Alan Keyes
Rush Limbaugh's flawed logic in response to Mississippi tea party loss
By Alan Keyes
According to the report I read, in reacting to Thad Cochran's purloined victory in Mississippi, Rush Limbaugh did a good job of impersonating outrage over the treachery of the GOP's elitist faction leadership:
"The establishment is going to align itself every which way it can against any outside challenger like this tea-party candidate.... We have a result that is not representative of the Republican Party thinking in Mississippi. The technique that was used and the manner in which this was achieved is reprehensible."
I say Mr. Limbaugh impersonated outrage because, in his usual fashion, he dutifully repeated the mantra required to appease the elitist faction idols who control the money that sustains his media perch. "I am not advocating for a third party...," he intoned. "They don't win." Such resignation isn't the last stage of true outrage. If anything, it's the penultimate stage of grief, just before we resign ourselves to our loss. But outrage isn't about inevitable loss. It's about political theft, rape, and murder – in this case of our Constitution, our rights, our liberty, and our decent way of life. Rush Limbaugh may be ready to resign himself to the loss of these precious goods. If so, I'd say that that, too, is outrageous.
Consider the [absence of?] logic in Mr. Limbaugh's position. He acknowledges that the evidence shows the GOP's elitist faction leadership to be corrupt and reprehensible. Their corruption led them to import what they knew to be the hardest of Obama's hardcore Democratic supporters into a GOP primary election (using a provision they put in place for this very purpose, even though it contradicts the essential purpose for which political parties exist).
In this way, they successfully thwarted the will of the majority of the registered Republican voters in Mississippi who went to the polls. So when it suits their purposes, the elitist faction GOP leadership structures primary outcomes so that they can cheat grassroots Republicans out of electing someone who might actually represent them. Of course, some people will say we shouldn't conclude that this cheating is endemic to the GOP everywhere. Didn't David Brat win his primary in Virginia?
Virginia's 7th District is supposedly a safe seat for the GOP, right? But what if the elitist faction corporate, money, and media powers make it their business to turn Brat's triumph into an example of how nominating candidates who please authentically conservative grassroots Republicans is a recipe for disaster during the general election? They would never do that, right? Think again. Elitist faction forces aren't famous for their loyalty to the GOP label.
Hence Karl Rove's supposedly jocular remark to his PAC's financial backers about murdering the Missouri GOP's 2012 U.S. Senate nominee, Todd Akin. (Apparently, Rove thought he was speaking in secret.) Hence also the general election turnaround against Joe Miller in the 2010 Alaska U.S. Senate race. After losing the primary to Miller, defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski ran in the general election as an Independent, with the backing of the elitist faction powers that be. She won a narrow victory, quickly certified by the Alaska GOP despite legal challenges.
Apparently, the GOP wing of the elitist faction doesn't accept the doctrine Rush Limbaugh proclaims that "There is no salvation outside the GOP." It doesn't apply to elitist faction incumbents seeking to save their seats. It only applies to sincerely conservative grassroots voters seeking to save the Constitution and liberty of their country. With such inequitable logic, the overseer teaches slaves to measure freedom by the length of their chains.
[By the way, some people still think David Brat faces no Democratic opposition. In fact the Democratic nominee, Jack Trammel, is, like Brat, a professor at Randolph-Macon College. He was chosen by a party committee, acting in lieu of a convention, on June 8, two days before the primary. This has all the appearance of a stealth nomination. Trammel resembles Brat in being young, attractive, well-spoken, and popular with his students.
If he were to benefit from enough elitist faction money and media attention, Trammel may have the superficial personal qualities required (along with some help from the elitist faction media) to trip up David Brat, or at least give him a surprising run for his money. And that will be relatively little money if, behind the scenes, the Rove clique is determined to see him fail. They could plausibly claim that they have chosen to focus on the more contested U.S. Senate campaign against Mark Warner. On the GOP side, that race involves their bosom buddy and well-known Virginia GOP fundraiser Ed Gillespie.]
The key to the elitist faction's corrupting power in politics lies precisely in the fact that they are not constrained by any imperative but to increase and hold on to their own power. In this respect they are archetypal Machiavellians. They want maximum freedom of action. They achieve it by acting without respect for any standard of action they do not define. Yet when he scoffs at third-party efforts, Rush Limbaugh helps to impose a mind shackle on conservative grassroots voters. He sets them up to be taken down, one way or another, by the unscrupulous maneuvers of their elitist faction enemies.
Though Limbaugh adamantly refuses to discuss it, there is an alternative to this learned helplessness. Grassroots conservatives can act on the principles of the American founding. Those principles also involve freedom of action, but it's based on doing what's right, as God empowers us to see the right. In the first instance, it isn't about so-called "third party" politics. It's about demonstrating a political will independent of every consideration except the nation's good. It's about being determined to use our voting power to enforce the demand that candidates we vote for commit to do what the good of the nation obviously requires, or else lose our support.
The Pledge To Impeach mobilization is the vehicle for gathering and demonstrating such political will in the 2014 election. It focuses on the one thing needful in order to begin restoring the integrity of our Constitution and liberty as a free people – i.e., the impeachment and removal from office of Barack Obama and all his collaborators. Have you joined the Pledge To Impeach mobilization? Are you encouraging everyone you can influence to do likewise?
