After reading a column by Leonard Pitts in today's paper, I emailed him this response.
Your column this morning was ridiculous and offensive. Michael Steele should have apologized to Rush, because his performance on D.L. Hughley's show was pathetic and disgusting. I notice, by the way, you didn't mention Hughley's "Nazi" remark that Steele said nothing about. This is because it goes against your thesis that the GOP is run by "angry white men" in the south. "Culturally intolerant, intellectually incoherent, perpetually outraged and willfully ignorant," is how you described them today. I don't recall any comments like the "Nazi" comment airing on Fox News recently. And yet no Democrats running for president last year would have anything to do with Fox, while the Republicans were happy to meet with CNN. Also, no outrage from these "angry white men" at CNN for airing the "Nazi" comment, nor from you. You are all a bunch of obnoxious hypocrites.
The simple fact is that Rush Limbaugh is more recognizable and popular than Michael Steele right now. Conservatives didn't have a man in the game in last year's election, and now the government is tilting further and further to the left. Limbaugh, in his CPAC speech - which again you don't quote or refer to in any way - said what conservatives have been wanting their leaders to say for years. In fact, we're still waiting. Steele certainly didn't step up to the challenge. I can't think of a single serious point Rush made in his speech that was offensive or "ugly" or "incendiary." Yet, when confronted by Hughley, the leader of the GOP basically laid down and admitted that Rush's speech was disgusting, and that the Republican party, as evidenced by last year's convention, looked like the Nazi party ("what made it look like that" would have been a nice place to start asking questions of Hughley).
You go on to say that "the GOP has reliably been able to woo [social conservatives] by demonizing gays, people of color, Muslims, feminists and anyone else who did not fit their white picket fence fantasies. But...that won't work quite as well in the future." Of course you offer no evidence of any of these offensive assertions, and in any event your idea of "demonizing," I'm certain, means nothing more than "disagreeing with." But liberals love to make emotional arguments with no basis in actual fact and no logical standing, and this is just another example of that. When you cannot argue on the facts, you resort to ad-hominem attacks to put your opponent on defense. It is an intellectually dishonest way to debate and shows nothing more than that you have no more brainpower than a teenager who is good at insulting people.
The idea that the GOP should listen to a left wing loony tune like you, Pitts, about how to repair the party and bring it back to prominence is laughable. In my opinion, that is what has brought them to where we are now. In short, you can't out-liberal the liberals, and yet that is what many elected Republicans have been doing. The liberal media last year rooted for the liberal McCain until he got the nomination, then they kicked him to the curb and rooted for the newer and shinier Barack Obama until he won the presidency. They constantly apply a double-standard in their coverage of liberal and conservative candidates, showing obvious partiality to the former and dislike of the latter. If the media would honestly and fairly portray both sides, left and right, as they deserve to be portrayed, comments like Rush Limbaugh's would be discussed openly rather than shouted down. Those who dared to agree with him would not be demonized in the media, but interviewed and debated with.
Sadly, that kind of balance exists, as far as I can tell, only on Fox. And, no surprise, it's where democratic candidates fear to tread. So we wind up with this political system that even you admit is unbalanced and getting out of control. In short, Mr. Pitts, if you are serious about wanting the political landscape to be more balanced (taking you at your word that you do), then work harder to get liberal candidates to engage in serious interviews and debates with people who disagree (respectfully) with them. That, along with the sending of a strong and consistent conservative message, not the liberalization of the GOP as you advocate, is the key to conservatives winning more elections and balancing out the system.
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