Reagan, Buckley and Limbaugh

Jay Nordlinger does a fine job of pointing out the silliness of a recent Newsweek article that claims that Rush Limbaugh is damaging to conservatives and the GOP. (And frankly, you can replace "Limbaugh" with whomever the media believes is the most visible conservative of the day. After Rush passes away, the Left will inevitably find their new demon and say that he isn't as likeble, friendly, generous or comedic as Rush Limbaugh.)

They say, “The party of Buckley and Reagan is now bereft and dominated by the politics of Limbaugh.” Oh, boo hoo. And let me tell you something about Buckley and Reagan — taking the latter first.

The mainstream media, of which Newsweek is a good representative, hated Reagan. Hated him. Never had anything good to say about him, when he was alive and working. In fact, they said many of the same things about Reagan that they now say about Rush: that he was a boob, a conman, a mountebank, a know-nothing, etc.

And then Reagan got old and sick and everybody went “Awww.” I liked it better when they were hating him — it was more honest, in a way.

And I love what Newsweek says about Reagan versus “the politics of Limbaugh.” Rush’s politics are the politics of Reagan, in their essence. And Newsweek has never shown much friendliness toward these politics, to say the least.

Now, Bill Buckley: The Left hated him, too, for the most part. I myself grew up around world-class Buckley-haters. They couldn’t speak his name without spitting. It was not easy to buy a National Review in an Ann Arbor bookstore, let me tell you — I mean, for the grief you got from the cashier. (I wrote a piece about this once.) But, in Bill’s last years, many people found him cuddly. And they now try to use him as a club against us — against NR, the people he entrusted to carry on his work.

And let me say once more what I’ve said before: Bill Buckley loved Rush Limbaugh.