Fraternal debates are one thing, but attempts to claw out the eyes of someone on your own team is suicidal. The people who love conservatives for going after Limbaugh don't have conservative ends in mind--they're just spoiling for an opportunity to bury conservative thinking as a viable political force. Goldberg warns conservatives like David Frum who've decided that now is the time to foam at the mouth and bite Rush in the back: "If you squint real hard and look over your shoulder, you can see the shark swirling in the water behind you." Make no mistake, there's more than one shark in that wake.
Recall that the denoument of Cats has the smallest, quietest, humblest, most compliant and cutest little kitten was the lone survivor of the dispute over which kitty is the prettiest--and the colossal carnage (which Gag mercifully leaves to the imagination) that follows shortly thereafter. The point I'm making is that conservatives don't need a small, quiet, humble, compliant, cute conservative to be the winner of their fraternal debates, because they're not angling to be anybody's household pet. We need all of the conservatives we can get, and we need them to argue (yes, even among themselves) both principle and policy for the good of America as a whole.
So take a deep breath and think constructively, people.
UPDATE:
Rush has spent part of the second hour of his show already quoting from the Federalist Papers on the subject of checks and balances. His argument (from Federalist 63, concerning the Senate) is that there are sometimes demagogues or popular political figures who are able to stir popular passion toward bad policy ends. It's the Senate's job (in part) to be skeptical and indeed to stop such a politician, indeed, to make sure he fails. Here's one portion that he quoted (find the rest of the text here):
As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next. [emphasis added]
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