Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh continue to battle for the soul of the conservative movement just like Robert Welch and William Buckley did back in the 1960s, even though they do share a mutual respect for one another.
I bring up comparisons all the time between the Birchers and the NRO Conservatives because they are very similar to today. I think if there had been as strong a media presence back then as there is now for right wing propaganda, the John Birch Society might have won that fight, even though Barry Goldwater thought Welsh a lunatic. What fuels many in the Tea Party uprising is a Producerist/Bircher/Patriot/Racist/Nativist underbelly that now has a FOX News to transmit their fringe ideas for them. Then there are ordinary movement conservatives -- well, they don't mind at this time because they want to regain power any way they can.
The Tea Party movement lacks sophistication and is, unlike the Reagan Revolution, not a "well-organized, coherent, ideologically motivated and conservative revolution." That's what GOP strategist Karl Rove told Germany's Der Spiegel in a recent interview.
"It's a little bit different because the Reagan Revolution was driven a lot by the persona of one man, Ronald Reagan, who had an optimistic and sunny view of what the nation could be," Rove said, describing birth of the modern conservative movement experienced in the 1980s. "It was also a well-organized, coherent, ideologically motivated and conservative revolution.
Rove continued, noting an incongruity between that political movement and the current Tea Party. "If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated," Rove told Der Spiegel.
Here's Limbaugh reacting to Karl Rove's criticism of the Tea Partiers.
In another sign of a rift between the Limbaugh-Palin grassroots and the GOP Establishment, Rush Limbaugh goes after Karl Rove -- who just a few months back, guest-hosted his show.
Limbaugh today:
Now, meanwhile, there are Republican political operatives insulting Tea Party members of not being sophisticated, not having read Friedrich Von Hayek. Wonderful, great people, but just not sophisticated. Karl Rove said this, but he's not alone. I got a note today from a friend, "Why would Karl be saying this, Rush? You know Karl. Why would he be saying this? Why doesn't Karl learn to keep his mouth shut?"
I said, "Karl means to say this. Mike Murphy, all these guys, they think this." It's not easy for me say here, folks, it really isn't. But it's what ought to be a euphoric period still indicates that on the Republican side there are divisions and jealousies and egos and competition.
And the simplest explanation is that the Tea Party cannot be claimed as credit by anybody. Nobody can say, "I am the Tea Party." Nobody can say, "I started the Tea Party." Nobody can say, "I saw the Tea Party coming, and I steered it." Nobody who makes a living generating political support, generating political donations, nobody in that business can point to the Tea Party and say, "I did it." So it's a threat.
The Tea Party has been claimed by the Bircher-loving Koch Brothers and other wealthy conservative figures like Dick Armey who have co-opted the movement. Fox News' incessant promotion helped build it into an opposing force against President Obama and liberals in general. Glenn Beck used his platform at Fox to broadcast insane conspiracy ideas that all but spell out his desire to wipe progressives off the face of the planet -- after all, what do you otherwise do with the "cancer that's destroying America"?.