July 1, 2014
According to the report I read, in reacting to Thad Cochran's purloined victory in Mississippi, Rush Limbaugh did a good job of impersonating outrage over the treachery of the GOP's elitist faction leadership:
"The establishment is going to align itself every which way it can against any outside challenger like this tea-party candidate.... We have a result that is not representative of the Republican Party thinking in Mississippi. The technique that was used and the manner in which this was achieved is reprehensible."
I say Mr. Limbaugh impersonated outrage because, in his usual fashion, he dutifully repeated the mantra required to appease the elitist faction idols who control the money that sustains his media perch. "I am not advocating for a third party...," he intoned. "They don't win." Such resignation isn't the last stage of true outrage. If anything, it's the penultimate stage of grief, just before we resign ourselves to our loss. But outrage isn't about inevitable loss. It's about political theft, rape, and murder – in this case of our Constitution, our rights, our liberty, and our decent way of life. Rush Limbaugh may be ready to resign himself to the loss of these precious goods. If so, I'd say that that, too, is outrageous.
Consider the [absence of?] logic in Mr. Limbaugh's position. He acknowledges that the evidence shows the GOP's elitist faction leadership to be corrupt and reprehensible. Their corruption led them to import what they knew to be the hardest of Obama's hardcore Democratic supporters into a GOP primary election (using a provision they put in place for this very purpose, even though it contradicts the essential purpose for which political parties exist).
In this way, they successfully thwarted the will of the majority of the registered Republican voters in Mississippi who went to the polls. So when it suits their purposes, the elitist faction GOP leadership structures primary outcomes so that they can cheat grassroots Republicans out of electing someone who might actually represent them. Of course, some people will say we shouldn't conclude that this cheating is endemic to the GOP everywhere. Didn't David Brat win his primary in Virginia?
Virginia's 7th District is supposedly a safe seat for the GOP, right? But what if the elitist faction corporate, money, and media powers make it their business to turn Brat's triumph into an example of how nominating candidates who please authentically conservative grassroots Republicans is a recipe for disaster during the general election? They would never do that, right? Think again. Elitist faction forces aren't famous for their loyalty to the GOP label.
Hence Karl Rove's supposedly jocular remark to his PAC's financial backers about murdering the Missouri GOP's 2012 U.S. Senate nominee, Todd Akin. (Apparently, Rove thought he was speaking in secret.) Hence also the general election turnaround against Joe Miller in the 2010 Alaska U.S. Senate race. After losing the primary to Miller, defeated incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski ran in the general election as an Independent, with the backing of the elitist faction powers that be. She won a narrow victory, quickly certified by the Alaska GOP despite legal challenges.
Apparently, the GOP wing of the elitist faction doesn't accept the doctrine Rush Limbaugh proclaims that "There is no salvation outside the GOP." It doesn't apply to elitist faction incumbents seeking to save their seats. It only applies to sincerely conservative grassroots voters seeking to save the Constitution and liberty of their country. With such inequitable logic, the overseer teaches slaves to measure freedom by the length of their chains.
[By the way, some people still think David Brat faces no Democratic opposition. In fact the Democratic nominee, Jack Trammel, is, like Brat, a professor at Randolph-Macon College. He was chosen by a party committee, acting in lieu of a convention, on June 8, two days before the primary. This has all the appearance of a stealth nomination. Trammel resembles Brat in being young, attractive, well-spoken, and popular with his students.
If he were to benefit from enough elitist faction money and media attention, Trammel may have the superficial personal qualities required (along with some help from the elitist faction media) to trip up David Brat, or at least give him a surprising run for his money. And that will be relatively little money if, behind the scenes, the Rove clique is determined to see him fail. They could plausibly claim that they have chosen to focus on the more contested U.S. Senate campaign against Mark Warner. On the GOP side, that race involves their bosom buddy and well-known Virginia GOP fundraiser Ed Gillespie.]
The key to the elitist faction's corrupting power in politics lies precisely in the fact that they are not constrained by any imperative but to increase and hold on to their own power. In this respect they are archetypal Machiavellians. They want maximum freedom of action. They achieve it by acting without respect for any standard of action they do not define. Yet when he scoffs at third-party efforts, Rush Limbaugh helps to impose a mind shackle on conservative grassroots voters. He sets them up to be taken down, one way or another, by the unscrupulous maneuvers of their elitist faction enemies.
Though Limbaugh adamantly refuses to discuss it, there is an alternative to this learned helplessness. Grassroots conservatives can act on the principles of the American founding. Those principles also involve freedom of action, but it's based on doing what's right, as God empowers us to see the right. In the first instance, it isn't about so-called "third party" politics. It's about demonstrating a political will independent of every consideration except the nation's good. It's about being determined to use our voting power to enforce the demand that candidates we vote for commit to do what the good of the nation obviously requires, or else lose our support.
The Pledge To Impeach mobilization is the vehicle for gathering and demonstrating such political will in the 2014 election. It focuses on the one thing needful in order to begin restoring the integrity of our Constitution and liberty as a free people – i.e., the impeachment and removal from office of Barack Obama and all his collaborators. Have you joined the Pledge To Impeach mobilization? Are you encouraging everyone you can influence to do likewise?
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
