Glenn Beck No Friend To Conservative Cause

I’ve watched Glenn Beck and listened to his radio program.  Aside from his frequent snide attacks on Republicans, I’ve usually enjoyed the program and thought he brought out interesting facts and ideas.

But when he appeared on CBS with Katie Couric, he jumped off the cliff into crazy town located far, far below:

Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose ratings and profile have soared this year as he has pummeled the Obama administration and become a rabble-rousing protest organizer, once again demonstrated his flair for creating viral new media moments, if the widely reproduced advance video excerpt from the show is any indication.

“John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” Beck told Couric. He also said that he might have cast his vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton rather than McCain if he had been faced with a choice between the two.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, I think I would have much preferred her as president and may have voted for her against John McCain,” Beck said, explaining that in his world view “McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.”

Well, Katie Couric is happy.  The left is happy with this latest fracturing within the conservative ranks.  “Conservative” independents are happy with the demonization of Republicans as a means to help their various “third party” causes.  And Republicans are trying to pull the knife out of the middle of their backs.

This morning on his radio program, a caller protested Beck’s damnation of Republicans as progressives and fakes.  Beck interrupted him repeatedly and ultimately implied that he was crazy for supporting Republicans (“What’s the definition of insanity?” he asked, with the obvious answer, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”).

When the caller tried to point out that Republicans have been the only opposition to the massive liberal agenda (the $3.27 trillion stimulus, the 9,000 earmark-loaded Omnibus bill,  the government takeover of 1/6th of the economy otherwise known as ObamaCare, and the terrible Cap-and-trade fiasco that would cost every American family $1,761 in additional regressive taxes.

For the record, ObamaCare would cost Americans a boatload of money, too.

Beck’s ridiculous answer was that the Republicans were only voting against it because they were out of power.  As though a sane and serious person believes that the GOP would have been proposing and passing these things if they WERE in power.  Does anyone seriously think that?  Socialist health care?  Cap-and-trade energy policy?  Seriously, Glenn?  Because that is just really asinine.

As for Beck’s bringing up the definition of insanity, let me just say this for that heckled caller today: rightbackatchya, Glenn.

You tell me when hoping for a third party victory amounted to anything other than a Looney Tunes fantasy.

Glenn Beck calls himself a Libertarian.  Do you know how many Libertarians there are in national office?  Zero.  That’s how many.  And there are only two independents in national U.S. politics, Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders.  Sanders, by the way, refers to himself as a “democratic socialist.”

Now ask me how many Libertarians have stood up against the massive liberal onslaught that can be exemplified by the following articles:

From the New York Post:

Under President Obama, the 2009 budget deficit is set to reach a staggering $1.8 trillion. It took President George W. Bush seven years to run up $1.8 trillion in debt.  And these deficits aren’t merely a temporary result of the recession; the president’s budget would run deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year for the next decade.The national debt would double. In other words, Obama would run up as much government debt as every president in US history from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. Put simply, he’d dump $84,352 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren over the next decade.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

From Heritage:

The Office of Management and Budget has released its annual mid-session review that updates the budget projections from this past May.[1] They show that this year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. The federal government will increase spending 22 percent this year to a peacetime-record 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President George W. Bush.[2]Driven by this spending, America will run its first ever trillion-dollar budget deficit this year. Even worse, the President’s budget would borrow an additional $9 trillion over the next decade, more than doubling the national debt. By 2019, America will be spending nearly $800 billion on net interest to service this large debt.[3]

That’s right.  Zero.  Not one.

In fact, out of the 537 elected national politicians (President, VP, US Senators, US Representatives), the only two who are “independents” vote with the Democrats.

The conservative “Pipe Dream Party” that Glenn Beck thinks will one day sweep into power aint going to happen.  Except in the minds of the brain damaged.

And he’s mocking this caller as insane?

One of the things I concluded long ago was that, if we ever by some miracle got a third party off the ground with enough power to change things, it would become every bit as corrupt as the other two.  Or does Glenn Beck think his politicians would be sinless, morally perfect saints?

If you think a third party would do everything right, you seriously need to wake up and quit being so foolishly naive.

Another thing: Glenn Beck admires Sarah Palin, as I do.  But Sarah Palin RAN with John McCain.  She’s continued to praise him.  If McCain is that terrible, than Palin is terrible too.  She’s tainted by McCain.  We can do one of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard exercises and draw double arrows connecting Palin to McCain.

If McCain is worse than Obama, then Sarah Palin deserves to be thrown into the junk pile of history.

I’m perfectly consistent in continuing to support Sarah Palin; Glenn Beck is not.

Mark Levin, a man whose books I’ve read, and a man I respect, said this about Glenn Beck’s remarks:

“I think there’s enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it’s not. It’s pathetic.”

Beck is great at criticizing Republicans’ motivations.  Let’s see him justify his own damned motivations.  He is pandering to divisiveness and anger.  He is appealing to the type of people who would rather take their ball and go home than grow up and try to build the Republican Party into what real conservatives should want it to become.

Conservatives easily outnumber liberals, and have for some time.  And that conservative majority is growing:

(CNSNews.com) – Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Conservatives overwhelmingly outnumbered liberals while Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over the House and Senate, and conservatives overwhelmingly outnumbered liberals while Barack Obama became president and liberals increased their stranglehold over our government.

And the simple fact of the matter is that they’re going to keep doing that unless “conservatives” decide they don’t want to keep eating liberal crap and start making their votes count.

As a practical matter, what Glenn Beck said on Katie Couric’s show was that he supports the hard-core liberal agenda more than he supports the conservative agenda.

Being able to work off the anger at the worst president in American history sure has done his pocketbook an awful lot of good.  Methinks Beck doesn’t want his gravy train to end with a conservative takeover.

This isn’t the first time talk of conservatives forming a new party has happened.  It happened in 1977, too.  Ronald Reagan responded:

I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends—perhaps including some of you here tonight—who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party.

I respect that view and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over.

What Reagan said is every bit as true today as it was in 1977.

It was Ronald Reagan’s philosophy – NOT Glenn Beck’s – which led conservatives out of the wasteland and into the promised land.

Tags: CBS, conservative, Democrat, Glenn Beck, independent, John McCain, Katie Couric, liberal, Libertarian, Mark Levin, progressive, Republican, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin