Defending Rush, Steele, and Jindal

Well, Patrick, if I would like too see any GOP surrogate succeed, I'll start with Joe the Plumber!!!

Indeed. The Dems are practicing the divide and conquer strategy to great success these days and Reps are making it way too easy for them to succeed. The only defense is to be united and take the offense by seeking ways to drive wedges between the ranks of the opposition. Given who they are and what they are doing, this ought to be both easy and very satisfying.

But I think you are exaggerating the media's impact on the body politic. Most people I have talked to see these types of stories as simple panache, something we on the right have long been accustomed to from the left press.

Of course -- and I hate to keep sounding like a broken record here -- if the party gave its membership its voice. Allowed them to speak and to be accurately heard, we wouldn't have to guess or be bothered what the left press says. But, hey, that's just me.

What is really hurting the Republican cause is our fellow Republican Congressmen and women selling out to the new socialist order.

ex animo

davidfarrar

The Limbaugh vs. Steele controversy would have been less embarrassing to the GOP if Rush had complained in private as opposed to criticizing Steele in public.

Michael Steele made a mistake. Big deal. Anyone can make a mistake. But Rush could have defused the whole thing by just laughing at the entire thing, while stating that Steele contacted him and explained what he meant, and that no offense was intended (or taken) by anybody.

Axelrod issued a somewhat provocative statement, that Steele & co. are mere puppets who immediately have to apologize to Limbaugh if they deviate too far from "the party line". Limbaugh could have proved him wrong by showing some intra-GOP magnamity...but I guess if would have hurt his ratings too much.

MARCU$

When I first heard that some of the RNC were calling for Steele's resignment already, I wrote this letter to my Committeepeople:

I understand that some RNC committeepersons are calling for Michael Steele's resignation, and saying that his conflicts with other prominent conservatives are an embarassment to the image of the party. I think they are way off-base. Worrying about our image with the Party in the shape it's in is like worrying about the paint on the house when the foundation has been eroded. Pretty much the only thing that Republicans are agreeing on right now is that we don't want Obama's Progressivism. If we are going to win in 2010 and 2012, we have to have better organization, a plan to govern conservatively, and that organization and plan will have to be developed through much debate. Debate between Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh are healthy. It will get us a better plan for the future.

Michael Steele wouldn't have been my choice for RNC chair, but he is a good one. Let's give him a shot.

 Where was all this concern about 'eating our own' when Gov. Palin was being pummeled by the right's  'best and brightest', including yourself? If there was ever a rising star in the party that was unfairly treated it was/is her. In the end it all comes down to your inability to respect/accept anyone who doesn't have just the right education or accent.  Palin was and is still one of the most popular Gov. in the country. She has an incredible personal story and has been successful in governing.  She is also the ONLY Republican with a true 'presence' capable of starting a wildfire in the party, whether you like it or not.  The line to shake her hand at the Alfalfa dinner was longer than Obamas. A person with that type of charisma and competence comes around once every 25 years, and yet, her 'warts' are to many to be overlooked? Jindal, brilliant as he is, couldn't cause a spark in a match factory.  

And some conservatives have gleefully joined in on the pile-on against Bobby Jindal for his delivery of the non-SOTU response and stayed mostly silent when it came time to counter the left's coordinated attack against Jindal's leadership during Katrina.

I guess that this group of conservatives recongize that digging up the real facts and confronting the "mis-speaker" with them is a legitimate function of journalism.

Jindal himself has now admitted that a key portion of his response speech was not true.

To recap: In the now-infamous Katrina boats story, Jindal claimed that he was in the moment with Sheriff Lee, the two men threatening civil disobedience if those damn federal bureaucrats wouldn't get out of their way. But it turns out that Jindal was not actually in the room when Sheriff Lee had his historic conversation. He apparently heard about the story later. For all I know, he was in the area and being a good, active congressman during Hurricane Katrina. But I also know that his boats story was a massive exaggeration (to put it kindly) and he has admitted as much.

So: why should those conservatives squander their integrity to defend him?

in general, with the exception of Rush Limbaugh.  It is certainly not a good idea to quash our rising leaders just as they're getting started, and the impetuousness in the reactions to some of the mistakes these "rising stars" have made reveal a jitteriness that isn't conducive to good decision-making.  At the same time, people should feel free to express criticism, to say, for example: JIndal's speech wasn't all that great but he's still a promising young leader that we support.  Maintaining openness at this point, I think, is just as important as not panicking and jettisoning our nascent leaders,

I differ with you, though, on Rush Limbaugh.  In this respect, no one is acting on the bidding of Obama.  There is a legitimate split within the conservative movement.  No, Rush Limbaugh is not the intellectual equivalent of Joe the Plumber, but he's arguably more offensive and undoubtedly, in my opinion, far more damaging to the party's prospects right now.  I don't feel the need to defend Limbaugh precisely because he is an entertainer: he represents his own interests, not necessarily the interests of the party or the movement, which he proves when he does things like undermining Michael Steele.  Why should Steele have to apologize to Limbaugh, when he only said the same thing you argued, that he is an entertainer.  Let Limbaugh say whatever he wants, but our leaders and politicians would indeed be best served to ignore him, not to justify or defend what he says, especially when it runs counter to the interests of the party.

Patrick's post got linked this afternoon on Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com.

Nate says that if Tedisco loses NY-20 on March 31, the long knives come out for Chairman Steele.

you don't agree with some of what they stand for, is a recipe for disaster. 

It's not only Republicans who shoot at their own.  Look how in the last presidential campaign the left and the MSM took out the Clintons, diminishing the stature of both of them.  Bill was made to look like a racist and a bumbler.  His successes as president are no longer touted.  Hillary was made to look like an incompetent liar.  It was something the right could never have pulled off, because these are false caricatures trumped up only for political benefit.  Sadly for the Clintons, their positives were ignored or turned into negatives.  (During the campaign I wrote against the mean-spirited bias in the press and on the left against them even though as a conservative I disagree with many of their political positions.)

Republicans have a number of possible presidential candidates.  Who do the Democrats have besides Barack Obama?  Who are the up and comers?  Certainly not the historical likely place--the VP; not the Democratic leadership in the House or Senate.

For this election there were only two viable Democratic candidates.  Fortunately for Republicans, Democrats made sure only one survived.  There were three or four survivors for the Republicans with stars like Palin and Jindal shooting into view as additional possibilities for the next round.

Shooting your own is not smart, but it is part of amateurish politics in both the Republican and Democratic ranks.  Fortunately for us, the Democrats have been much more effective in taking out their stars.  Even in the also ran category.  McCain is slowly gaining back national political stature.  Kerry never did.