The Pink Flamingo :: How to Buy the White House & Demise of the Conservative Dinosaurs

Shaun Mullen at Kiko’s House came up with the perfect description of today’s modern conservatives. They are dinosaurs on their last legs. I love it. I wish I had thought of it. Mullen quotes a recent David Brooks article that is quite damning.

“…Apostates and deviationists were expelled or found wanting, and the boundaries of acceptable thought narrowed. Moderate Republicans were expelled for squishiness. Millions of coastal suburbanites left the party in disgust.

And still the corset tightened. Many professional conservatives do not regard Mike Huckabee or John McCain as true conservatives. “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party,” Rush Limbaugh said recently on his radio show. “It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Some of the contributors to The National Review’s highly influential blog, The Corner, look to Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney to save the conservative movement. Their hatred of McCain is so strong, it’s earned its own name: McCain Derangement Syndrome.

Yet a funny thing has happened this primary season. Conservative voters have not followed their conservative leaders. Conservative voters are much more diverse than the image you’d get from conservative officialdom….”

If conservatives continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh and his conservative minions, they are going to be as extinct and as dead as the dinosaurs. They have betrayed Reagan. If Ronald Reagan were to attempt to run today, they would crucify him, it’s that simple. Evidently our Rush Limbaugh conservatives are more interested in being pandered too and worshiped than looking at the truth. As McCain blogger Walter G. emailed earlier today,

"...it's easy to pick up a few points in the polls if you're willing to "make all the promises you have to," like promising the people of Michigan that you'll bail out the Big Three in Detroit, and the people of Florida that you'll sit down with insurance executives to figure out a way to get all Americans to pay for insurance policies for people with beach-front property in hurricane-prone areas."

MITT ROMNEY IS NO CONSERVATIVE
Debra Saunders in RCP wrote about Romney.

“…I understand Romney's appeal to GOP voters. During debates, he usually delivers the best line and demonstrates a command of every issue. Pundits like to talk about how he looks like a president. More important, he sounds like a president. Romney's work to restore confidence to the scandal-plagued 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics shows that his take-charge attitude can lead to success. Also, Republicans like a candidate with real-world business experience. But don't tell me Romney is the true conservative in the race. His record reveals a solid conservative -- when it has been in his interest to be one.

In 1994, when he was running to unseat Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, Romney supported abortion rights, distanced himself from Ronald Reagan and courted the gay and lesbian vote. While he opposed same-sex marriage, Romney convinced the largest gay GOP organization, the Log Cabin Republicans, that he could support civil unions -- and won their unanimous endorsement when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. Before his first -- and only -- term as governor was over, Romney had flipped completely. When Romney came out against civil unions, Log Cabin Republicans felt betrayed. "He shakes your hand, looks you in the eye," Log Cabin member Richard Babson later told the Washington Post. "It's hard for me to know what Mitt Romney's first principles are on a given day."

Romney had liberal/moderate Republican positions when running for Massachusetts office, then far-right positions when they could help him win the GOP nod for the White House. And somehow he feels no hesitation in framing himself as the true conservative. Yes, thinking people's positions evolve, but Romney's evolutions have been too fast and too convenient….”

SELF FINANCING SHOULD BE PROHIBITED
Romney’s self-financing is the subject of Elizabeth Holmes’s WSJ piece today.

“…A senior aide to Mr. Romney says the millionaire investor plans to spend as much as $40 million in the campaign. Mr. Romney spent $17.4 million of his own money on his campaign through the third quarter of last year, according to the Federal Election Commission. By comparison, Arizona Sen. John McCain raised a total of $31.4 million in individual donations during the same period. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee raised $2.3 million. At a time when some campaigns are running dangerously low on funds, Mr. Romney's ability to self-finance will make it difficult to count him out of the race until the very end. "At the end of the day, he doesn't have to worry about the things that other people have to worry about," said Ed Rollins, a senior adviser to Mr. Huckabee who recently agreed to forgo his $25,000 monthly paycheck because the campaign was running out of money. "He just goes to his ATM machine and pulls out whatever he needs."

I’m of two minds here. I think this requirement for money is disgusting they way candidates are forced to beg and pander. On the other hand, self-financing gives the wealthy candidate such a distinct advantage over those who don’t tens of millions to throw into the wind. When you think about it in those terms, self-financing beyond a few million is grossly unfair to the other candidates and gives someone like a Michael Bloomberg or a Mitt Romney a massive advantage. When you look at it in those terms, I think self-financing should be prohibited after a certain amount of cash is infused into a campaign. If Mitt Romney was not using his own money, would he even be in the race right now? It makes it look like the White House is open to the highest bidder. If this is the case, why even bother. Just do like they did at the end of that horrible flick, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and auction the White House off to the highest bidder.

