I’ve put off writing this long enough.

Some weeks back while I was abroad St George posted a piece about Liberals “not of the Left” here at RS, which I’d written back in ‘07. As far back as I can remember I’ve sent off an annual ceremonial email to Rush Limbaugh for his misuse of this term, reminding him that not all liberals are “of the Left.” Oh, well. We all know what he means, in a general sort of a way, and I was merely expressing my distress that many “good liberals” would never come over to our side as long as he was painting them with such a broad leftish brush. Words mean things, and I’ve been quoted by so many others.

In 2009 enter the meteoric rise to national prominence of Glenn Beck, since he moved over to Fox, for he has grabbed hold of that “progressive” word in much the way Limbaugh has “liberal”, as a shibboleth that somehow sets him apart…in this case, from Limbaugh.

Therein lies a problem.

Even before CPAC, when it was announced that Beck would be giving the keynote, I told Bernie, If he hits a home run with his use, and misuse, of “progressive”, expect the fur to fly. He did, it has, and just as I predicted, from Beck’s fans, some of whom are just as loyal, and blindered, as Limbaugh’s.

Last week a lady called Rush (I get to listen to his show more often than Glenn’s) to lambaste him about  “going easy” on the Republican Party (who Glen infers are just as “progressive” as the Democrats). So, for a few days Rush dished it back in his inimitable way by having Snerdley blow a horn from to time to time to signal that he had to say something bad (gratuitously) about the GOP, thus mocking the Beck fans, for their pettiness. Get my drift, girls?

This is a staking out of turf, plain and simple, but it is getting perilously close to petty, a la Letterman and Leno. “The View” petty. It’s as if two gamblers were trying to set up competing high stakes poker tables at opposite ends of a cruise ship…losing sight that they were on the Titanic.

This is also childish, and if you have followed both as long as I have, you’ll know the potential danger that can arise here, over just two words, neither of which are correctly used. If Limbaugh’s and Beck’s armies start going at at it, and the Left is egging this on, imagine how the Tea Parties might be split.

Now inferentially, the logic of what Glenn Beck is teaching is that the GOP is “progressive”, just like the Democrats, and in George Corley Wallace’s words, “there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between ‘em.” He isn’t preaching third party, but he’s getting close to it….all to satisfy a distinctive characteristic that is as much professional vanity as it is a misguided sense of scholarship. (If Beck had called progressives “socialists” then I wouldn’t be writing this.) But neither would he have his argument that the Republicans and Democrats are closer to one another than they really are. He would have lost his singular position. (I have other issues with the trail of Mr Beck’s logic.)

Now Limbaugh understands the score on this point. I agree with his argument. He believes that Conservatives have to take back the Republican Party, while Beck seems to be saying Conservatives need to learn and know, and understand who they are, become more centered, then bring whoever will agree with them over to their side. To hell with the parties. (If you’ve ever wondered how the Second Century Church ever split up so quickly, you’re seeing it here.)

Ironically, while I think Limbaugh’s right on the strategy, I believe Glenn Beck is the only public person who can make that strategy happen, except, if you’ve noticed, they’re not on the same page. Why? It’s all really about “biznez”, and those two damned words, and not the “Wahr”. The poker game trumps the seaworthiness of the ship.

So, this is where I get a little irate, and I go over and get my little Commie cap with the Red Star, and wonder how the Enemy might be seeing this turf war develop, and how they might want to help it along.

Now, I’m older than both those guys, and quite frankly am more experienced in many ways (other than broadcasting), e.g., I once shot a good stick of golf (better than Rush, around 8), and have been thrown out of more saloons than Beck, slept on a pool table, been to two state fairs, been drug through a bush backwards, and can tell a horse from a mule…which means I can for sure as hell tell a Republican from a Democrat, Mr Beck. In fact, both get on my nerves at times, but then again, I never liked Hawkeye Pierce, either, but watched that show anyway.

But see, that’s the test we all have to confront here everyday on RedState…having to dig deep to agree with someone we probably wouldn’t like if we knew them in real life. For you see, those two men are one-man armies that are indispensable to this fight, each in his own way. But much like Hamilton and Jefferson, they have to keep their respective “petty differences” and the sauciness of their devotees, at bay. Resume the fight after the war.

