Posted by
AJH on Tuesday, March 03, 2009 7:08:12 PM
Mark Steyn, my favorite Canadian, has written about the Rush dustup at National Review Online's "The Corner" (“Rush to Judgment”).
I was ... disturbed by Michael Steele's wretched performance. His initial reaction — that Rush's show is "incendiary" and "ugly" — revealed:
a) that he never listens to it;
b) that he takes his cues from the mainstream media, for whom Rush is invariably "angry". They don't listen either. Rush is a lot of things, but "angry" isn't one of them. If you catch him for 20 minutes, you know he's full of fun, laughing it up, having a grand old time. There are a lot of angry talkshow hosts out there bellowing at the world for three hours a day, but Rush isn't one of them.
This first reaction is disturbing for two reasons: first, given the size of Rush's audience, it's something a RNC chairman should not be so obviously foreign to; second, it's not encouraging when the de facto face of the party accepts so unthinkingly the liberal/media framing of the issue.
Then we come to Mr. Steele's second response - his reaction to the reaction to his original reaction: By apologizing for his first remarks, he opened the door for his DNC opposite number to make sport of the way he was kowtowing to the "ugly" Limbaugh.
In two brief soundbites, Mr. Steele has managed to suggest to his own party base that he has a lazy disposition that reflexively shares the liberal biases, and to allow the wider world to portray him as a craven squish. This is not encouraging. At the very minimum, he does not appear ready for primetime.
AJH