If David Frum had not taken to the pages of Newsweek, a one-time news magazine now little more than a dead-tree version of left-wing blog to tell us why he thinks Rush Limbaugh is wrong, I would not criticize him.  His book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, while dry at times and a bit too trusting in government, offers some serious suggestions for party rebuilding.

Indeed, even in his Newsweek essay, he offers a number of good suggestions, notably this one, “We need to put free-market health-care reform, not tax cuts, at the core of our economic message.“  And he’s right about Limbaugh’s failure to appeal to the kinds of voters Americans need to reach, especially women who find the talk show host’s message “off-putting.”

Not just that, he’s right to fault Rush’s fellow radio talk show host Mark Levin for calling him a “putz.”  Levin should stick to the style of his conservative manifesto, articulating the ideas of conservatism rather than insulting fellow conservatives.

But, then again, so should Frum refrain from insulting fellow conservatives.  In his piece on Limbaugh, not only does he bring up Rush’s past personal problems, calling him a “walking stereotype of self-indulgence,” he also buys into the spin of the MSM/White House Axis, calling Rush the leader of the GOP.  And he claims Rush is invested in Republican failure:

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

Hardly.  Yeah, Rush won’t be as prominent as he is now when Republicans regain the White House, heck, even I called him the interim leader of the GOP in the immediate aftermath of the election.  But, I don’t think Rush would mind being “sidelined” by a conservative president and Congress.  (I used to listen to him regularly in 1994 and recall how exuberant he was when the GOP regained control of the House and Senate.)  He loves this country too much to compromise its national interest for the sake of his personal prominence.

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In a “news” article on the success of the G20 summit, Time magazine called it a success, lavishing praise of the President of the United States:

Yet as American officials tell it, the real hero of the hour, proving his mettle at his first summit, was President Barack Obama. The remaining point of disagreement, which threatened until the last minute to derail the consensus so devoutly wished for by all parties, centered on tax havens. Sarkozy was determined that a list of tax havens that refuse to provide information to foreign tax authorities on request should be published immediately by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as part of a clampdown on such havens. China, not a member of the OECD, was stalling because of its concern that such a list might include Macau and Hong Kong, which have both recently moved to implement OECD standards. The U.S. President took Sarkozy aside, then Chinese President Hu Jintao, and finally brought them together in a private meeting at the side of the room. “If he hadn’t done that, we’d still be there,” remarked a White House official after the communiqué had been safely published.

Emphasis added.  Note the magazine’s sources for evidence of the president’s heroism.

Did, in the eight years before the advent of Obama, any MSM outlet call Bush “the hero of the hour” by quoting his advisors?  (Would any Bush advisor have so praised his boss?)

Last night I watched the wonderful (though dated) Mister Roberts on DVD where James Cagney‘s Captain Morton (with a thick New England accent) helps us understood another mean-spirited New Englander, the unhappy Barney Frank.  Cagney, resentful of “college guys” who pushed him around when he was growing up, takes it out on his crew, bullying them, saying he knows “how to take care of smart boys:”

I hate your guts, you smart college guys! I’ve been seeing your kind around since I was ten years old… working as a busboy. “Oh busboy, it seems my friend has thrown up on the table. Clean up that mess, boy, will’ya?” And then when I went to sea as a steward… people poking at you with umbrellas. “Oh, boy!”, “You, boy!”, “Careful with that luggage, boy!” And I took it. I took it for years! But I don’t have to take it any more.

As I’ve suggested before, it seems that in bullying corporate executives and Republicans, Barney’s venting inner demons which built up in his psyche when he was bullied in grade school.

But, just as their are sanctions for the schoolyard bully, it seems there are also sanctions for his congressional counterpart.  Yesterday, when he accused Republicans who criticized of suffering from “psychological disorder,” may have violated the rules of the House.  His behavior reminded me of that of his former Bay State colleague, though he had less grounds for his insults than did Tip O’Neill nearly a quarter-century ago.

In May 1984, then-Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich faulted

. . . Democrats for believing “America does nothing right.” [Then-]House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) called Gingrich’s attack “the lowest thing I’ve ever seen in my 32 years in Congress.” But Gingrich and an ally, then-Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), demanded that O’Neill’s attack on Gingrich be struck from the record and it was, marking the first time since 1798 that a speaker had been rebuked in such as way.

