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ABC Highlights Frum’s Charge Fox News and Selfish Limbaugh to Blame for Health Defeat
Newsbusters ^ | 3/22/10 | Brent Baker

Posted on 03/23/2010 3:52:31 AM PDT by ICAB9USA

Looking at the state of both parties after President Obama’s health bill win in the House, ABC’s Terry Moran elevated the view of “prominent conservative” David Frum, author a year ago of Newsweek’s “Why Rush is Wrong” cover story, who blamed Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for what he’s dubbed the GOP’s “Waterloo.” On Nightline, Moran contended “anger, stoking it, expressing it, riding it...was the Republican strategy to defeat health care. And over the weekend all that anger got ugly, as some Democratic Members of Congress were called vial, racial and anti-gay slurs.”

But, he warned, “in the wake of the Democrats’ victory, some Republicans are not sure all that anger makes good politics,” as if Limbaugh and other conservative leaders advocated yelling the “slurs.” Moran relayed how “Frum says the real leadership of the Republican Party during the course of the health care battle was not to be found in the halls of Congress, but on the air waves” since “it was talk radio and Fox News, Frum argues, that drove the GOP strategy.” Moran paraphrased Frum’s take:

It sounds like you're saying that the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, hijacked the Republican Party and drove it to a defeat?

Frum rued: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox. The balance here has been completely reversed and the thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party.” On his FrumForum blog on Sunday, in a post titled “Waterloo,” Frum charged: “We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.”

An excerpt from his tirade against talk radio and Limbaugh for making it impossible for Republicans to make a deal with Democrats, as if that’s a bad thing, as Frum claimed Limbaugh really wants Republicans to fail so he has more listeners and can sell more ads: ....There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination.

When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: conservativism; limbaugh; media; talkradio
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To: ICAB9USA

Rush said that the meeting on healthcare with Obama was a mistake, but the Republicans did it anyway.

Frum needs to give a single example of an elected Republican citing Limbaugh as a factor in his voting, or he is just writing crap for the weak minded.


21 posted on 03/23/2010 4:06:57 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (I always wanted to post in "Test Topic, Ignore It". [CHECK])
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To: ICAB9USA
Well they have been trying to discredited the conservative efforts all along, and all it does is fire up and expand our troops with free advertising! lol
22 posted on 03/23/2010 4:09:29 AM PDT by Dem Guard
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To: ICAB9USA
frum is proof that too much sex with other men will rot your brain... and frum never had much of one to begin with. I hope that I meet him someday... I will punch him right in the nose. HE is a smarmy little elitist ba$tard... and like most I have met... arrogant and in desperate need of an “attitude adjustment”.

LLS

23 posted on 03/23/2010 4:09:32 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (Wolverine)
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To: highlander_UW

Not even the dims believed the slur crap.. and dims NEVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING... EVER!

LLS


24 posted on 03/23/2010 4:10:33 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (Wolverine)
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To: ICAB9USA
Ahhh...this is simply the talking points of the left.
ABC has no film of any out of the way behavior from the demonstrators, but they do have film of about 2 dozen people in the crowds holding video camera's.
Sorry, MSM media! Your charges are propaganda. But thanks for playing!
25 posted on 03/23/2010 4:11:39 AM PDT by swamprebel
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To: joelt

Perhaps we will want to make 11/2 a national holiday like 7/4. Would that piss off the libs! lol


26 posted on 03/23/2010 4:11:49 AM PDT by Dem Guard
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To: ICAB9USA

So Frum got up off of his knees from in front of Mitt Romney long enough to spew more RINO lickspittle for the mainstream media to slobber up? I imagine Romney must be feeling a breeze about now.


27 posted on 03/23/2010 4:11:56 AM PDT by Buckeye Battle Cry (Enjoy nature - eat meat, wear fur and drive your car!)
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To: Virginia Ridgerunner
Mark: “It’s like Yankees who come South because it’s generally such a nice place to live and then tell us we’re all a bunch of idiots and that we need to “do it like they used to do it back in Detroit.” Spare me – move back to Detroit and leave me alone.” ------ lol

'The Great One' is one of my favorite people in the world. We go back a long way ...... to the days of N. Sanders Sauls and the rebuff of Gore's bid for hand recounts of ballots in 2000.