Mitt Romney has made a mockery out of this entire process, the same way Ross Perot did and the way Michael Bloomberg is probably going to do. The more I think about it the angrier it makes me.

RUSH SHOULD BE HUSHED
I don’t care what you think about Rush Limbaugh, he should be forced to shut the h#l@ up until the end of the primary season, or else play fair, which he is not doing. I know good, decent honorable Republicans who are listening to every word Rush is saying about McCain. Rush is hurting John McCain. I use my RNC friend, who is not connected online and listens only to FOX and Rush. He is convinced Romney is an excellent conservative, and says Rush is holding the country together for us.

Rush Limbaugh has a very grave moral responsibility to either declare who he is supporting as Michael Medved has done and be intellectually honest about it, or be fair and balanced as Michael Reagan is trying to do. Rush is hurting himself. He is hurting conservatives. Even worse, he is hurting the country. If the polls are correct and John McCain is the only Republican who can beat either Hillary or Obama, then Rush Limbaugh needs to be honest about it and QUIT LYING about John McCain. You see, only telling one side of a story is, according to Fr. Penn, also a lie of omission.

VERY DISCOURAGING TIMES
Right now I am terribly discouraged. I don’t see how anyone but Mitt Romney can win considering the fact that he is allowed to spend all the personal money he wants, and literally buy his way to the nomination. Then, added to the fact that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and all the usual conservative sources are treating him as the 2nd coming, I don’t see how anyone else has a chance.

Listening to Medved this evening, I realized how much damage Rush Limbaugh had done to both John McCain and Mike Huckabee. He is NOT TELLING THE TRUTH. No person should be this powerful and be allowed to continue spreading half-truths and innuendo about our REPUBLICAN candidates and not be challenged to the whole truth and absolute truth. Tell the truth about Romney’s taxes. Tell the truth, Rush or SHUT UP!

Conservatives are damning themselves if they continue this obscene persecution of John McCain and Mike Huckabee They are dooming themselves as a movement (which is probably good). The problem is along the way they are going to turn the White House over to the Dems. Benjamin Story’s Weekly Standard piece is quite an indictment.

“…Many think that the conservative movement is currently on shaky ground. In a perceived crisis, it is a human temptation is to run to ideologies to save the day. But conservative thought will be impoverished if its advocates close themselves in the "clean and well-lit prison of one idea," as G. K. Chesterton warned. To do so would be to fall prey to the fallacy that theories can govern men. Men must govern men, and men have characters, good or bad, and those characters are decisive for how the country is led. The ideology of the economists leads far too many to sneer at the honest, if imperfect, attempts of a man to be virtuous and to put that virtue in the service of his country. More damaging than any of the particular quarrels with McCain is the evident cynicism of some public intellectuals toward the possibility of virtue in public life.

The mixed motives of even the most earnest public servant are a subject McCain himself examines with probity and insight in his book, Worth the Fighting For. Senator McCain is not perfect, but he has the priceless virtue of believing in virtue. He knows himself to be ambitious, but he also knows that to be honorable he must put his ambition in the service of something greater than himself: his country. Difficult as it is to embody virtue in action or define it in thought, conservatives must have the courage to acknowledge the reality of virtue and its necessary role in public life. Hamilton didn't think that virtue was an attractive ornament; he insisted that it was indispensable to republican government….”

NOT VERY CONSERVATIVE
From Race 42008 we learn just how much in love Mitt Romney was with raising taxes when he was governor of Mass. But wait – he is THE TRUE ANOINTED CONSERVATIVE, so it doesn’t matter what his record is, Rush, Coulter, NRO, and all the usual conservative suspects are going to lie about it.

“…“Tax Hike Mike” — $47.62 Million “True Conservative Mitt” — $81.25 Million
So the true conservative raised taxes 70% more per year in less than half the time in office than the ultra-liberal tax hiking Huck.Even when considering the difference per capita, the amount Arkansans paid over what Masachussetts citizens paid was $2.00 per year! That’s less than the tax increase Arkansas voters approved — which was factored into the “Huckabee” tax increases. Here’s the real shocker. Romney only served four years in office. Technically less, since he started running for president during his tenure as governor. Remember the charge that Huckabee’s net tax increases were about $500 million? at $81.25 million a year, Romney’s tax bite could have been as much as $853.13 million if he had been able to get re-elected and spend 10 1/2 years in office. That’s $353 million he saved the people of Masachussetts by quiting his job early to run for president — proof that he is indeed a fiscal conservative. So in addition to the sleaze factor, his ideological viscosity, his cynical drive to do a “Leveraged Buyout” of the White House and all the other reasons his opponents give for opposing him, Mitt Romney’s opponents can now add, “he’s a tax and spend liberal who raised taxes even more than Mike Huckabee!” to their mantra. Of course, before I hit the “Send” button, the establishment media will have Mitt’s latest talking points up debunking this “myth”….”

