Part 1:

Part 2:

And the highlight of the show… Rush running over Al Gore (and Ed Begley Jr.)… twice…

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.

Feherty, one of the most popular golf analysts for his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, was among five Dallas residents who wrote for “D Magazine” on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas.

“From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though,” Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.

“Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

Feherty, a former Ryder Cup player who grew up in Northern Ireland, has gone to Iraq over Thanksgiving the past two years to visit with U.S. troops, and he created a foundation to help wounded soldiers.

Sure, Mr. Feherty’s joke was in bad taste but it was no worse than comedian Wanda Sykes jokes about September 11th and Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

For the record I’m not excusing David Feherty, it was a bad joke… I’m just curious when Ms. Sykes is going to apologize to Rush Limbaugh?

Forced to the ramparts to defend Rush Limbaugh against the spurious, low-down attacks of the Obamedia-plus-hangers-on, conservatives are letting the real enemy of  conservatism slip away. That enemy would be George W. Bush, whose stealth political legacy is a tectonic lurch Left for what is popularly thought of as “conservatism.” The resulting chaos–crisis, in fact–is exactly what the new collectivist-in-chief has seized on, not to change America’s direction, but to accelerate its Leftward shift. This continuity is what conservatives are failing to appreciate and assess, much to the detriment of their own coherence and political message.

West is entirely right, George W. Bush’s brand of neo-conservatism has done serious, and possibly lasting, damage to the Republican party and to the conservative movement. We can’t simply ignore his legacy or the effect it has had on the Republican Party or the conservative movement. We need to confront it and repudiate the out of control spending and leftward lurch that defined the Bush years.

H/T: Michelle Malkin.

Mindless Republicans are heeding the iron discipline of conservative talk radio hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told reporters after President Barack Obama’s address to the nation on Tuesday.

“I don’t think we found any Republican minds today,” Frank told a reporter minutes after the president had finished his speech. “[T]hey shut their minds down. That they are so afraid of being yelled at by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity that they won’t even clap for him [Obama] when they agree with him.”

Umm, Congressman Frank could it be that they just honestly disagree with his policies???

Lets not forget 57 million Americans voted for the John McCain so I think it’s a fair to say that a sizable percentage of the population disagrees Pres. Obama’s vision.

By the way I seem to recall a large number of Democrats sitting on their hands during Pres. Bush’s State of the Union speeches. Were they afraid of being yelled at by liberal talk radio hosts or did they simply disagree with his ideas?

Because of the high volume of phone calls and correspondence received by my office since the Politico article ran, I wanted to take a moment to speak directly to grassroots conservatives.  Let me assure you, I am one of you.  I believe I was sent to Washington to fight for and defend our traditional values of smaller government, lower taxes, a strong national defense, and the lives of the unborn.  In my six years in Washington, I have led the charge on many of these issues.  In fact, in 2008 The National Journal ranked me the #1 most conservative Member of the House of Representatives.

As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values.  I have actively opposed every bailout, every rebate check, every so called “stimulus.”  And on so many of these things, I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh.  Regardless of what yesterday’s headline may have read, I never told Rush to back off. I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent.  I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican Leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.

Now more than ever, we need to articulate a clear conservative message that distinguishes our values and our approach from those of liberal Democrats who are seeking to move our nation in the wrong direction. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience.  Everyday, millions and millions of Americans—myself included—turn on their radios and televisions to listen to what they have to say, and we are inspired by their words and by their determination.  At the end of the day, every member of the conservative movement, from our political commentators and thinkers to our elected officials, share an important and common purpose in advancing the cause of liberty, reigning in a bloated federal government, and defending our traditional family values.

Heh, thanks for clearing that up Congressman.

H/T: Hot Air.

Responding to President Obama’s recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaugh’s lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is “obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He’s more frightened of me, than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.”

Asked to respond to Gingrey, Limbaugh, in an email to Politico, wrote: “I’m sure he is doing his best but it does not appear to be good enough. He may not have noticed that the number of Republican colleagues he has in the House has dwindled. And they will dwindle more if he and his friends don’t show more leadership and effectiveness in battling the most left-wing agenda in modern history. And they won’t continue to lose because of me, but because of their relationship with the grassroots, which is hurting. Conservatives want leadership from those who claim to represent them. And we’ll know it when we see it.”

Rush nails it… There is serious lack of ideas and leadership coming from those who claim to represent us. We’re ready and willing to fight for them but they’re not fighting for the things that matter to us.

Whatever happened to the party that used to stand for fiscal responsibility, limited government, a strong defense and free markets? Where have all the principled conservative leaders gone?

Where Edwards loses me is here:

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.

The problems faced by the Republican party aren’t the fault of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter or the grass roots of the party. Conservatism is alive and well on main street, where its failed is in Washington… The party’s leadership and of its political consultants have abandoned the principles and ideas that made Ronald Reagan successful and replaced them with a brand of populist, politically expedient “republicanism” that has more in common with the Democratic party than it does with conservatism.

If  republicans are going to have any chance in 2012 or in the 2010 mid-terms the party leadership has rediscover core its core conservative principles and begin crafting policy ideas rooted in those principles.

H/T:  Hot Air.

Other McCain has a slightly different take.