28 posted on 03/23/2010 4:12:01 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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To: ICAB9USA

the one to blame are those REPUBLICANS who VOTED FOR OBAMA because they thought he was a moderate


29 posted on 03/23/2010 4:12:27 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: ICAB9USA
Add charles “I love abortion and fetal stem cell research” krauthammer to the list. HE said that NONE OF THIS WOULD HARM THE dims IN NOVEMBER! He is no Conservative... but like frum... he dances the tune for the marxists that control his strings. **** them ALL!

LLS

30 posted on 03/23/2010 4:13:28 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (Wolverine)
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To: Adder

Amen... I despises the bassturds.

LLS


31 posted on 03/23/2010 4:14:46 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (Wolverine)
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To: LibLieSlayer
Not even the dims believed the slur crap.. and dims NEVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING... EVER! LLS

It has it's weaknesses but I used to think the two party system generally worked, but now it'd be folly for Americans to ever elect a democrat again. I'm not comfortable with the republicans having all the power either, but the democrats have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can never again be trusted with a political position above dog catcher.

32 posted on 03/23/2010 4:15:09 AM PDT by highlander_UW (Happiness doesn't come from owning something; it comes from being a part of something)
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To: freebilly
LOL

The guy (Frum) is a political dinosaur. He would be better off to just disappear!

People like him just serve to preserve the status quo. Look what politicians like him have done to this country over the past decades.

Frum ...... GET LOST!

33 posted on 03/23/2010 4:15:45 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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To: ICAB9USA

Just because the government is doing something illegal to the health care system is no reason to get your pantys in a wad? Is that what Mr.Frum is trying to say?


34 posted on 03/23/2010 4:17:10 AM PDT by linn37 ( "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money.)
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To: Matchett-PI

frum is a useful idiot


35 posted on 03/23/2010 4:17:15 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: RightOnline
Frum .....

...... steaming pile

36 posted on 03/23/2010 4:19:33 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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To: highlander_UW
Yesterday Rush said something like we must NEVER allow the dims to be elected again... we can’t... we must destroy them. I agree with Rush... the party that needs to die and be reborn is the dim party... I will work towards defeating them and every evil thing that they stand for... until my dying breath I swear!

LLS

37 posted on 03/23/2010 4:20:18 AM PDT by LibLieSlayer (Wolverine)
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To: linn37
re: Just because the government is doing something illegal to the health care system is no reason to get your pantys in a wad? Is that what Mr.Frum is trying to say?

LOL

Frum is an out of touch beltway fool.

38 posted on 03/23/2010 4:20:48 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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To: LibLieSlayer
re: Yesterday Rush said something like we must NEVER allow the dims to be elected again... we can’t... we must destroy them. I agree with Rush... the party that needs to die and be reborn is the dim party... I will work towards defeating them and every evil thing that they stand for... until my dying breath I swear!

___

excellent

39 posted on 03/23/2010 4:21:35 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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To: EBH
Frum, "When I was in law school, I devised my own idiosyncratic solution to the problem of studying a topic I knew nothing about. I'd wander into the library stacks, head to the relevant section, and pluck a book at random. I'd flip to the footnotes, and write down the books that seemed to occur most often. Then I'd pull them off the shelves, read their footnotes, and look at those books. It usually took only 2 or 3 rounds of this exercise before I had a pretty fair idea of who were the leading authorities in the field. After reading 3 or 4 of those books, I usually had at least enough orientation in the subject to understand what the main questions at issue were — and to seek my own answers, always provisional, always subject to new understanding, always requiring new reading and new thinking." -----

Well David. It's way past time for some NEW THINKING on your part. Grow up, get wise ...... or GET LOST!

40 posted on 03/23/2010 4:26:29 AM PDT by ICAB9USA (An Executive Order reasserting the intentions of the Hyde Amendment will be fulfilled (not))
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