I just wish they were a two-man army instead.

For you see, in like manner as Limbaugh’s “liberals”, there have always been throughout modern history progressives, who also were “not of the Left”. Limbaugh uses “liberal” colloguially to express many things that are defined differently, but Beck attempts to use “progressivism” as a precisely-defined scholarly term to define many different things cultural having nothing to do with the political aspirations of “progressivism”, as if they were the same. In many ways, his misuse of the word is more dangerous, precisely because it leads one off into a direction of third party, or a non-party, and it omits the historical notion that the ground he claims for conservatism has already been staked out, a flag planted, and that banner is the Republican Party. The GOP is the natural home of liberty and conservatism. It’s our brand. Why go searching for a new plot of ground?

To put progressivism in the proper context of American history I suggest Mr Beck go back to the founding of the GOP in 1856 and the writings of even lesser known political philosophers such as George William Curtis, for it was their ideals that held sway in America from the Civil War forward to the beginning of intellectual progressivism around 1900-1910. And it was the risen “common man” who defined that era, especially amidst those great waves of foreign immigration. It was the “American Doctrine of Liberty”, and those teeming millions coming through Ellis Island, seeking to be free, more than the Founder’s vision, that confronted the progressive vision in 1900.

Besides, and I know I’m beating a dead horse here, why use “liberal” when you know there are liberals not of the Left, or use “progressive”, when you know there are progressives not of the Left…while you also know there are no socialists who are not of the Left, nor any Marxists, fascists, Nazis, Communists, also who are not of the Left?

For want of nail, the shoe was lost…..(Ben Franklin)

To be “of the Left” you have to have an added ingredient, a teaspoon, maybe, a tablespoon, I’m not sure, but that ingredient isn’t stupidity, or good intentions, or guilt. But simply being for “big government”, or adhering to a body of knowledge and political customs we here call big-city or up-east (blue state), or RINO, but which has been around since their grandfathers were in knee pants, does not make one a man of the Left. What it does is make one “not a conservative”. The Constitution itself does not paint its citizens with such bold, broad strokes. It understands you are “for it” and it understands you are “against it”. But most of all it understands the far larger group, “don’t know that much about it”. That was always the contest….educating them and bringing them over…and our side seems to be losing.

Using Mitch McConnell as a foil, I’m on record here as wanting him gone. Not just from GOP leadership, but the Senate. But I want him replaced by a conservative, not a “Louavul Leftie”. And since Blue Dogs have proved how well “conservative-to-moderate” Democrats are allowed to behave in Congress, I want him or her wearing a big R- in front of their name, not a D-. Sorry, Glenn, that’s how I see it. Even the Maine Blueberries are more apt to vote the Big R than Blue Dogs are the Little C.

Limbaugh knows McConnell, and likes him, and holds back his most strident language for people he genuinely doesn’t like, such as M’Cain. (Just because of an annual black-tie cigar smoke with Arnold every year, it’s taken Limbaugh longer than most to finally see through the fakery of California’s second most famous actor-governor. ) Limbaugh’s weakness is the politics of friendship…which only means he’s neither a Trotsky nor a Cromwell. He’s human. He still criticizes McConnell, but he is absolutely correct in drawing daily distinctions between the GOP, who are gelded big-government “moderates” (dare I use that word?) and the bulk of the Democrats, who, in one form or another, are dedicated “socialists, of the Left.”

Beck really doesn’t make those distinctions, and again, in order to stake out his own professional ground, seems to argue against these distinctions even being made.

But Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are indispensable to the conservative movement, and the conservative movement is just about all that stands between the greatest experiment in human freedom since the beginning of time, and abject tyranny. The stakes cannot get any higher. It’s from this observation that I make this little criticism.

I’m not a pedant or prig, but a pragmatist….and this is war in which we cannot go off spitting over lines drawn in the dirt. Hamilton, Jefferson and Adams overcame this, dammit! Limbaugh has staked out his turf as that of analyst. He’s the best there is. But he is also “planned for” by the Left. While I rely on his opinions about events, he really isn’t kicking the war forward, as Nimitz did, from the Solomons, to Tarawa, to Iwo Jima, and onward to Okinawa.

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, is un-planned for, (although he’s beginning to telegraph a little) and possibly the most important general in this war, short of Aragorn suddenly showing up after his walk through the Paths of the Dead. So far, he still seems to be able to stay a step ahead of the Left.

Three times now I have asked these guys to sit down and stake out “areas of responsibility” and sign some sort of mutual non-aggression pact. (Bad choice of words, huh?) Let Levine and Judge Napolitano draw up the papers. But they won’t, even though AH, TJ and JH did.

In my own garrulous way, I’ve just given you 2000 words of preface, just to say that we really need to make “socialism” and other words dirty again. If Limbaugh and Beck were more caring for their misuse of what have become very important words, we wouldn’t be talking about this sideshow….for as I write this…

…Recent polls show up to a third of the people aren’t too bothered by the word “socialist” or even by being called that name. But since polls also show that 80% of college students (and probably the media) would fail (below 60%) a standard 9th grade civics exam…it’s also clear most of them don’t know what that word “socialist” even means, or the implications of what it means. (Design or accident? Gimme a break.)

In other words, kids today, and for at least thirty years, haven’t been taught anything about the fundamental principles of our system of government; it history, its heroes, and its wonderfulness, and certainly nothing about the enemies of these things.

They aren’t being taught…which in sum, allows both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to pervert the language and possibly split the armies of conservatism…over a damned nail for a horseshoe.

Then consider that home schooling, while helping, isn’t helping enough, by a long shot. First, kids learn best when they share the wonderment of a thing with their peers. Just take your 8 year old to see E.T. alone, and take him with six or seven other kids, then observe the differences; in wonder, in passion, in enjoyment. Paul Revere’s Ride is no different. Washington’s crossing of the Delaware is no different.

Author’s message, Author’s message, Author’s message

We’re asking home-schoolers to consider having night courses for classrooms of 15-20 kids, in the 4th, 6th-7th grade, then again in the 11th-12th grade as information becomes more sophistication. This requires organization, it requires planning and it requires commitment.

We’ve written often about winning the politics, taking back the institutions, and the culture, but not necessarily in that order. Here you/we must take back the culture now, in the words of Latin smugglers, in the “informal economy” of ideas and education.

As this piece by the American Thinker points out, it’s entirely possible that the Republicans could have 52 votes in the Senate come 2010. That’s a gain of 11 seats, added on to the 41 we now have since Brown won.

Good quote:

Moreover, [Dan] Coats’s decision to run this year [for Evan Bayh's seat] is an example of the great vulnerability that Democrats face if 2010 continues to look like a strong Republican year. A few months ago, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas were both considered pretty safe placeholders for Democrats in the midterm election. The number of possible gains by Republicans was very small. In fact, after November 2008, net gains by Democrats in the Senate in 2010 were considered possible. Today, it is a sure bet that North Dakota Governor John Hoeven will become a conservative Republican senator, replacing the liberal Democrat Dorgan. It is just about as sure that Senator Lincoln in Arkansas, who won reelection easily six years ago, will lose to a conservative Republican.

Republican candidates are running ahead of the Democrats in Colorado, Nevada, Delaware, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. If those poll numbers hold up, a Coats victory over Bayh would give Republicans 49 seats in the Senate. Coats, like Hoeven in North Dakota, represents a very strong candidate against a leftist Democrat in a blue state. Congressman Michael Castle in Delaware is a RINO, but not a leftist. He also represents the best Republican candidate in Delaware, and polls which had shown Castle beating Biden’s son will almost certainly show Castle well ahead in the wake of Biden’s decision not to seek his father’s old Senate seat.

If Republicans can persuade the most electable candidates to run in other states, the problems for Democrats could quickly mushroom into an enormous political headache. Polls show former Governor George Pataki running ahead of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, where the Democratic Party is increasingly dysfunctional. Pundits see former Governor Tommy Thompson as a very strong challenger to Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Patty Murray in Washington seems safe, according to Rasmussen, but if the former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi runs against her, he beats Murray by two points. That is a recurring theme in the 2010 Senate election cycle: Republicans are very competitive if the top tier of candidates can be recruited. Those three candidates could give Republicans 52 Senate seats.

