Jack Hunter

September 16, 2009

Though every talk radio blowhard is pretending to be for limited government now that a Democrat occupies the White House, I have maintained ? not without criticism – that there remains a marked difference between Glenn Beck and most other national conservative hosts. For all his melodrama, Beck does two things which distinguish him from his colleagues:

1. Beck is not simply a blind Republican partisan. Sean Hannity does not believe in limited government—he simply believes big government is best managed by Republicans.

2. Beck is not a constant warmonger. Says Hannity with a straight face ?you can?t deny that Bush was conservative on foreign policy.?

As an example of no. 2, can you imagine Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin saying this?

I?m not saying Beck has always been a libertarian, or is even sufficiently so, and during the Bush years he said all sorts of nasty things about Ron Paul, supported the PATRIOT Act and so on. But how many Alternative Righties are former Dittoheads? Plenty. Now imagine it was all caught on tape.

What good, exactly, does it do to constantly bash neocon-leaning conservatives whose minds are beginning to change, when you could instead help shepherd them in the Right direction?