Dan

Calabrese

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March 5, 2009

Rush Limbaugh Is Awesome, But He Shouldn’t Be Conservatism’s Leader

For all the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh, most Americans don’t really understand who and what he is. And most conservatives – who rightly embrace Limbaugh’s strength and clarity – don’t seem to understand why it’s become a problem that they’ve given over the leadership of their movement to him.

It was 20 years ago that Detroit’s then-News Talk Radio, AM 1270 WXYT, made the controversial announcement that it was replacing the Dr. Leonard Portner Show during the noon hour to start carrying some national guy. The first time I heard the announcement, it sounded like they said his name was “George Limba.”

The first time I heard the show, I was aghast. With fake trumpet fanfare, this guy out of New York announced it was time for a “homeless update,” for which the chosen theme was “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry. During the same broadcast, I heard a “condom update” introduced with the theme song “My Beautiful Balloon,” and then a “Barney Frank Update” – this one pertaining to the homosexual congressman’s admission that a gay prostitution ring had been run out of his basement by his lover, Stephen Goby. Congressman Frank insisted he knew nothing about this, and that he had been “a sucker.”

The theme song? “My Boy Lollipop.”

What was this?

Rush Limbaugh, whoever he was, was trashing every taboo, mocking every unassailable notion and offering no apologies whatsoever in doing so. I had never, ever, heard anyone do and say things like this on the radio before. Apparently, neither had many other people. The station was bombarded with phone calls and letters of protest. Even some of the local hosts – and they weren’t liberals – decried this assault on all that was good and decent. Surely, this was a gag. Surely, this couldn’t last. Surely, the station would soon reverse course.

It’s 20 years later, and Rush Limbaugh is now the unchallenged leader of the conservative movement. He earned the mantle by daring to do what conservatives had heretofore been afraid to do – advocating forcefully and unapologetically for conservatism, and better yet, having no qualms about assailing anything and everything the left and the mainstream media considered sacred.

Jesse Jackson? You couldn’t mock him. Rush did. AIDS? You couldn’t question mainstream orthodoxy there. Rush destroyed it. He was a funny conservative with attitude, but he was also smart and serious. To this day, it rankles me when people try to explain Rush away as “an entertainer,” because he is that, but he is also a formidable thinker. He is arguably the most dominant force in the history of radio, even as he is surely the 800-pound gorilla of the conservative movement.

Just about every popular notion about what’s wrong with Rush is incorrect. Just about every media assault against him is dishonest and disingenuous – but sadly effective when put before people who don’t listen to his show and aren’t predisposed to embrace conservative thinking.

But that doesn’t mean Rush should be the leader of the conservative movement. There’s a reason he is, though, and it goes to the most fundamental weakness of American conservatism today: Conservatives do not know how to govern.

Limbaugh likes to point out that when a true conservative is nominated against a liberal, the true conservative wins. That is true. But as many elections as conservatives have won over the past generation, the direction of governance in this country has been decidedly leftward. The federal budget is now four times the size it was in the Reagan years. More federal departments have been added. The obligations of federal entitlement programs are out of control. We are closer than ever to a European-style welfare state.

Conservatives are good at winning arguments, and no one is better at it than Rush. Conservatives should be good at this. They are right. But put them in public office, they don’t know how to prioritize. They don’t know how to use political capital wisely. They don’t know how to resist when their local constituencies come looking for federal largesse. That’s why you get the spectacle of a supposed conservative star like Congressman Thaddeus McCotter – making stirring floor speeches about the evils of the financial-sector bailout, but lobbying for an auto industry bailout. Hey! That’s his district! That’s different.

This is why Rush is the leader of the conservative movement, as opposed to an actual holder of public office who has accomplished anything of note in advancing the conservative agenda. There is no such person. This is why you still hear all the Ronald Reagan nostalgia. Very little has been accomplished that can be described as conservative since Reagan left office. George W. Bush cut taxes and thumbed his nose at the United Nations in seeking transformation of the Middle East – not small feats – but his most laudable conservative goals were left unachieved, while federal spending ballooned on his watch.

Conservatism needs Rush. He is its most eloquent champion. But conservatism also needs a leader who has actually governed effectively, not just excelled rhetorically. The fact that it is so hard to name such a person is the real evidence of conservatism’s plight. You can’t blame Rush for being who he is. The fault lies with the thousands of conservative elected officials who have been put in office over the past generation to make American governance better – and have failed.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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