Very obviously, this is an optimistic assessment, but it isn’t an unreasonable one. It is very much within the realm of possibility. And, the fact that such an assessment can be made reasonably ought to prove just how bad things have gotten for the Democrats after their banner year in 2008. It hasn’t even taken two years for the Democrats to waste the goodwill and political capital given to them by the American people.

Now, I don’t believe at this moment that we’ll gain 11 seats–Perhaps I’m a little too cautious in my predictions. I believe we could see Republicans pick up 6 maybe 7 seats at this point, but as I’ve already said, it really says something about how fast the public’s opinion has soured on Democrats. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid are too busy trying to cater to the far Left while not appearing to be so to do anything effectively centrist like they prefer to advertise themselves as. The public has seen this abandonment of centrism or at least the appearance of such and reacted accordingly. Furthermore, those who favor incremental change are shocked at how fast Obama’s agenda is being pushed through, and those who favor radical change are dissatisfied with how slowly he is trying to change things and how little progress his initiatives have had.

Put it to you this way: it took George W. Bush, “the Chimp”, six years to face losses in either house of Congress. It has The way things are going, it will have taken Barack Obama, “The One”, two. I realize this is common for Presidents in their first midterm, but if we are to believe the hype, Obama is anything but “common”.

As the article also notes, these successes could carry over into the House and into state governments:

What about the House of Representatives? Republicans will gain a lot of seats, very probably enough to gain a majority. Even if Republican gains fall short, though, Nancy Pelosi will be playing with a very weak hand. More importantly, if 2010 is a good year for Republicans generally, then the GOP ought to make major gains in governorships (all polls show that now) and Republicans, who held up very well in 2008 in state legislative elections, will probably come out of the 2010 elections with a majority of state legislative chambers and seats. Special legislative elections are strongly indicating that already, as I noted last October, often by stunning margins of victory.

What would it mean if Republicans have a majority of power in state governments? It would mean that the redistricting process following reapportionment would help elect more Republicans to the House. Reapportionment is already going to move House seats from red states to blue states. Add a redistricting process mainly controlled by Republicans, and an automatic increase of a dozen or so House seats to Republicans is easily conceivable. House Democrats in 2012, faced with new districts and probable minority status for several election cycles, might leave Congress in droves.

I cannot imagine that the Senate would gain seats and the House would not. The Senate, in fact, almost always, if not all the time, follows the direction the House goes, so if we gain seats in the Senate, it should be a foregone conclusion that we gain some in the House as well. And, while I am not sure how this usually translates into state level elections, I should think the successes of McDonnell in Virginia, Christie in New Jersey, and even Brown in Massachusetts would indicate that gains will also be made in these elections as well.

To put it simply, things are looking good for Republicans, and I couldn’t be happier. We may not necessarily be looking at another 1994, but things are certainly setting themselves up that way.

This post was originally posted here at my blog Jake Speaks. Check it out if you get the chance!

Editorial Note: Just to be clear, this is my personal view. At RedState, we would not support the Democrat. In fact, I would not write supportively of the Democrat at all even were Ox the nominee. RedState’s position is and has always been to support the conservative in the primary and the Republican in the general. That’s not changing. But by God I hope people realize just how awful Oxendine is and deny him the GOP nomination in favor of someone who will not be an embarrassment. — Erick

I’ll tell you bluntly, I will vote for former Georgia Governor and potential Democratic nominee Roy Barnes over Republican John Oxendine, Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner now running for Governor. At least with Roy Barnes we’d get no worse than Sonny Perdue and would know honestly what we are getting.

John Oxendine is Georgia’s Rod Blagojevich, complete with bad hair. If the Georgia GOP were to nominate him, the party would be committing suicide.

What I would much prefer is one of the candidates who has always been a Republican. In fact, here at RedState, we have endorsed Georgia’s former Secretary of State, Karen Handel. Nonetheless, I would love to actually see Georgia get a Republican Governor — not just a guy with an “R” next to his name, but a small government, fiscal conservative, who will not wind up embarrassing us through scandal and, more likely than not, impeachment.

