Comments on: Is Rush Limbaugh Good for the Repulican Party? A JealousBrother Guest Post by Robert Barr

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:15:46 +0000

I need to add that the best and most rational Republican ideas are not even given the time of day. Take Health care reform. While the tea party screams socialism etc. and Republican congressmen refuse to even enter into the debate or vote, there have been rational Republican solutions like creating tax breaks and incentives to encourage small family practices across the U.S. A great solution while real estate is down because small practices could emerge now. But this proposal was never heard and was never even considered by most Republicans or Democrates. I went to the Tea Party Rally the otherday (in Naperville, IL) and most of the speakers except a few had anything relevant to say. The only relevant things said was the concern that small businesses will be negatively effected by the health insurance law. Everything else was mis-information that people heard on the radio!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:19:23 +0000

Let me just say all of the members of my family who are Republican including myself are so ashamed of the racism, homophobia, and the irrationality of the Tea Party we see little hope for the Republican Party. We grew up with Republican role models which were gleaned from Eisenhower (and earlier) values which were inclusive and inspiring. That believed on true fiscal responsibilty. We are all Christian but our church The United Church of Christ has ordained gay ministers since 1971. The current Republican party or at least most of what hits the press does NOT represent our values! I voted for Obama, other members of my family did not but are disgusted that the most ignorant in the Republican Party are getting ALL the media coverage. AND I would have voted for McCAIN until his foolish choice of Sarah Palin! Which revealed to me dispite McCains “moderate” past he would choose an idiot who is now destroying the Republican Party! I can’t stand to see what the Republican party has become.

By: Funny How

Funny How — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:12:08 +0000

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.

By: greg

greg — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 02:02:46 +0000

i agree with rush most of the time . honestly almost all the time .i’m an evil conservitive .see i’ve taken care of myself all my life , and taken responsabilty for every thing i ever done , every dicision wise or not ,i made it , it was mine . i was free to do it .freedom .
i’m older , i don’t understand what you all want? i don’t understand someonelse telling me whats best for me , when i know it’s not ! you want the goverment to take care of you ,you give up your freedom , i don’t want to !
oh by the way , if you read page 16 of the 1018 page document of the health care reform act . you can keep your own health care . but if you ever decide your not satisfied and want to change you can’t . unless of course you want the goverments plan . uh , now ain’t that something . but you believe your messiah .

By: bloopville

bloopville — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:50:03 +0000

First, my bias. I am an independent who is skeptical of government based solutions, but fears the Religious Right more. And, so far, I like Obama. THough I am a fiscal conservative, monetary policy is vastly overated in its effect on growth. Confidence in the economy is the greatest driver of recovery.

I dodn’t quite understand how present day conservatives can balance the inconsistency of non intrusion in matters of taxes, regulation and child rearing, but intrusion in lifestyle.

Part of the problem with all of these discussions is that some people use conservative and Republican interchangeably. They may not always be the same thing, so to say a failure of a Republican is a failure for conservatism is not an accurate statement. That being said, the rampant conservative led deregulation of the financial industry was a massive failure, and neo conservative foreigh policy was both devistating and ethically bankrupt. But, in general, lowering taxes to a certain point and reducing certain kinds of barriers to business are positive steps, and in line with conservatism (or classic 19th century liberalism).

To the central question, is Rush Limbaugh good for the Republican Party? I don’t know. Moderate conservatives and the Populist conservatives (Limbaugh, Hannitty, Palin, O’Reily)are in a death match. My personal opinion is that Populist Conservatives will win the battle, put up a slate of Social conservatives in 2012, and they will be soundly thrashed everywhere except the SOuth and Southeast. This will test the Limbaugh hypothesis that America is really looking for a sound conservative (even though they have only ever elected one in the last 50 years). So, if Limbaugh forces this binary choice between a Populist conservative, Republicans lose, and go back to a fiscal conservative with libertarian social policies, ultimately, that will be good for the party. But if a Palin gets elected, I am moving out of the country. Oh wait, I have already done that.

By: ben kazinec

ben kazinec — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:26:55 +0000

The following post was what i presented to my class international business class in college. I wanted to share this post with this thread. I do want to relate the information below with the topic here. I believe the conservative talk show hosts inlcuding Rush, and the democratic talk show hosts alike need to get out of the left/right paradigm. The economic problems with our country are beyond most people’s comprehension. I am not trying to degrade anyone’s intelligence, I am just voicing my concerns that the main stream media including syndicated talk show hosts are not speaking the truth and or neglecting to tell the whole truth. They are playing a left/right game that is very hostile to our country’s news blood line. Please read with an open mind and dont think that I am defending either side. I am just trying to get people to think in the right mind set. Thanks!!

I apologize for the length of the DQ. I do feel that the information is very important. This information is not about propaganda or political debates. I am only attempting to relate international business forces with the United States financial crisis by using facts about our current challenges. I have been attempting to get to the bottom of the global financial meltdown and I have been very intrigued by it. I hope this is useful information for everyone. J

Trade restrictions have been used in international trade by different countries. The restrictions have sometimes been used for the better good, but at other times they ended up hurting more people than they were established to protect. Examples of trade restrictions include tariffs, product dumping, government intervention (subsidies and tax policies), and sanctions. With this being said, I believe that without the option of restrictions, there would be a much higher rate of trade abuse in the global markets.

