Sunday, March 8, 2009

GOP at the Crossroads

Here is an excellent article in Newsweek written by David Frum discussing the internal battles for the future of the GOP and American Conservatism. Are Republicans going to become the party of O'Reily, Hannity, Palin and Limbaugh? Or will they become the party of Frum, Larison, Reihan and Duthat? I sincerely hope it is the latter, or else the GOP is destined to become an ever-shrinking southern theological party.
Preview:
In the days since I stumbled into this controversy, I've received a great deal of e-mail. (Most of it on days when Levin or Hannity or Hugh Hewitt or Limbaugh himself has had something especially disobliging to say about me.) Most of these e-mails say some version of the same thing: if you don't agree with Rush, quit calling yourself a conservative and get out of the Republican Party. There's the perfect culmination of the outlook Rush Limbaugh has taught his fans and followers: we want to transform the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan into a party of unanimous dittoheads—and we don't care how much the party has to shrink to do it. That's not the language of politics. It's the language of a cult.

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