The Bum's Rush

The Constitution as a rule maintains a majestic and annoying distance from policy issues, which is why the exceptions deserve our special attention. Among them stands Article I's prohibition of Bills of Attainder, which among other things deprives the current Congress of the pleasure of sentencing Rush Limbaugh to the scold's bridle and a bland diet for the crime of being a fat, cigar smoking, conservative bastard.

The Democrats' focus on Rush betrays not an excess of confidence, but fear and insecurity. They have alleged that he is both a huge obstacle (literally) to progress, and a bloviating piper to the Jesus freaks, tobacco farmers, airborne wolf-hunters, gun show promoters, ex-homosexuals, know-nothings, Illinois nazis, and the rest of the trailer trash who voted for Sarah Palin.

The first is demonstrably untrue. If a President's power can be measured by the size of his... wallet, Barack Obama proves that black men really are bigger. Congressional Republicans' objections to the spending plans advanced by the President were given a public hearing in the same sense that a condemned man is allowed a few words after finishing his chicken-fried steak and blueberry pie. And if it was inappropriate for Rush to object to the nomination of a Treasury secretary who couldn't find an accountant to properly complete a Form 1040, then one struggles to imagine what could possibly constitute permissible dissent.

And if all Rush Limbaugh really represents is Red, Dead America, then what of it? Surely your teeming hordes of non-denominational twentysomething collegiate postpartisan postdoc seeing-someone-but-not-exclusively, spiritual-but-not-religious, straight-but-not-narrow, likes-children-but-doesn't-want-any social smokers can whip out their iPhones and Twitter their Facebook friends to remind what a BUNCH OF HOSERS all of Rush's fans are on their way home from the Whole Foods on River Street in their ZipCar. Using a hands-free device, of course.

Now there's another element to all this, and that's the would-be Martin Luthers like David Frum who want to recast contemporary Conservatism by making it look less like Rush Limbaugh and more like David Frum. And when I say "look," I mean exactly that. It is impossible for Newsweek or any other media organization to do a story about any right-wing personality without making him look like Darth Vader. Leaving aside that Rush will likely hang a framed copy of the cover up on his trophy wall, it is telling that you can usually guess the partisan affiliation of a cover subject by where they set up the camera and lights.

But the most laughtastic part of it all for me is the packaging of this as "A Conservative's Case Against Limbaugh." If you want to find liberal critiques of liberals, centrifuges and distillation apparatus will likely prove necessary to concentrate such rare and ephemeral essences into a measurable quantity. But if you wish to find conservative critiques of conservatives in the media, you do not need a magnifying glass; a rake will do just fine.

In any case, the positioning of David Frum as the articulator of a conservative critique of Rush is dubious, to use the mildest possible language. While Frum's accomplishments are non-trivial, suggesting that anyone is more in touch with the pulse of American conservatism than Rush is laughable. This is a man who spends 15 hours a week taking calls from listeners, whose election returns are measured daily by Arbitron, and who has done it nearly every working day since some time before I was old enough to drive.