A while back, I urged Rush Limbaugh to use his incredible influence on the right and call out Donald Trump for his irresponsible comments. In the intervening weeks, Trump’s rhetoric only intensified. Yet, even after Thursday night’s GOP debate — when it became painfully obvious that Donald Trump is a liberal — Limbaugh continued to prop up The Donald. I don’t want to be accused of misrepresenting what he said, so I’ll simply provide the headline and link from his own website: “The Orders to Take Out Trump Must Have Gone to Fox, Not the Other Candidates.”
Even if Mr. Limbaugh buys this conspiracy theory that Fox News is somehow in cahoots with the Republican “establishment” to go after Trump (frankly, they were pretty hard on all the candidates), and even if Mr. Limbaugh doesn’t care about Trump’s unchivalrous attacks on Megyn Kelly, why is he so unconcerned about Trump’s obvious liberalism? As I wrote in the Telegraph today:
During the debate, it became painfully clear that Mr Trump was unwilling to pledge his support the Republican nominee (should it be someone other than him), supported single-payer health care (which is viewed by American conservatives as tantamount to socialised medicine), and had donated money to the hated Hillary Clinton — so she would attend his wedding.
Meanwhile, RedState’s Erick Erickson deserves a lot of credit for standing up to Trump and disinviting him from the RedState Gathering this weekend. When Charles Krauthammer or George Will or Jonah Goldberg (or even yours truly) criticize Trump, it doesn’t mean much, since our audience aren’t likely to be Trump backers. But Erickson represents what is very likely the most popular grassroots/tea party blog on the right. I think he deserves a lot of credit for providing some adult leadership at this moment. I just wish some other conservative “leaders” were willing to do the same.
Earlier today, I was on MSNBC giving Erickson some kudos, and talking about this. You can watch below: