Glenn Beck: McCain would have been worse for America than Obama

Looking forward to the 1,000-rpm spinning in the comments for this remark, which (a) is buttressed by his admission that he might have voted for Hillary over McCain/Palin and (b) would earn most any other righty torrents of acidic grassroots abuse for daring to utter it. His point, essentially, is that McCain’s no conservative, but then, per Peter Wehner, neither is Glenn Beck:

I say that because he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck’s statements—for example, that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”–are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties). And then there is his sometimes bizarre behavior, from tearing up to screaming at his callers. Beck seems to be a roiling mix of fear, resentment, and anger—the antithesis of Ronald Reagan.

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality.

The clip cuts off before Beck has a chance to explain himself but presumably his argument is that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats these days and therefore we’re better off with a president whom the right doesn’t feel pressure to apologize for and whose tendencies towards big government it can oppose in earnest. If you believe that — that there’s no difference between the parties — then you haven’t been paying attention to Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Honduras, Poland, and Czechoslovakia the Czech Republic lately. Epic fail.

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