I specifically do not want a politically malleable charlatan who will say or do anything to get elected. And that is precisely what I see in Oxendine — a man who woos some with tales of Jesus and others with whatever sort of pandering he can.

Let’s roll the tape.

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Maybe I don’t know what’s going on, but how is the Republican party handling the Tea Party movement? Upon hearing the latest chatter from the Democrats about driving a wedge between the Republican party and the Tea party movement, it would seem imprudent for the Republicans to sit back and just let the relationship evolve.

Michael Steele or someone from the Republican leadership should be taking an active role in formulating a strategy to bring the Tea Party movement into the Republican fold. If Democrats can successfully separate the two parties, it would be a very bad thing for both the Republicans and the Tea Party movement. Does anyone know if there is a plan in the works or if there is an initiative underway?

crossposted to The Ritz Report

In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, I have been watching the Democrat media – strictly for entertainment value.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down part of the McCain-Feingold law.  Now, thanks to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, corporations can spend money on political purposes.  Keith Olbermann was outraged, OUTRAGED that big corporations would get involved in politics.  I forced myself to listen closely, waiting for him to disclose something very relevant.  Olbermann never did mention the fact that the network he (and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz) work for, MSNBC, belongs to a big corporation, General Electric.

In truth, Keith Olbermann is a corporate spokesman for General Electric.  He has no problem with his big corporation owning a network that spews Democrat talking points 24/7.  But, if another corporation is able to buy a 30-second political commercial on MSNBC or another network, Olbermann says that would endanger democracy.

Olbermann even compared Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to Dred Scott v. Sanford.  He also failed to disclose the fact that the author of that infamous decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney, was a Democrat.  In fact, all seven Supreme Court justices who voted for Dred Scott were Democrats.

In the interest of full disclosure, let’s remember that Ronald Reagan got his start in politics as a spokesman for General Electric.

Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the nation, showing office-holders and candidates and activists how they would benefit tremendously from appreciating the heritage of our Grand Old Party.  Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision.  He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.  His Grand Old Partisan blog celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics.  See http://grandoldpartisan.com and www.RepublicanBasics.com for more information.

I have been wanting to write a couple of posts congratulating Scott Brown for his victory, but I think I’ll put them on hold for now until my concerns explained here are allayed.

I must admit, as a committed conservative, I have my problems with supporting most New England Republicans (there are some Republicans, mainly in New Hampshire, who are exceptions to this, but not many). Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Maine’s two senators, highlight why I am hesitant to support most New England Republicans. Usually, I end up supporting the Republican in a New England race because a) they less Liberal than their Democratic opponents and b) they are usually the best said state or district can offer.

Scott Brown is another example of my hesitance. I knew before I became a supporter that he was pro-choice and that he had several other conservative heresies. I reconciled myself with these facts because I knew that Massachusetts likely didn’t have anyone better to offer. However, what really made me a fan of his was what he campaigned on. He called for fiscal restraint nda strong stance in the War on Terror (particularly his quote, “In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.“). However, my personal favorite moment was he said that he would be the 41st vote to block and defeat the current healthcare legislation.

And when election day rolled around and the time can for his victory speech, I listened to his victory speech with great interest. I wanted to see what this man who I had come to like increasingly more with each passing day before the special election. Listening to his victory speech, I was very impressed that a man like this could win in Massachusetts.

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Leaving aside for the moment what this means to the agenda of Obama and the Democrats, I just want to point out just how groundbreaking Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

For the first time since 1953, a Kennedy will not be the elected holder of this seat (Benjamin A. Smith II and Paul Kirk have both held this seat during this time, but they were appointed to it). Furthermore, for the first time since 1947, Massachusetts will not have a Kennedy as an elected member of its Congressional delegation (the two gaps where the state was Kennedy-less between 1947 and now, but those instances were those of the aforementioned appointed Senators).

For the first time since 1966, when Edward Brooke (coincidentally the first black senator of the modern era) was elected to what is now John Kerry’s seat, the Republican party has won an open Senate seat in Massachusetts.

For the first time since 1972, when Edward Brooke was reelected, the Republican party has won a Senate election in the state of Massachusetts.