Our country is in very hard economic times. This current crisis will be used to defend the point that sometimes the correct form of trade restrictions are needed. The country’s manufacturing industry is a large part of what brought our country to the heights we reached at our economic peak. In light of this, the big three auto makers have been on the verge of bankruptcy. I am not a big fan of big government but our government should be promoting tax breaks and subsidies to many different manufacturing industries in our country such as the big three, right now. This increase in domestic manufacturing would cause trade retaliation by other countries, but producing jobs in America should take precedence over worries of slumping global trade. To compare, China has been recently investing much money into their infrastructure due to low export demands, and they are investing much more than the US.

Historian and economist Webster Tarpley stated Monday,

“The US is putting maybe, 60 billion (stimulus), China, 600 billion.”

Unfortunately, according to CSPAN interview with Fed Chairman and Senator Sanders at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi0YS5j9P2Y, our Federal Reserve has been not favoring our infrastructure, rather they have been unleashing trillions into the “international financial industry” sector, much of which are off shore banks home based in countries other than America! To put these numbers into perspective,

Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry of Bloomberg.com recently wrote,

“March 31 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.”

The millions in bonuses going to AIG employees are just drops in the bucket of spending, just as the percentage of US infrastructure funding (60 billion from stimulus) is drops in the bucket in proportion to the whole pie of spending by the Federal Reserve and Treasury. To put the latter into perspective, 60 billion is only .5% of 12.8 trillion. (I hope I did my math right, 60,000,000,000/12,800,000,000,000=.5%) There may need to be a new text book term developed for this type of activity. This term would have to explain the benefits given to global trade when a country uses its Central Bank to create multi-trillion dollar “international” banking subsidies. Remember, the Federal Reserve is private, can spend trillions (even into toxic derivative investments), is above our government as far as financial accountability (as seen in CSPAN debate), does not have to tell the public where the money is going (as Fed Chairman acknowledges in CSPAN Debate), and is fed by our tax dollars.

By: laneyjane

laneyjane — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:53:02 +0000

Robert, I’ll be happy to attempt to explain my comments.

I’m a big fan of Arnold but he is no conservative. I don’t blame him for not being able to fix California’s problems because no one can fix what’s going on there. California was becoming a welfare state twenty years ago and it’s gotten worse as the years go by. I worked for a group of pediatric surgeons and the majority of our patients were on medi cal and welfare. There is a tremendous amount of abuse of the system and we left as soon as we could because we got tired of carrying the tax burden. It just costs too much to live there and it’s getting worse all the time.

The home loan fiasco can be placed at the feet of Barney Frank and Harry Reid. They were pushing it down everybody’s throat and were getting kickbacks. Barney Frank’s lover was a Fannie Mae executive and although their relationship ended ten years ago, his ties to Fannie Mae were already firmly in place. Let’s also remember that the democrats have been in control for the past two years. I’m equally upset that the only person from either party who was trying to stop this was McCain.
As far as Rush running for public office he has said many times he has no desire to do that. Not everybody wants to be a politician and obviously he’s making a lot more money doing what he’s doing.

As for your last point I will say emphatically, “YES, I think they are too liberal. I’m not a conservative on all points but I’m not a liberal and I don’t think we should be printing money in the White House basement to cover all this spending that all our lawmakers are voting for.

By: ed from ga

ed from ga — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:40:51 +0000

Reading the posts on your site, as well as those on many others, it becomes obvious that conservatives are killing the Republican party. If nothing else, the previous eight years proved the hypocrisy of the conservative leadership and the bankruptcy of their ideas. “Supply-side”, “trickle down” economics has twice proven to be a failure. The conservative’s overreach into private lives as in the Terri Schiavo case, the implication that they love this country more than those on the left, and their crowing about smaller government while increasing the size of government has turned off moderates and independents. Yet, so many of them insist it’s the party’s failure to be more conservative that’s chased voters away. They just don’t get it.

Look at who speaks for the party these days: Boehner, McConnell, Cantor, Jindal, Bachmann, Palin, Limbaugh, Coulter. None of them have any appeal to anyone outside the base, and Michael Steele is an absolute joke. Be honest: when was the last time a conservative policy has proved to have worked in favor of the working class in this country? That pretty much explains it.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:41:46 +0000

I am not exactly a Limbaugh fan, but I find myself naturally sympathetic to conservativism (absent the religiousity). I must say that I really don’t understand your perspective.

The expansion of government is the expansion of the power of government. Say what you want about conservatives, but if conservativism is correctly applied it argues for a restrained government (granted this was not necessarily the case in the last eight years). Speaking for myself, nothing could push me into the power grubbing arms of the Dems who seek to ever expand the size and scope of government.

