpen in the West Wing appealing to that day?
What did you think the base's response would be after listening to nearly 15 years of that kind of talk day in and day out, not just from Rush and the rest of the Microphone Militia blasting away at flyover country with terra-watts of Talk Radio spew, but from the Republican Party apparatus. You know, the Party you were so proudly trumpeting as engineering a permanent majority in government.
I find it interesting that a man who brags of being a communications guy for the "Axis of Evil, You're With Us or You're With the Terrorists" president is shocked that communicating actually accomplished something. Welcome to the law of unintended consequences.
Frum has spent a good deal of the last 15 years helping feed talking points to the very animal he is now worried is turning to bite him. I find his plaintive bleating on the subject ... uninspiring.
Here's my other favorite bit of near-suicidal self-realization from David:
"In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult."
Bad news Dave... it's not just Rush and the Dittoheads. Been to a Teabagger rally lately?
You can't just turn these people on and off, Dave. You and your gang are going to have take some responsibility for this.
You got a hell of a nerve, brother, asking us all to think you just woke up the other day to hear this bat-shit crazy, oxycontin-stoned freak screeching at you out of your alarm clock radio? You were, like, "holy crap, who the hell is this guy, and why is he dropping my name?"
C'mon, man! Sack up and take the heat. And it's not just Rush. Think about Rand Paul. Ten years ago, this guy couldn't get elected dog catcher and today he's the class of the 2010 Republican candidate crop! Where do you think this all started Dave?
Look, this auto-cannibalism fest on the right has been a while in coming. Frankly, this is something I wrote about from the floor of the 1996 GOP National Convention in San Diego as a regular news reporter, and an issue the editors here at the wire have been talking about for years now.
So on the one side we have the red rags: Frum, David Brooks, George Will, the gang at National Review, the Ghost of William Buckley, etc... On the other we have the blue rags: Rush, David Levin, Mark Steyn, Michael Weiner nee Savage, Laura Ingrham, and the aforementioned terra-watts of Hate Radio, etc...
Maybe, just maybe, their little gang war will be vicious enough to buy us Dems some time to salvage our own deal. But that's another post....
mojo sends
