The Pink Flamingo :: The Suicide Bomber Conservatives

“…WALLACE: Do you think there's a rush to judgment about Barack Obama. Do you think voters know enough about him?
BUSH: I certainly don't know what he believes in. The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad. I think I commented that in a press conference when I was asked about that.
WALLACE: I hope not. But so you don't think that we know enough about him or what he stands...
BUSH: It doesn't seem like it to me, but this campaign is plenty of time for candidates to get defined. He is yet his party's nominee.
WALLACE: So why do you think he's gotten this far if people don't know what he stands for?
BUSH: You're the pundit. I'm just a simple president.
Responds Obama spokesman Bill Burton:
“Of course President Bush would attack the one candidate in this race who opposed his disastrous war in Iraq from the start. But Barack Obama doesn't need any foreign policy advice from the architect of the worst foreign policy decision in a generation….”

Any rational person, after reading the above, should be absolutely terrified and do everything possible to facilitate the election of John McCain. Unfortunately there are some far right multi-millionaire talk show and pundit conservatives who are planning to do everything possible to prevent his election. They are also threatening to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. G. Gordon Liddy calls them Suicide Bomber Republicans. I think he is being kind. I would rather call them something else, but I’ve given up profanity for Lent. Instead, I am calling them Suicide Bomber Conservatives.

WHY DID CONSERVATIVES REJECT BROWNBACK?
I don’t know about you but I am sick and tired of listening to the far right multi-million dollar, radio show, talking, narcissistic heads reject Sam Brownback’s Presidential bid? He’s nearly the perfect Reagan conservative. He has charisma, TV-Q. He is smart, handsome, personable, and would have gone far if conservative talk radio had jumped on his bandwagon.

Sam Brownback was the PERFECT conservative candidate, but not one, not one of our top shelf bloggers, let alone our Suicide Bomber conservative talk show hosts would even lift a pinky to support him. Doesn’t it make a person wonder about this sort of thing?

First there were not “true” conservatives, even though Brownback was probably the most conservative of the bunch. Then there were no true “Reagan” conservatives, even though Brownback calls himself that. Perhaps the problems was the fact that Brownback, far too honorable for our Suicide Bomber Conservative radio hosts, called Tom Tancredo down for supporting John Tanton. This leads to another question. Are these people in the tank for Tancredo?

Then none of our candidates was religious enough. Mike Huckabee went religious. He was then too religious.

Would you make up your minds?

The other morning I listened to an interview with Bill Krystol. He said something that I found rather interesting. I think most Republicans are more than a little concerned about what comes next with our rather recalcitrant far-right conservatives. Are they going to eventually get behind our nominee or be left behind?

Krystol makes the observation that two of the biggest critics of a McCain candidacy are two of the most flawed messengers conservatives could choose. Tom Delay left under a cloud of corruption charges and Tom Santorum lost his re-election bid by 20 points!

Roger Simon, a voice of reason, writes,

“…But that should only prove my point about purists. No one is good enough for them. When Rudy Giuliani came on the scene and was running high in the polls, for the most part they sat there with their arms folded, waiting for him to make ideological bows in their direction. And when he did, they still didn’t jump on his bandwagon. Even Fred Thompson, supposedly a pure conservative himself, wasn’t good enough. As we know, both of these men tanked. The lack of wholehearted support by the conservative movement wasn’t the sole reason, but it helped. So I have a suggestion for the attendees at CPAC. You are expecting John McCain to meet you at least halfway (or maybe more) on Thursday. Why don’t you think about meeting him halfway as well? He has something to do that you don’t. He has to win a presidential election. The American electorate is in the middle. If you force him too much over to your side, in the name of ideological purity you will have elected your opponents…”

LIMBAUGH AS AHAB
Not only are our Suicide Bomber Conservative talk show hosts and celeb pundits absolutely obnoxious over their refusal to behave in a rational or logical manner. In their abject refusal to listen to reason or act in a “Christian” manner, even though they all claim to be “Born Again” they are condemning John McCain for behavior that stems fro allegations, half-truths, and out-right lies. It doesn’t really matter though. Something else is going on here.

