Adam and Eve and Ronald Reagan

File under: "The lies Conservatives tell themselves are the most terrible lies of all."

And while it might have been a little soon to bang this gong again, so much drivel compacted into such a small space is such a miracle of pure, mendacious efficiency that I just couldn’t help myself. So watch as Andy Sullivan tells three lightening fast lies in a row and once again gets everything wrong:

Who Will "Sister Souljah" Them?

It's time to reclaim conservatism from Coulter and O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Hannity.

…

Take yours truly. I'm not a Democrat and if pushed, I'd have to say right now I'm a libertarian independent. I'm uneasy about Obama's long-term debt, to say the least, but I'm intelligent enough to know it's not Obama's as such, but mainly Bush's, and I'm also cognizant that the time to cut back may not be in the middle (or beginning) of a brutal depression. On most issues, I side with what used to be the center-right, but the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders - from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

I'm waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism...

If I worked at it for a week I doubt I could tinker together anything that would spotlight the Core Lie at the heart of Sullivan’s brand of Conservatism half as economically as his prefacing this weak, dishonest claptrap with “It's time to reclaim conservatism…” The very idea that conservatism is a thing to be reclaimed (Verb: to claim or demand the return or restoration of, as a right, possession, etc.; to claim again. Synonyms: regain, restore.) as if it were some fraternity mascot stolen by the naughty, pilfering creeps from Limbaugh House shows a level of pathological self-deception that would have to be spliced directly into Sullivan’s genetic code to run any deeper.

That’s the first lie, which slides neatly into the second lie; that the thugs who somehow snuck into Daddy Reagan’s den and stole his favorite pipe are interloping little arrivistes.

They're not.

Hannity and O'Reilly are multi-million dollar media products created by Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the Fox Conservative News Imperium for the purpose of advancing their radical, Conservative ideology.

Ann Coulter didn’t spring full-bore-psycho from Karl Rove’s head either. She shambled out of that same, diseased whelping box of Conservative fin de siecle anti-Clinton bloodlust that gave the entire movement its energy and purpose after it was briefly left enemyless following the sudden and inconvenient collapse of the Soviet Union:

...
Coulter debuted as a public figure shortly before becoming an unpaid legal advisor for the attorneys representing Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. Coulter's friend George Conway had been asked to assist Jones' attorneys, and shortly afterward Coulter, who wrote a column about the Paula Jones case for Human Events, was also asked to help; she began writing legal briefs for the case.

Coulter sank her fangs into the spotlight and never let go, managing to get rich and stay famous because Conservative print and broadcast media barons have lavishly underwritten her down-spiraling, say-anything-do-anything-fuck-everything strategy for perpetually rebooting her shelf-life as Movement spokes-harridan.

And Limbaugh? Limbaugh is the purest child of Conservatism of them all. A ferocious bigot, who was sired by Ronald Reagan (who killed the Fairness Doctrine and made media-monsters like Limbaugh possible) and suckled his wingnut nutrients directly from the vinegary spleen of Newt Gingrich's politics.

Coulter and O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Hannity and the rest of their ilk positively own the Conservative movement lock, stock and teabag. They have the collective electoral maraschinos of every first-, second- and third-tier Republican politician in a vice and everyone damned well knows it.

Which leads us to the third lie; that Bill Clinton should be an example to all you young 'uns out there because of how bravely took on “extremists in his own ranks.” That he “reject[ed] them, excoriate[d] them” and “remind[ed] people that they do not have a monopoly on [Liberalism]" and, in doing so, courted some electoral disaster equivalent to that which will befall the first Republican to tell the wingnut Axis of Asshats to fuck off.

Bullshit.

Clinton certainly broke a lot of hearts by selling out a lot of cherished Liberal values to suck up to the Right, but the only time he ever excoriated anyone was when he used his microphone time in front of the Rainbow Coalition to beat up on a woman named Sister Soulja who Sullivan uses in the title of his post.

At the time, Sister Soulja was a hip-hop MC and activist that virtually no one in the mainstream beyond the Hudson River had ever taken note of. She never commanded millions (Or thousands. Or even hundreds.) of Liberal voters. She never received six-figure checks from billionaire Liberal media moguls to help ram her DNC-sculpted message through every AM radio speaker and into every bookstore premium rack.

Clinton didn’t take her on: he punked her for votes. He punked her because she was a young black minor celebrity -- roughly comparable in power and reach to a B-list blogger today -- who made an angry and offensive comment after the 1992 L.A. riots, and it was safe to make her into a straw-man and kick her down the stairs.

He punked her precisely because, in the Thunder Dome of Big Time politics, she was a relative nobody outsider who lived on the fringe.

Limbaugh is not a nobody.

He is a Somebody.

Limbaugh is not on the outside looking in.

He is Mr. Inside and has the 1994 Congressional "Majority Maker" plaque on his wall to prove it.

"Rush is as responsible for what happened here as much as anyone," said Vin Weber, a former Representative from Minnesota, now of Empower America. Citing a poll taken after the election by Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, Mr. Weber said that people who listened to 10 hours or more a week of talk radio voted Republican by a 3-to-1 margin. "Those are the people who elected the new Congress," he said.

Limbaugh does not live on the fringe.

He lives in a multi-million-dollar mansion, commands a $400 million salary and flies a $54 million Gulfstream jet, all of which he can afford because he owns clear title on the beating heart of Conservatism.

And always has.