Turns out members of Congress “are forbidden from making personal attacks on one another.“  Now, saying your fellow Congressman suffer from a “psychological disorder” certainly sounds like an insult to me.

Seems an investigation is in order.

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

After reading that anti-globalisation/anti-war protests in London drew “about 4,000 protesters,” I thought that number of protesters looked familiar, so I decided to check how many showed up at last month’s “Tea Party” protesting higher taxes and increased government spending in Cincinnati.  Looks like I was onto something.  According to the local paper, “about 4,000 protesters showed up.”

Crowds about the same size should generate about the same amount of coverage, right?

Turns out not to be the case at all.  A google news search for “London Protests” (without the quotation marks) yield 9,174 hits whereas “Cincinnati Tea Party” (again without the quotation marks) yields only 62.  You’ll note that most of the big media outlets turn up for the first search while mostly local outlets turn up for the second.

So, I decided to do another google search to find the population of each city.  London has “7,517,700 as of mid 2005,” Cincinnati “364,040.”  In both cases, I’m not including surrounding areas.  (That’s .05% of London’s population, but over 1% of Cincinnati’s.)

And of course there’s the added attention paid to London because of the G20 taking place there at present.

Maybe it was the violence of the London protests that called for additional media attention.  (A google search of “violence London protests” yields 95 times as many hits as that search I did for just plain news about the Cincinnati Tea Party.)

Or maybe it was something else.

A MISMANAGED, BANKRUPT ENTITY PAYING OUT BIG BONUSES WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS:

Capitol Hill bonuses in 2008 were among the highest in years, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks payroll data. The average House aide earned 17% more in the fourth quarter of the year, when the bonuses were paid, than in previous quarters, according to the data. That was the highest jump in the eight years LegiStorm has compiled payroll information.

Emphasis added.

In his meeting with the Queen, the President of the United States said, in response to a her question about jet lag:  “I had breakfast with the Prime Minister, I had meetings with the Chinese, the Russians, [Tory leader] David Cameron. And I’m proud to say I did not nod off in one of the meetings.”

Just wonderin’.

If I got paid for blogging, I might do things a little differently.  I would certainly attend more gatherings of left-wing gays as I would be compensated for hearing the same old jargon over and over again, in the hope I would hear some new twist amidst the same old rhetoric.

I say this because I had been considering attending the LA Gay and Lesbian Center’s “Town Hall on the Freedom to Marry” tonight.  Indeed, it was anticipation of that meeting that I had penned, er, pixeled, this post on what, I believe to be, the best strategy to deal with a California Supreme Court ruling upholding Proposition 8.  I intended to speak out and say what I have long been saying on this blog and which a reader echoes on his own blog, “present a much better campaign to win the hearts and minds of the California public,” i.e., make a better case for gay marriage.

When I read the list of organizations invited to address the gathering, I saw the usual suspects, the left-leaning gay interest groups in the Golden State.  Now, I’m not disputing their inclusion.  I’m wondering about the exclusion of Log Cabin or any other right-of-center groups.

I expect they would offer the same tired arguments I heard at the “Equality” Summit.  A few people might make a good point or two, but it would have a general leftist slant.  Now, maybe my hunch is wrong and maybe they’ll have a more balanced approach this time, but my experience has taught me not to expect inclusion of conservative ideas at such confabs.

So, I’m not going.  I have better things to do with my time.

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Is there no end to Barney Frank’s insults?

Can’t a man as intelligent as he express in disagreement in the form of counterarguments?  Will the media continue to let this unhappy man get away with his mean-spirited remarks?

When Texas Republican Congressman John Culberson today “blasted Democrats for passing the stimulus, which permitted AIG to lavish billions on executives after the de facto federal takeover,” the Massachusetts Democrat fired back, saying Republican criticism was part “of a psychological disorder I am not equipped to diagnose.”

This from a man who grandstanded about AIG bonuses even after he had voted to allow them, a man who refuses to acknowledge his own role in the financial meltdown, errors of judgment he made about the financial soundness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Can you imagine how the media would react if a senior Republican so smeared his partisan adversaries?  They went after Tom DeLay for much less.

Barney Frank owes Representative Culberson and GOP critics the same kind of apology then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey offered him in 1995.

