Rush Limbaugh Doesn’t Speak for Me and Neither Do “Conservatives”

Patterico wrote a piece covering the Rush Limbaugh and now David Frum kerfuffle on Hot Air entitled David Frum Does Not Speak for Me Any More Than Rush Limbaugh Does which puts forward some very sensible points about allowing pundits of any stripe to be the end all of right leaning thought. Since this issue of who speaks for who in the GOP is burning across the right-o-sphere let me put forward my own two cents.

Neither David Frum or Rush Limbaugh “speak for me” or the Republican Party as a whole. We elected a leader to do that. Conservatives are one constituency of the party, but they are not the only constituency and they shouldn’t be. There is already a Conservative Party, and if Limbaugh’s fans are unhappy being in a party that also has large numbers of social moderates, Libertarians and people who don’t care if gays get married then they have a place to hang their hat.

Conservatives, especially Social-Cons, are frankly to the left of me and party faithful on more important issues than ones concerning public morality. On most issues Rush Limbaugh, David Frum and a large portion of the Hot Air comments section are left of me. I have never promoted the idea that they should be thrown out of the party because of it.

I believe in Republican principles that protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, thus I support Gay marriage. I believe in a small government with a muscular foreign policy backed by a strong military. I believe in capitalism and economic freedom, which requires personal responsibility and fosters personal liberty.

I am a Classical Liberal who believes in the worth of the individual and his or her freedom, but I also don’t believe you have the right to destroy public order. So while I am disgusted that my local GOP has an anti-pornography stance written into its platform cribbed from Radical Feminism, I do support obscenity charges for ultra violent porn or simulated rape/pedophilia porn. I am to the right of most conservatives on this issue.

Where others on the right want to erect a fence to keep Mexican chaos from spilling over here, I believe we should militarily intervene in Mexico if our allies in the government can’t defeat the cartels. I believe we should be actively working to destabilize Communist and Islamist regimes as we did in the Reagan era. I believe we have a moral imperative to support Israel, Georgia, Ukraine and all the other freedom loving countries that are essential to peace in the future. I am to the right of most conservatives on this issue.

I believe in Pax Americana, and that we should export our ideals and values to the four corners of the world. I believe America is morally superior to every other country on the face of the earth. I shouldn’t be on the right of most conservatives on this, but I am.

So tell me how Rush Limbaugh, David Frum or any other talking head speaks for me? They don’t. Limbaugh is a great entertainer and helps rally the conservative base, but he doesn’t rally Republicans. Frum has been acting distastefully to say the least, but come 2010 I assume he’ll vote Democrat and leave anyway. Neither is as strong on national defense as I am but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room in the Party for us all, although Frum seems to want to stand outside the tent at this point.

I speak for myself from inside the tent of the Republican party and that’s how it should be.

I’m all for party discipline and being united, but the Rush Limbaugh cult of personality is not helping the Republican Party or the Conservative movement.

Ace has a post which points out how nonsensical, and destructive this fight is. Predictably Rush’s creepy personality cult is reacting badly.

One thought on “Rush Limbaugh Doesn’t Speak for Me and Neither Do “Conservatives”

  1. Well said. There comes a point where there’s no way anyone can agree with absolutely everything their party is doing, and this is one of those cases. Our political parties in the US are fairly broad, so putting a single person (especially one that’s not very moderate) at the forefront of the party’s political thinking and expect everyone to agree with it is just bizarre.

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