If you believe in liberty and individual responsibility, if you believe in freedom from the soft tyranny of government and if you believe in a constitutional government then fundamentally I just don’t get how anybody could make such a dramatic shift. A lurch to libertarianism I could at least contemplate as not being antithetical to basic principles. I can’t help but wonder what your basic principles are.

Bombing Iran into the stone age is not a basic principle and while closer, neither is a woman’s right to choose. A strong defense is a more basic principle, but even that could be reduced to the protection of individual liberties. However, a belief in the sanctity of human life is a basic principle (one’s own liberty only extends as far as it does not infringe on another). In reverse, another interpretation of individual liberty might yield the notion that government has no role to play in the abortion debate because life at such an early stage is impossible to define and individuals ought to be able define such an ambiguous issue for themselves.

Finally, I wish to address your comment to explain to you where the GOP became too liberal. First and foremost, they were NOT fiscally responsible. They expanded government entitlements through such things as the medicare prescription drug bill. I’m sorry, but can you explain to me what is conservative about such bills as “No Child Left Behind?” I seem to remember Reagan arguing for the elimination of the entire Department of Education and I think the state of education would be better off if he had succeeded.

Bush toed the line conservative line on taxes and not on spending. Government grew under his tenor under the guise of compassion which might as well have been a code word for liberal spending. The irony here is that the skyrocketing deficit under Obama proves you can’t outspend a liberal so why try? The liberal desire to grow a corrupt and inefficient government seems virtually unbounded.

More recently in the context of the bailout debate, Bush stated he had to abandon his free market principles to save the free market. I am still haunted by the stark lack of conservativism in his words. I think the better question to ask is what exactly is conservative about the modern Republican party.

My deepest fear is many “modern” conservatives are just like you and simply have no philosophical grounding. Sorry if that is harsh, but you can’t wake up in the morning and say you know that whole bit about liberty and the individual I don’t believe that anymore.

Much love though for inciting such controversy. I hope you take my criticism in good humor and in the spirit of debate.

By: bigkazzyry

bigkazzyry — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:15:22 +0000

Robert,
I’ll take a stab at this.

1.) “I know the Arnold has a tough time being a Republican in the company of all those bleeding heart liberals, but the state is still being run by a Republican.”

Let’s not kid ourselves, Arnold is far from a Republican which becomes more obvious on a daily basis. He married into the Kennedy family and the problems with the state of California stretch back a lot further than just the Arnold. When I lived there Grey Davis did his fair share damage to CA.

2.) “I know all politics are local, but as I said, you do have a Republican gov, and we are just coming off of an eight year rule by the Republicans, so I don’t understand it when you say “We pushed for home loans for all those people.” Who are you referring to? And who are all those people?”

I already made it clear that Arnold is far from a republican or should I say very far from conservative. We all know Bush made some horrible choices and in large part due to the war added some serious weight to the National Debt. It was likely the failure of Bush’s administration that pushed so many people to compromise the fabric of our country by voting for a president who is attempting to spend the dollar out of existence and implement so many socialistic policies that in a few short months we will no longer be able to recognize our great country. I can’t help but mention that the Dem’s had power of the congress for the last two years of Bush’s stay in the white house and all spending had to be approved by them.

In response to the last questions, the community reinvestment act or more specifically the changes made to it in the early 90′s is the what. The who can be traced to lawsuits filed against large financial institutions claiming unfair lending practices based on race and income, to politicians and groups such as A.C.O.R.N that played there role in bullying lenders into giving loans to unqualified applicants, the dirty mortgage companies who stemmed from greed voluntarily handed out home loans to people they knew wouldn’t be able to repay, Investment firms repackaging mortgages into large investment packages that were grouped together as they reaped the profits from the horrendous interest rates that were being charged, the irresponsible borrowers who took out home loans they couldn’t pay due to ignorance, stupidity, and a false sense of entitlement.

3.) “I can’t agree more, the Dems have been converting handouts for votes in the big cities for 60 70 years.”

Obviously no argument from me on this one.

4.) “And I that is where our paths diverge. Because if Rush wanted to put his money where his mouth was, he would drop the mic and run for something. He could win the Florida Gov race without getting out of bed, so why doesn’t he?”

Let’s make some very clear, Rush is an entertainer not a politician. It is the media and the President who have artificially enrobed him with the title of the voice of the GOP when it’s a title he doesn’t want and certainly didn’t ask for. I’ve heard Rush address your last question several times and here’s what he had to say, “I’m not willing to take that big of a pay cut”(Not an exact quote) No one, not even me will argue that Rush is an egotistical know it all and with that being said he is very self serving so why is it so hard to understand he really doesn’t want to sacrifice the pay to serve others when his primary interest is himself?

5.) “That is my whole point, but where I think they are too conservative, I think I am correct in saying you find them too liberal?”

In some ways I agree with this statement. There is nothing wrong with being open minded but when it comes to certain economic beliefs I’m not willing to budge nor should any other conservative/republican. I can go with increasing oversight for obvious reasons but our corrupt government wouldn’t be my first choice to administer the oversight. However increasing taxes isn’t good for anyone except for a spending happy president like Mr. Obama.