Politics
Posted on 03/12/2009 11:22:07 AM PDT by AreaMan
Rush is not the right leader for the Reagan Revolution Phase Two
03.04.2009
Rush has enviable radio talent. He reaches out to a big group of people every week and edutains them.
He has his reward and needs no further praise. I am not going to let leftists force me to throw Rush under the bus, but they cannot force me to make him the driver either.
Suppose you want to see some of his ideas, such as pro-life and small government, win.
Suppose you want to see the Reagan Revolution continue or expand to new groups.
Rush is the wrong guy to feature. Featuring him as “leader” or “public intellectual” is a misuse of his talent. He can help create the conditions for change, but he cannot lead it.
Let me make my point using an analogy from the Revolutionary War.
Sam Adam was a great guy and genuine patriot who now has a decent beer named after him. He was a leader in the early stages of the Revolution who sacrificed his all for the Cause. He was personally brave and an effective rabble rouser. Revolutions need a Sam Adams like they need air.
If, however, he had become the face for the Revolution in those days, we might very well have lost. He could not appeal (and turned off) many people we needed on our team. Instead, Washington became the face of the revolution and our leader and the Revolution was saved.
This irritated many purists who wanted the more “in your face” approach of the Sam Adams set. Sadly for Adams, but perhaps fortunately for the Revolution, he was physically unable to challenge the more moderate leadership of the Patriot Cause.
A Sam Adams can create a revolution, but he cannot lead a successful one.
Notice that by “moderate” voice, I do NOT mean compromised or wimpy. Washington was a patriot willing to sacrifice everything for the cause. He was also the patriot the British feared, because he was impossible to dismiss.
America found a champion that even our foes had to admit was sterling.
It matters to get the right Face Man. Ideally (see Washington, George) your Face Man is also your Fighting Leader, but you simply cannot have the Sam Adams types being your public persona or a good many of the Virginians and nice Pennsylvanians you need to win will turn away from you.
Rush as party leader or Voice of Conservatism is in the wrong role. He is Sam Adams cast as Washington.
Bad move for Rush and for us.
*Editors Note: Listen to John Mark Reynolds discuss Rush at Scriptorium’s podcast Middlebrow.
Obama tried to declare Rush the de facto head of the REPUBLICAN party.
Rush, while flattered, has declined the offer.
The author really should deal with the facts as they are.
Not really surprising. Just more proof that whatever lie a liberal states becomes truth to many.
Rush is doing a great job. He is a conservative ‘leader’ by default. Because there is no one else out there leading.
I agree. Although I admire and love him, he is pompous at times. And I don’t think average Americans appreciate hearing about giant gas-guzzling SUVs just for the sake of wasting fuel etc... And the glorious naked body thing is about as disgusting as it can get. I don’t want to hear that. But I do like the main message.
My wife says Sarah Palin is staying out of the limelight to avoid over-exposure. I pray she’s the next president.
No offense to the author, but he sounds like a philosophy professor, throws a lot of information out but in the end, it has no practical application.
The author assumed facts not in evidence. The idiot should really learn the facts before mouthing off about them.
The left’s goal of distracting us is working so well. :(
Whatever, the real question might really be is this; Who is the next Jefferson Davis/Robt. E. Lee?
Ok, no one is looking to do an exact carbon copy of 1776.
People aren’t waiting around until we have an exact clone of everyone from that time like we are filling roles in some historical reenactment play.
We go with who’s here, and their roles will fall into place.
So, a guy with a podcast is going to tell us how to take in what Rush has to say?
Interesting...
I don’t know if Rush is the right leader. He is the right guy to voice the concerns and desires of Conservatives right now, but I do know that John Mark Reynolds, whoever that is, is not the guy to decide who the right leader is.
The important point is that the GOP needs leadership badly, political leadership. Right now, they’re floundering around while Obama is turning the country into a socialist state. Someone with conservative ideas and credentials has to come forward and take the helm as the moral and philosophical leader of the GOP. It happened after the peanut man Carter got elected in 1976 with Reagan, and it has to happen again for the party to win the next presidential election.
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Somehow you have to wonder what a liberal arts studies program has to say about Republicans.
Washington II is already there. That person just needs people to stop looking for him so he/she can emerge on his/her own.
Washington was not Washington because people were looking for him.
More than that, however, neither Washington nor Adams would have been able to do anything without the intellectual foundations that had already been laid by many other members of the revolutionary leadership.
Indeed, those intellectual foundations were the difference between our revolution, and that of the French only a few years later.
If the revolution needed a "Face Man" who could also fight; they also needed one who was fully conversant with the philosophical underpinnings of what he was fighting for.
Ronald Reagan was that sort of man -- and he had the likes of Buckley, Kirk, and others to lay the intellectual foundations.
We need the "Face Man," sure. But even more, we need to refurbish our ideas.
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