There is no doubt at all that Rush Limbaugh hates John McCain with such a passion he will doom the country to either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and their absolutely reprehensible SCOTUS choices, thus dooming Republicans to a good 25 to 50 years of abjectly liberal rule. They problems is apparently Rush Limbaugh doesn’t give a blank (profanity deleted due to Lent). ALL he is interested in his hatred of John McCain. If he destroys the GOP’s chances this election, so be it.

When a person develops this kind of pathological hatred, something is wrong. Rush Limbaugh is acting like a conservative Captain Ahab with John McCain as his Moby Dick. Unfortunately, we all know how Ahab was destroyed by his obsessive hatred.

If Limbaugh had not denigrated Mike Huckabee and basically every other candidate but the unelectable Mitt Romney it would give him just a little credibility on the subject. Unfortunately, when NONE OF THE ABOVE prove acceptable to Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter & co it makes one a little suspicious.

There is only one logical and rational reason for the above to be behaving they way they are. They have a vested interest in seeing John McCain defeated. The only logical and rational reason for these people to behave as they are is the fact that if John McCain wins, they lose. If John McCain loses, they win.

POWER - That's the only reason these people are behaving the way they are. They evidently are incapable of evolving and growing with the changing culture of the country. They are dinosaurs in a world where mammals are starting to evolve and dominate.

CPAC PROVES MY POINT
The straw polling at CPAC was interesting. 30% of CPACers responding said they will not vote for McCain. Considering CPAC is the most conservative of the conservatives – this is excellent. This is a very good indicator that only a small minority of the “conservative” GOP base will not vote for McCain. These individuals have greatly over-estimated the great conservative GOP base.

CHILDISH CONSERVATIVES
Deborah Saunders

“…Only an ignoramus would call McCain's record to the left of Hillary Clinton's. California Republicans are not fools. Party biggies excluded independent voters in a primary that seemed rigged for Romney, but voters themselves delivered an estimated 161 out of 173 delegates to the out-funded McCain. If you go by the votes, the McCain-Over-My-Dead-Body Crowd is vocal, but tiny - despite the wrath of talk-show giants and the deluge of Mitt's millions. When you listen to the McCain haters, you realize that they aren't angry at McCain's record or his votes, so much as they're incensed that the Arizona senator works with Democrats. Comment boards sneer at the very notion of compromise. Romney often faulted McCain for working on bills with Democrats. To the purists, elected officials are supposed to go to Washington to not work with those on the other side of the aisle. It is as if they think U.S. senators should spend the day pointing pea-shooters at each other. They don't want results. They want a food fight.

This is not the conservative base; it is the kiddie wing of the Republican Party….”

Dick Armey takes out Ann Coulter.
AJ Strata on the great divorce

“…The fact of the matter is there are more conservatives who can disagree on some items than those too pure for the rest of us lowly beings to fathom. And that is the lesson that will be taught this election cycle. Hannity and Ingraham are divorcing themselves from the GOP for daring to disagree with them - they are now “Independent Conservatives”. How pathetic. They don’t get their way so they bolt, insults and demeaning comments flying against those who dare differ. And let’s not forget the two versions of suicide voters out there. We have the Coulter-Beck club who are not RINOs, but will vote for Hillary before the GOP nominee (and yes folks, McCain is the GOP nominee as selected by the voters just as Bush is the GOP President, also selected by the voters). How is it they are more “pure”, “true” conservatives than those who disagree with McCain but still want to defeat liberalism? And there is also their close cousins the suicide non-voters, whose actions will also result in Liberals having an edge in this year’s elections? These suicide voters are holier conservatives than me?...”

