RUSH: There was a piece in the American Spectator yesterday, one of my favorite online websites — (interruption) why are all of you people smiling and laughing? Why? Oh, okay. Well, I can’t talk about that, most people can’t see it. Somebody sent me a Mao hat today, I put it on here, break at the top of the hour. You people watching on the Dittocam can see it. Sadly, it looks good, it looks better on me than most caps do. It’s a green army fatigue Mao cap with a red communist Chinese star, ChiCom star right in the front of it, and they can’t stop laughing. Because you never see me wear a hat, I never wear hats, even on the golf course. Well, I don’t like to put a dent in my hair. I don’t. They bug me. Wearing a hat is like tunnel vision.
Anyway, the piece in the American Spectator is by R. Andrew Newman, who is a freelance journalist in western Nebraska. This piece that he has written cuts to the chase about where the Republican Party is today, and let me read some excerpts from it to you. ‘If Movement Conservatives once and for all could bring ideological purity to the Republican Party, they would no longer have to go nose-to-nose with the Democrats for control of the White House and the Congress. No, instead, a Movement Conservative-dominated GOP would find itself in a different battle: clawing with Greens and Libertarians for two or three percentage points of the vote.’ Right off the bat here in the American Spectator we have a piece that says that movement conservatives are no bigger in number than Libertarians or the wacko environmentalists.
‘I must stress that I consider America a conservative nation, though small-c conservative. That is, more instinctually conservative than ideologically so, and with a decidedly populist-progressive twist. There is of course much overlap between Movement Conservatism and small-c conservatism. By Movement Conservatism I refer to the dominant narrative of ideas and events issuing forth from the constellation of talk radio hosts, columnists, and think tanks that the mainstream media put under the heading of ‘Conservative.’ While there is not space today to elaborate sufficiently upon those definitions and assertions, I want to draw attention to one point of policy and ideology that has become dogma for MC’s: The government should not lend a hand to biofuel research and production.’ That is what he says is a point of policy and ideology that’s become dogma for movement conservatives: government should not lend a hand to biofuel research and production.
‘Turn on the big-names of talk radio, flip through Movement Conservative blogs and websites, slide to the more libertarian ones MC’s like to quote when it comes to economics, and this will be recited with as much resolve as the faithful affirming that Jesus Christ is ‘very God from very God.’ Ethanol ruins the environment, drives up gas prices, and starves poor people somewhere. Simply put, biofuels are not the sort of thing the government should be subsidizing. There is much to debate here, including whether corn will (or should) remain for long the primary ethanol crop, but let us leave such matters for another day. Let’s talk straight politics.’
Now, what he has just written here, by the way, folks, is true, and we have had recent stories on it. When he says that ethanol ruins the environment, it’s causing more damage to the environment, the whole process of producing it, consuming it, is taking more energy and causing a bigger carbon footprint, if you care about that kind of thing than normal production of petroleum refining to gasoline and so forth. Drives up gas prices. Does. Starves poor people somewhere. Well, not starving, but food prices around the world where corn is related are rising through the roof. He’s right about that. And we movement conservatives say, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ We’re getting involved in a global warming hoax, and we’re getting involved in all these kinds of things here that the government shouldn’t be getting involved in, it’s costing more money, it’s raising prices, it’s taking a product intended for food, using it for something it’s not good for, ethanol, biofuel, what have you. For that we are to be savaged. And do you know why? Why do you think, Mr. Snerdley, why are movement conservatives a problem here in the Republican Party?
Well, he says, ‘As a small-c conservative and registered Republican, I have a serious question: Why do Movement Conservatives seem increasingly tone deaf as to where Republican votes come from and just who the folks are who actually pull the GOP lever? It is not too difficult to find the location of bio-refineries in the United States. As of late January this year, there were 139 bio-refineries in production and another 62 under construction. They dot the midsection of the country, in some of the reddest of Red State America — Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota, Iowa, and Indiana. They’re heavy in the land of Lincoln where the party has fallen on hard times as well as Minnesota where the GOP has made inroads.
‘MC’s are willing to take the votes of Middle America, but when it comes to helping the midsection of the country, that swath of America where small towns are drying up and blowing away, and the only thing taking root is the Wal-Mart on the edge of town, they seem to simply quote from their catechism and look the other way. I would hate to think Movement Conservatives share John F. Kennedy’s assessment of the heartland. After giving a speech on agricultural themes in South Dakota, then-candidate JFK told one of his speech writers, ‘F*** the farmers after November.’ These biofuel plants boost sagging rural economies. In Nebraska, which is my neck of the prairie, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, who has something bad to say about biofuels and ethanol plants.’
Bottom line is this. Movement conservatives again screwing up the Republican Party. What we ought to realize, that a dumb policy and a failed experiment here to save the environment and to expand fuel efficiency, which doesn’t work, is worth promoting, funding, and engaging in order to get the votes of people who want it. And when we don’t do that, we’re being shortsighted Neanderthals who are forgetting our roots and forgetting where votes come from. So to synthesize it even further, I guess what we’re supposed to do now is stop teaching, stop informing, and stop leading a movement. We’re just supposed to take the temperature of people wherever they live in the country and whatever they want, we are to be for. Where does this stop? Okay, it’s fine and dandy if we go out and survey the farms in red state central parts of the country, Midwest, find out if they like biofuels and they like the process involved in creating them, so we support it. But in California, they like no Marine Corps recruitment center in Berkeley. We want those votes, too. No, Mr. Limbaugh, those are not Republican votes. Yeah, well, we kind of like to tell the people in Berkeley where to go as well, rather than try to go get their votes. You can go to any part of the country and this really sums up my whole problem with this whole primary season. This is what the Republican Party has come to. Pandering. Not leading anything. Simply engaging in a bunch of Big Government-subsidized programs and policies, benefiting this group here and that group there, in order to get their vote, how is that any different than what the Democrats have always done and the liberals?