For the first time since 1979, when Brooke lost his reelection bid to Paul Tsongas, Massachusetts will have a Republican Senator.

For the first time since 1997, Massachusetts will have a Republican member of its Congressional Delegation. His election also shatters what was heretofore the largest single-party delegation to the United States Congress.

Scott Brown’s election marks the first time since 2002 that Massachusetts has voted Republican on a statewide level. The last Republican statewide winners? The Romney/Healey ticket.

In a state that Obama won 62% to 36% in 2008, a Republican won a little over a year later 52% to 47%.

This diary was originally posted here at my blog Jake Speaks. Check it out if you get the chance!

Cross-posted at The Underground Conservative.

You can go ahead and say it.

The Boston Tea Party of 2010 may have triggered the Second American Revolution.

Scott Brown became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 30 years by cruising to an easy win over Democrat Martha Marcia, Marcia, Marcia Coakley in the special election to fill the seat once held by Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy, the late Senator from Chappaquiddick.

The Swimmer’s seat, as pointed out tonight, hasn’t been occupied by a Republican in over six decades.

Al-AP has called the race for Brown. So has Fox News.

Coakley has called Brown to concede.

This result, of course, has both short-term and long-term implications for the entire nation. With Brown’s election, there are now only 57 Democrats in the Senate plus two independents that caucus with the Democrats. Dingy Harry doesn’t have his 60 votes for cloture without getting one RINO sellout.

That means the Democrats have limited options to get the health care takeover through. Most likely, they will try to force the House to vote to approve the Senate bill or use the reconciliation process to avoid any cloture votes.

In fact, Juan Williams just finished predicting on Hannity that would be what the Democrats would try. In effect, doubling down on stupid. Try to ram everything through, the voters be damned.

Would not be surprised one iota to see the health care bill rammed through in the next week and the Senate refuse to seat Brown until it is passed.

Yes We Did!

The open thread at Hot Air has numerous links and continuing coverage.

Statement from Press Secretary Baghdad Bob Gibbs at the White House here.

By the way, I’m with Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit. Sen. Brown should deliver the GOP’s response to the State of the Union Show on January 27.

With his victory tonight, Scott Brown has continued what was started in November by both Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie in victory and Doug Hoffman in a narrow defeat: the reconstruction of the Reagan coalition of economic conservatives, social conservatives, national security conservatives, libertarians, blue collar workers, middle class voters, ethnics.

This is the Big Magnet, a phrase coined by former Sen. Fred D. Thompson. It represents a Republican Party strong on principles that will draw voters, especially independents to it, rather than abandoning those principles in an attempt to be all things to all people and essentially stand for nothing.

This is how Ronald Reagan won two landslides in the 1980s and how Republicans captured control of Congress in 1994.

There is a red tsunami building, one that may very well wipe out the statists and Marxists and any enabling RINOs between now and November.

This is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. The emergence of the Tea Party movement as a legitimate political force in America. Once again, from The Prowler as we quoted here:

“You know what scares our people more than the fact that they lost Ted Kennedy’s seat and the Obama mystique may take a huge hit [today]?” says the DNC adviser. “The fact that Democrats and the media can no longer make the tea party types out to be irrational, inflexible ideologues who are supporting nothing but extreme right-wing candidates. The tea party movement supported Brown, raised millions for him and worked for him, and he is not necessarily their kind of guy. Brown proves the tea party movement can be tapped politically for Republican candidates anywhere in the country if they are basically sound on taxes and small government. That is huge.”

I have to go back to a post I bookmarked for further commentary that plays into it. It’s from Erick Erickson at Red State, a blog that if you aren’t reading, you should be.

In it, Erickson describes the big story that all of the state-run media missed in its zeal to portray the Tea Party activists as extreme ideological zealots hellbent on ideological purity and how Scott Brown didn’t fit their template:

Right now the media is missing a really big story. It does not fit their narrative.

The narrative, of course, is that conservatives want a totalitarian pure party with a purity test for the GOP. You want gay marriage? No way. Pro-choice? No support. For government assisted health care options? We don’t recognize you. At least that is what the media claims.

