Oh no you didn’t! Michael Medved, who came to fame as a conservative commentator when Hollywood dumped him for taking the industry to task on content, joined the chorus of clueless Republicans to go off on Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin today, calling their criticisms of Barack Obama “especially distasteful — and destructive to the conservative cause.”
In his WSJ op-ed, “Obama Isn’t Trying to ‘Weaken America,’” Medved laments conservatives who think Obama has less than honorable intentions for the nation. Which explains why conservatives are burning up the airwaves to dial out his daily radio program to listen to Limbaugh, who, incidentally, gave Medved his start in talk radio. Happy Valentines Day, Rush.
Palin and Limbaugh, both of whose stock seems to increase by the nanosecond, have been pointedly critical of Obama as possibly purposely undermining the government. Theirs is not an isolated position; Glenn Beck has floated the theory that Obama is a proponent of the Cloward-Piven strategy to collapse the American republic into a democratic socialist state-type government.
The thing is, the evidence is on Limbaugh and Palin’s side. Whether Obama is deliberately trying to collapse the government or not, he has employed both Saul Alinsky and Cloward-Piven strategies consistently from the beginning of his term. His takeover of the American healthcare system is a classic example of the former; he used Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, rules numbers 5, 8 and 10 in pushing through his package, and continues to use rule 11 now to implement it.
As honorable as Medved’s intentions may be, in publishing the attack on his conservative radio mentor and the former vice presidential candidate, he is fueling the Left’s disinformation machine by giving weight to the spurious argument that their criticisms are fantastical.
Medved piously declares:
Moreover, the current insistence in seeing every misstep or setback by the Obama administration as part of a diabolical master plan for national destruction disregards the powerful reverence for the White House that’s been part of our national character for two centuries.
Which of course plays right into Obama’s hands. By joining the lines of moon howlers on the left who suggest that Limbaugh and Palin are among the loonies propagating malicious or ignorant untruths about the President, Medved strings swimmingly to the tune of Alinsky’s fifth rule. Make them look ridiculous with ridicule.
But Medved doesn’t let conservative loyalty get in his way:
Regardless of the questionable pop psychology of this analysis, as a political strategy it qualifies as almost perfectly imbecilic. Republicans already face a formidable challenge in convincing a closely divided electorate that the president pursues wrong-headed policies.
Oh really?
Currently only 29 percent of voters approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president; nearly 40 percent strongly disapprove. Fifty-seven percent are for the repeal of health care, and similar numbers disapprove of his stance on immigration, cap and trade and just about every foreign policy decision he has made. Workers in the Gulf Coast petroleum industry are on the verge of revolt because of his drilling moratorium.
If the Republicans have a problem selling their message in 2012, one is safe to bet that it will be John Boehner, Mitt Romney, or dare I say Michael Medved, who miss-sell it, not Plain or Limbaugh.
The fact remains that whether or not Barack Obama is trying to harm the nation, he is without question doing just that, and what is decidedly not needed at this juncture, is another inside-the-box Republican to help him with his task.