GET OVER IT
Malkin can’t get past the success John McCain is having. James Joyner on Mark Steyn’s almost racial repulsion against John McCain’s supporters at CPAC. Steyn remarks about hearing two young people speak Spanish, with almost revulsion. The poor man wouldn’t last five minutes in the Southwest where 90% of the people you hear speaking Spanish are either touristas who are here legally or American Citizens who just happen to speak Spanish. (HINT: Their families pre-date 1848).

Then Sean Hannity had a nuclear meltdown – the China Syndrome incarnate.

“…But something inside Hannity snapped over this and he was in the throws of insanity. He claimed those who question his actions are pompous, arrogant, hanger-ons who are simply trying to angle for jobs in the new administration and have sold their principles for money. And he was just getting started! The most hilarious (and pathetic) part came where he declared himself and other angry and raving talk show hosts the future of America! You could almost see him stand up and salute himself….”

Coulter equates McCain with Hitler.

Killing victory

“…Now McCain is "unwilling to bow and kiss the ring" of his antagonists, says one adviser, who didn't want to be named fanning any flames. (Regarding Coulter, another top McCain aide snorts—anonymously, for the same reason—"I don't care what she thinks.") Do their diatribes bother McCain? "I don't listen to them … I've never even met them," McCain says. "I don't even listen to Rush … I'm not a masochist." Asked if it wouldn't make his life simpler to call Dobson and seek common ground, McCain shrugs. "I know what it takes to unite the party," he says. He needs to put that knowledge into action, and fairly soon. It seems possible that the conservative movement—the dominant force in American politics since the Reagan Revolution—has become so dogmatic that it might choose purity over victory….” “…"Conservatives are in open rebellion now," says longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie. "We've been treated shabbily by Republican establishment politicians. We've been treated like the proverbial country cousins. They'll invite us to the wedding but make us sit in the back. All that Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage and the others are doing is just reflecting what's happening at the grass roots. The Republican Party is in shambles. McCain is trailing among conservatives, and conservatives are the base of the Republican Party. Sure, he's getting the lion's share of moderate and liberal Republicans, but they make up only one third of the Republican vote."…”

Ross Douthat wrote in the NYTimes:

“…Similarly, religious conservatives who listened to James Dobson were asked to believe that Mr. McCain’s consistent pro-life voting record was less important than the impact his campaign-finance bill had on the National Right to Life Committee’s ability to purchase issue ads on television 60 days before an election. Or that his consistent support for conservative judicial nominees, and his pledge to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito, mattered less than his involvement in the “Gang of 14” compromise on judicial filibusters.

Mike Huckabee signed a no-new-taxes pledge and campaigned on a (borderline-crackpot) tax plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and institute a national sales tax. Yet he found himself caricatured as a “Christian socialist” because he had raised gas taxes and cigarette taxes while governor of Arkansas. Merely acknowledging that some corporate chief executives might be overpaid and some working-class voters might be struggling was enough to get him dismissed by George Will as a “radical” who had supposedly repudiated “free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America’s corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.”

The conservative critics of Mr. McCain and Mr. Huckabee weren’t wrong on every issue. But in their zeal to read both candidates out of the conservative movement, often on the flimsiest of pretexts, the movement’s leaders raised a standard of ideological purity that not even Ronald Reagan could have lived up to.

This sort of purism would have been folly in Mr. Reagan’s era, when conservatism was an insurgency with its greatest victories still ahead of it, and there were real liberal Republicans to slay along the way. It represents political suicide today.

Precisely because the right has won so many battles — on taxes, welfare, crime and the cold war — in the decades since it squared off against Gerald Ford and Jacob Javits, the greatest danger facing the contemporary Republican Party is ideological sclerosis, rather than insufficient orthodoxy.

Conservative voters seem to understand that.

Too bad their leaders don’t….”

Unfortunately there is only one logical explanation for the behavior of our Suicide Bomber Conservative leaders. It has nothing to do with honor or protecting the country and everything to do with keeping their individual power base.