So the media has and is ignoring the alliance between left and right among the GOP in Massachusetts.

Scott Brown is not a conservative. He makes no pretension of being a conservative. He defends Romneycare, which most conservative have rejected. He is pro-choice. But he is for less government interference in the free market and less spending. Like Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, he is the perfect sort of Republican candidate for New England.

Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund is encouraging its members to support and donate to Scott Brown.. Marco Rubio is supporting Scott Brown. RedState is supporting Scott Brown. We, well . . . I, suspect he’ll give conservatives heart burn as New England Republicans do. But all of us know he is a good, pragmatic fit for Massachusetts. He’ll vote against Obamacare and he’d vote against a second stimulus. Conservatives do know, despite media and liberal Republican (called “moderate” by the media) claims to the contrary, that the GOP needs 51 seats in the Senate to have a majority.

Conservative and liberal Republicans are united behind Scott Brown. You’d think a mainstream media that has generated millions of words on television, radio, and print about conservatives demanding a pure party would take notice.

As I wrote earlier, this is the process of reconstructing the Reagan coalition that led to Republican prominence. Over the past 10-12 years, the Republicans lost their way by allowing the Democrats and the state-run media to define who they were, by allowing them to force this idiotic “Big Tent” approach in which all views had to be accommodated or the GOP would be labeled an ideologically rigid party. Ironic, too, since the definition of ideological rigidity is the Democrat Party.

The Big Tent approach has led the GOP into abandoning its core principles in an attempt to be all things to all people and in doing so, alienated the very same Reagan coalition that put it in power.

Right now, it looks like that coalition is being reconstructed, and the message is being sent loud and clear to Washington: to paraphrase President Bush from Ground Zero:

We hear you. All real patriotic Americans hear you. And the people who are trying to destroy our country will hear from all of us in November.

Several libertarian-types I know have unhappily pointed out that Scott Brown in Massachusetts supported then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s state-level socialized medicine scheme when it was passed. “What’s the point?” they say. If Brown supported socialized medicine in Massachusetts, he may well support some type of socialized medicine in the U.S. Senate. Happily, I have the solution to such misgivings. As noted in the Massachusetts race, Coakley is so awful that she must be defeated at any cost, no matter how bad Brown might (or might not!) turn out to be.

Now, here’s what we Real Republicans do: After Brown wins in Massachusetts in a few days (with the votes of both conservative Republicans and Democrats), we watch his voting record. No more talking a BS line to the “rubes back home,” and then voting another way in DC. Those days are gone forever. If Brown turns out to get bad scores with American for Tax Reform, the National Taxpayers Union, the Club for Growth, et al., then conservative Republicans in Massachusetts (and elsewhere) simply move to recruit a Real Republican candidate to run against Brown in the nextprimary, knock him off, and go on to win  the general election with a Real Republican, not a RINO. Simple! And a pattern that can be replicated throughout America as we work to cleanse the Republican Party of the corrupt political class that has decided to live off of it.

However, I don’t think that will be necessary. Politicians are known for changing their stripes. And it doesn’t take a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing in America today. That means that Brown may well turn out to be a great vote in the Senate, and be very supportive of real conservative principles. For a long time, people have thought the way to get elected was to act like a liberal statist, and to a certain degree that was true, especially as long as the mainstream media maintained a lock on information-dissemination. However, now that the results of liberal statist policies are “coming home to roost” (to quote Obama’s Reverend of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright), we are witnessing a massive swing of the electorate in the conservative/libertarian direction. That is, today the way to get elected is not to “reach across the aisle” or “compromise” in order to ape the Democrats. The way to get elected is by being a strong, consistent, principled conservative.

As this plays out—as the Republican party becomes more and more a real alternative to the more-openly-socialist Democratic Party, and as it becomes purged of the corruption of the political class (aka RINO’s)—the GOP will become an ever-greater magnet for people of all walks of life, including working class Democrats. Why? Because conservative policy prescriptions “work.” They are the way back to a better, healthier, wealthier economy, country, and people. We just need to bypass the government toadies in the mainstream media. But that’s become easy. That’s why God gave us the Internet, talk radio, and Fox News Channel.