In my post Monday on the Vice President and his family’s privacy, I asked him a variety of questions, including, “When, in the 2008 presidential campaign, the media made much of the indiscretions of the daughter of your rival for the second highest office in the land, did you tell them to cool it?“  Should he answer “Yes,” to that or any of the questions I posed, I held he would “have grounds to criticize anyone who would publicize your daughter’s private life.”

Turns out that during the campaign, in reference to the media’s obsession with the daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, his then-rival for the Vice-Presidency, candidate Biden said that “children are off limits.”  (Thanks to reader Jenny for tracking that down.)

He thus has every grounds to ask the media to lay off his daughter and not publicize her private indiscretions.  The story should die.

But, given his partisan affiliation, the story doesn’t have much legs and won’t make–as well it shouldn’t–the mainstream media.  In this case at least, conservative media should follow their lead.

There is, however, still a story here, not really a new story, but a retelling of one we’ve been hearing over and over again, that of media double standards.  Joe Biden is right, a politician’s children should be off limits.

The MSM ignored his rule when it comes to the private lives of children of Republican politicians.

And Biden’s fellow Democrat Barney Frank explicitly endorsed their snooping into the private life of Palin’s daughter.  That unhappy Democrat is once again exposed as a hypocrite, favoring only investigations into people’s private lives (and other matters) when such investigations can be used to hurt Republicans.

Recalling the media fascination with the stories of the Bush and Palin daughters,  John Hinderaker reminds us that they

. . . were major news stories. Does anyone seriously believe that if there had been a video of Barbara or Jenna Bush snorting cocaine during their father’s administration, the press would have refused to write about it?

It’s nice that our newspapers have decided to respect the privacy of people like a Vice President’s children. It would be even nicer if they extended the same courtesy to members of both parties.

Exactly.

With the media extending a courtesy to a Democrat that it regularly denies to Republicans, we have yet just another piece of evidence proving our point about media bias.

With younger Americans more favorably disposed to gay marriage, each year the number of citizens more favorably disposed to state recognition of the institution and eligible to vote increases.  The likelihood grows that should an initiative appear on the California ballot to repeal Proposition 8, it will pass.

With that in mind, it’s imperative that should the California Supreme Court uphold that proposition, as many court watchers expect it to do, that advocates of gay marriage use that setback to their advantage.  I believe that if, in the immediate aftermath of that decision, these advocates conduct themselves responsibly, they will all but guarantee repeal, perhaps as soon as 2010, but definitely by 2012.

Simply put, they need react not angrily, but rationally, saying they understand this decision, acknowledging they need to convince many voters about the merits of the change they propose, something to the effect of “We have not done a good enough job in the past of making that case. We’ll do a better job next time.”

In short, instead of lashing out against the Court and proponents of Prop 8, acknowledge the task ahead.  Don’t blame others, do acknowledge the magnitude of the change they are proposing and the responsibility of those pushing such a change to act responsibly and to speak intelligently.  With solid arguments and the right attitude, they can change their minds of some of those who last year voted for the successful ballot initiative.

It’s all a question of approach.  And attitude.

The folks at Pajamas asked me to write an essay for them on an ABC News segment on the reaction of patrons in a New Jersey sports bar when they (i.e,. ABC News) dispatched a gay couple to that locale.  Then, they spiced it up by having another actor verbally harass them.  Here are the first three paragraphs.

The news division of another broadcast network has been staging “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of the American people.  Only this time, it didn’t work out as planned.  After planting a gay couple and an actor portraying a loud-mouthed anti-gay bigot at a New Jersey sports bar, ABC News learned that the bar’s patrons are, on the whole, a remarkably tolerant lot.

This wasn’t the first time that ABC staged “news” in an attempt to show the prejudices of those from more “conservative” segments of American society, supposedly macho sports fans or Southern whites.  This network has not been alone in engineering events designed to show such prejudice.  Three years ago, NBC sought to dispatch Muslims to a NASCAR race in order to show how “red-state” America would react.

These news producers seem convinced that the places to look for prejudice in America are places where conservatives congregate.  Or, perhaps, it might be more accurate to say where people different from them congregate.  They always do seem to discern prejudice in the “other.”

Now that I’ve whet your appetite, click here to read the rest.