In addition:

“…Now let’s move on to the flipperoos that escaped Ann Coulter’s attention:
Immigration: As late as last year, the candidate who now ridicules amnesty proposals said: “I don’t believe in rounding up 11 million people and forcing them at gunpoint from our country. With these 11 million people, let’s have them registered, know who they are. Those who’ve been arrested or convicted of crimes shouldn’t be here; those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship, as they would from their home country.” Wasn’t that pretty much the Bush party line?

Gun control: He supported bans on so-called “assault weapons.” He supported the Brady bill. He spurned the National Rifle Association. As late as 2002, he was still defending Massachusetts’ confiscatory gun laws. But, last year, he joined the NRA and claimed to favor easing licensing requirements.

Minimum wage: In 1994, he opposed an increase, but offered as a compromise tying a hike to the rate of inflation. By 2002, he supported an increase. In 2006, he vetoed an increase. Like some other notable politicians of the recent past, he was against it before he was for it, before he was against it.

Same-sex marriage: In 1994, he opposed the federal marriage amendment and promised to help establish “full equality for America’s gays and lesbians.” In 2002, he provided legal recognition to same-sex couples in Massachusetts, even though he was not required to do so under a state Supreme Judicial Court ruling, as he has suggested. As governor, he even threatened to fire officials who would not issue same-sex marriage licenses and perform civil ceremonies. Yet, now, in 2007, he miraculously supports the federal marriage amendment.

Homosexuals in the military: In 1994, he supported “don’t ask, don’t tell,” saying it was a step toward “gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military.” Today he claims he doesn’t want to change the policy to permit homosexuals from serving openly in the military.

Tax cutting: In 1994, he opposed a cut in the capital gains tax. In 2002, he refused to sign a “no new taxes” pledge. In 2007, he claims to support a cut in capital gains taxes. He has taken the “no new taxes” pledge. And he says he supports making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent.

Nevertheless, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and countless other friends of mine – people who are right far more often than they are wrong – have somehow fallen under the spell of Mitt Romney. I look at the man, and I see the face of disingenuousness. They look at it and see the face of sincerity….”

INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY
The latest issue of Time is quite damning to Rush Limbaugh and his little minions.

“….Conservative fears about McCain are often irrational: through a 25-year career in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate, McCain has proved himself consistently pro-life on abortion and a hawk on defense, a scourge of wasteful government spending and a generally reliable vote in favor of tax cuts. Yet at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of party power brokers, McCain was booed.

Conservative élites are the ones most likely to break out into hives at the mention of McCain’s name. Former Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay has declared that he would not vote for McCain in the general election, even if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee. Railing against McCain and Huckabee, both of whom he views as anathema to conservatives, talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh recently warned his 13.5 million listeners, “If either of these two guys gets the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party.” A few days later, Limbaugh was so outraged by the possibility that Republicans might support McCain that he bellowed, “If you Republicans don’t mind McCain’s positions, then what is it about Hillary’s positions you dislike? They’re the same!”…”

A CONSERVATIVE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE
McCain is damning Limbaugh with faint praise. Let's be honest here. I will be honored to to cast a vote for Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. They are good, honorable, decent men. Any one of them would make a very good President of the United States. I just happen to like John McCain and think he is the one most likely to win in November. I am annoyed with Romney's self-financing, but he is doing nothing illegal. I think no one should be allowed to self-finance beyond say a figure like $5 million. Anything beyond that should be prohibited.

I am most angry, betrayed, by Rush Limbaugh and to a lessor extent the other celeb conservative pundits who do not have the intellectual honesty to either stay above the fight, play equal, or come out and openly endorse a candidate and be decent to the others the way Michael Medved is. What Rush Limbaugh is doing is the most deplorable and disgusting thing I've ever had the misfortune to see. If he cannot treat every one of our decent candidates FAIRLY then the GOP needs to impose some sort of fairness doctrine on self proclaimed conservative talk show hosts. Rush is doing serious harm to both John McCain and Mike Huckabee. While he is entitled to his opinion, when he attacks someone out of pure, abject hatred the way he does John McCain, then we need to pull the plug. I always though he was better than that, more honorable, more capable of playing fair. Evidently he is not.

He is destroying what is left of the "conservative movement".

He is destroying himself.