Richard Cummings

March 12, 2009

Rush Limbaugh gets far more attention than he deserves.  I find it difficult to take someone seriously who confused the Declaration of Independence with the Preamble to the Constitution, as Rush did in his address to CPAC,  Perhaps even worse, he once said that the Eagles had hired Donovan McNabb because he was black. McNabb has had a brilliant career, which should tell you something.

Unfortunately, it was the lame Bush-booster, David Frum, who was featured in Newsweek, as the first major figure of the right to take on Rush, warning that he is turning off the very people the GOP needs to attract if it will ever return to power.  At the heart of all of this is the debate that is ongoing on what it means to be a conservative, something most Americans have never fully comprehended. A conservative is someone who thinks that you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water when you need to change things and that an individual must be held responsible for his actions. The problem with Limbaugh in this regard is that he is uneducated and as a result has no idea of the traditions that we need to preserve. As an individual, he has failed to take responsibility for his own actions, making him an unlikely role model.

Frum, on the other hand, remains a supporter of George W. Bush, insisting he was the right leader who led us into the right war. With Richard Perle, he advocated regime change in Syria and Iran, which would have landed America in two more disastrous wars. Consequently, our motto should be “Neither Limbaugh nor Frum.”  Were Reagan alive, I am confident he would agree. He never engaged in nasty personal attacks like Limbaugh and had the sense not to make catastrophic decisions the way Bush did.  Were he president now, he would not consider himself bound by ideology in doing what was necessary for the country. He resembled DeGaulle, a great conservative, in this respect. He would oblige GM to go into Chapter Eleven bankruptcy with guarantees for car buyers and he would nationalize Citigroup and Bank of America, getting outstanding leaders of the private sector to run them briefly while they figured out what the assets and liabilities of those banks really were.  Then, he would get rid of the toxic assets by auctioning them off and break up the banks into smaller units and then sell them off.  With AIG, he would nationalize it, sell off the profitable insurance division and liquidate the rest.  He would do this and everyone would cheer as he joked about his turnaround.

As for the Republican Party now, there is only one solution and that is a change of leadership in Congress.  The majority leader in the Senate should be the leader of the party and that cannot possibly be Mitch McConnell.  He should resign and turn the leadership over to a great Republican, Lamar Alexander,  who was one of America’s greatest governors when he cleaned up Tennessee after the corruption engendered by the Democrats.  He also brought countless jobs to the state by luring foreign auto makers to open plants there.  As president of the University of Tennessee, who turned that university into a national leader in higher education.  He is a conservative that people will respect and listen to carefully.  The next step is to concentrate on the gubernatorial races that will bring new leaders to the country and the party.

Also, Michael Steele has become an embarrassment and must go as well.  This will send a message that conservatives are not clowning around while the country goes down the drain.  It must be the loyal opposition with class.  There is a chance to be this, but the time to act is now.  Otherwise, the Republican Party could well find itself on the ash heap of history.