{"id":1928,"date":"2009-03-03T21:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T21:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/03\/you-want-a-piece-of-me"},"modified":"2009-03-03T21:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T21:58:00","slug":"you-want-a-piece-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1928","title":{"rendered":"You want a piece of me?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been called out, so I&#8217;ll take the bait.<\/p>\n<p>A reader of this blog said he &#8220;gets it,&#8221; and that Rush Limbaugh&#8217;s commentary makes me &#8220;want to puke.&#8221; Well, that&#8217;s a little over the top. Limbaugh doesn&#8217;t make me sick to my stomach. It does, however, sadden me when his fellow Republicans genuflect before a guy who&#8217;s only credential is that he is an entertainer with a bucketload of opinions.<\/p>\n<p>The reader says I&#8217;ve never been &#8220;specific&#8221; about my criticism of Limbaugh. He&#8217;s right. That&#8217;s because Limbaugh doesn&#8217;t articulate policy. He is critical of the &#8220;other side&#8221; on purely partisan grounds. If Democrats are for something, he&#8217;s against it. He calls himself a &#8220;conservative,&#8221; but I don&#8217;t know how he defines his conservatism. Is he a &#8220;social conservative&#8221; in the mold of, say, James Dobson? Is he a &#8220;fiscal conservative&#8221; like Newt Gingrich? Is he a less-government conservative who follows the doctrine of Barry Goldwater?<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s a jokester.<\/p>\n<p>The reader wonders if I am afflicted by &#8220;professional envy.&#8221; Ummm, no. I&#8217;m not glib enough. I&#8217;m glad for his success. Limbaugh has developed a following of Dittoheads &#8212; a term which, if you think about it, is an insult. But those who hang on his every word are happy with the description. More power to &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p>My real concern lies with the dismal state of the conservative movement. William Buckley, an absolute genius, is now gone, but the world has other first-class conservative thinkers. George Will comes to mind. Gingrich has a wealth of ideas &#8212; and he can be a forceful advocate for them. William Kristol is an articulate advocate for the conservative cause. Those are just three. They argue their cause with civility. I don&#8217;t believe thoughtful conservatives wish &#8220;failure&#8221; on the president of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Limbaugh&#8217;s talent? He&#8217;s excellent at finding straw men and then beating the stuffing out of them.<\/p>\n<p>But he&#8217;s now the voice of the conservative movement in this country. Sen. Goldwater &#8212; God bless his soul &#8212; is spinning in his grave.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been called out, so I&#8217;ll take the bait. A reader of this blog said he &#8220;gets it,&#8221; and that Rush Limbaugh&#8217;s commentary makes me &#8220;want to puke.&#8221; Well, that&#8217;s a little over the top. Limbaugh doesn&#8217;t make me sick to my stomach. It does, however, sadden me when his fellow Republicans genuflect before a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1928\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You want a piece of me?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}