Beck Misread By Colleagues

February 24, 2010 at 7:21 am | Posted in Political | 3 Comments

by Walter Scott Hudson, contributing to the New Patriot Journal

Glenn Beck delivered the keynote address at CPAC Saturday, receiving roughly a dozen standing ovations as he utilized his trademark chalkboard to present what he called the progressive “cancer… eating our Constitution.” Beck did not constrain his criticism to the Obama administration or the Democratic party. He called out Republicans as well:

I’m so sick of hearing people say, oh, well the Republicans are going to solve it all. Really? [They are] just progressive-lite. That’s like somebody sticking a screwdriver in your eye and [you] saying, “Stop! Stop!” And somebody else pulls it out and then puts a pin in your eye. I don’t want stuff in my eyes! Stop stabbing in the eyes!

Beck also said:

The Republicans right now are giving us many of those same [progressive] choices – not all of them – but some of them. We have a guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.

Beck went on to out Roosevelt as a progressive.

Beck compared the condition of the Republican party to that of a drunk at the end of a raucous night of debauchery. Like an alcoholic who hits rock-bottom, the Republicans must admit they have a problem before recovery can occur. This comparison, and the broader accusation of progressivism in the Republican party, has come under attack by conservative colleagues.

Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program Monday:

I would not have said that the only people who can stop Obama, the Republicans, should be excoriated for being just as bad. I don’t know how you could say, after hearing Marco Rubio, that the Republicans are just as bad as [Democrats]. It would never occur to me to say that. I don’t know what the objective would be.

Former Secretary of Education and morning talk show host Bill Bennett was more specific and derisive in a column posted at National Review Online:

To say the GOP and the Democrats are no different, to say the GOP needs to hit a recovery-program-type bottom and hang its head in remorse, is to delay our own country’s recovery from the problems the Democratic left is inflicting. The stakes are too important to go through that kind of exercise, which will ultimately go nowhere anyway — because it’s already happened (Bennett earlier cites examples like Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann).

The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are. There is a difference between morning and night. There is a difference between drunk and sober. And there is a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they don’t exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous.

Both Bennett and Limbaugh misread Beck’s point. Beck clearly articulated the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. His analysis suggests a difference insufficient to satisfy principled conservatives. Beck is calling for more than rhetoric, more than speeches from individual politicians. Beck is looking for broad and consistent action. He is looking for Republicans at large to embrace principle over politics.

Scott Brown, the celebrated new senator from Massachusetts, just voted for Obama’s “jobs bill,” which has been widely analyzed as yet another stimulus package. In Minnesota, 15 Republican state senators recently went along with the Democratic majority to pass a $1.2 billion bonding bill which includes funding for volleyball courts and gorilla cages among other pork barrel projects. The actions of the GOP at large do not match the rhetoric of figures like Rubio or Bachmann. In some cases,  like Brown’s, individual Republicans literally say one thing and do another. This is what Beck speaks to. This is the behavior for which he demands repentance.

Presumably, Bennett regards Beck’s message as “dangerous” because the electoral failure of Republicans means the electoral success of Democrats. Yet, this is precisely Beck’s point; it does not matter if the GOP emerges from 2010 victorious if they merely “suck less than the other guys.” Republicans need to become a true alternative to progressives. It is not sufficient to be Republican.

Curiously, Bennett cites the Tea Party movement as evidence Republicans have seen the error of their ways, as if the movement emerged from the party. As recent posts at the New Patriot Journal declare and demonstrate, the Tea Party movement is not a Republican proxy. It contains Republicans. It is not of or about Republicans. If anything, the movement has emerged in response to Republican hypocrisy as much as any Democratic policy. The movement is not about party politics. It is about principled governance and citizen activism.

This concept of principle over party seems to genuinely confuse Limbaugh. When he says he does not know what the objective of excoriating Republicans is, he demonstrates a vision obscured by a partisan lens. If you do not like Obama, Limbaugh’s paradigm demands you love Republicans. The Tea Party, like Beck, rejects that false dichotomy. Contrary to Bennett’s perception, the true danger in 2010 lies in trusting Republicans without holding them to account. Voters cannot find comfort in a slower march off the same progressive cliff.