My Personal Beef With the GOP
Although I have devoted most of the 1,200 articles I’ve written over the past decade to deriding Democrats, I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that I don’t have my share of problems with Republicans. I’m not merely referring to the lack of guts they so often display in Congress or the way they let things slide from 2001-2007 when they controlled everything in Washington, D.C., and instead of pushing forward a conservative agenda, spent most of their time trying to cozy up to the likes of Ted Kennedy and proving they could waste our tax dollars nearly as well as liberals. Speaking of money, on this one occasion, I won’t spend a lot of time chastising wealthy conservatives for blowing their loot trying to promote some mediocrity in the primaries when they should be buying up newspapers and TV stations. It seems pretty obvious that we can’t rely entirely on blogs and talk radio to get our message out.
Although I have devoted most of the 1,200 articles I’ve written over the past decade to deriding Democrats, I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that I don’t have my share of problems with Republicans.
I’m not merely referring to the lack of guts they so often display in Congress or the way they let things slide from 2001-2007 when they controlled everything in Washington, D.C., and instead of pushing forward a conservative agenda, spent most of their time trying to cozy up to the likes of Ted Kennedy and proving they could waste our tax dollars nearly as well as liberals.
Speaking of money, on this one occasion, I won’t spend a lot of time chastising wealthy conservatives for blowing their loot trying to promote some mediocrity in the primaries when they should be buying up newspapers and TV stations. It seems pretty obvious that we can’t rely entirely on blogs and talk radio to get our message out.
Instead, I will take this opportunity to complain about my lot as a conservative writer.
To begin with, I have never been able to get any of my articles published or even re-printed in such places as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the NY Post, the Weekly Standard, the National Review or Townhall magazine. What’s more, Townhall has consistently refused to review any of my half dozen books. Adding insult to insult, the Heritage Foundation has never invited me to use its bully pulpit.
As for my books, I have never been able to persuade Regnery or any of the handful of conservative houses to publish even one of them. I did finally receive a commendation from an editor, but the message was that I wasn’t well-known enough for them to consider. In other words, because I neither hosted my own TV or radio show, nor appeared regularly on other people’s, they would have to expend some effort to publicize anything I wrote, so why bother?
To be fair, the brilliant and noble Bernard Goldberg has written the forewords to a couple of my books, but the publishers would only have been interested if he’d written the books and I’d written the forewords.
On the other hand, because the major houses don’t publish my books, Fox has never invited me to be a guest. It’s my own hellish version of Catch 22.
But inasmuch as Fox has left-wingers like Juan Williams, Geraldo Rivera, Bob Beckel, Leslie Marshall, Alan Colmes and, now, Dennis Kucinich, cluttering up their shows, they don’t really have much room left for another conservative.
As some of you know, I devoted months last year to trying to connect with the Romney campaign. I even resorted to sending one of my books to one of Romney’s sons, Matt, in my attempt to be considered for his writing staff. I never heard back from anyone. Now I’m not saying I could have actually helped Romney get elected, but I guarantee he wouldn’t have finished any worse than second.
Another area of frustration is that even though I have interviewed such conservative radio talk show hosts as Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Joyce Kaufman and Michael Medved, for my books, only Medved has ever invited me on his show.
What’s worse, from my point of view, is that when I have approached the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Steve Hayes, Jim DeMint, Bill Kristol, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Dennis Miller, the Koch brothers, Jan Brewer, Glenn Beck, Mark Steyn, Michelle Malkin, Donald Trump, Ed Feulner, Nikki Haley, Allen West, Reince Priebus, Sarah Palin, and more senators and House members than I have room to mention, requesting an interview, I’ve been royally snubbed. Not even the courtesy of a “thanks for thinking of me” response. You’d have thought I was asking to borrow money.
And although over the years, I have managed to snag the likes of Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton and Gerald Ford, I have never received a single bit of feedback from any GOP luminary. On the other hand, I have received brickbats in the form of angry emails from the staffs of Charles Rangel, the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, and personally from Henry Waxman. So I know there are folks in Washington, D.C., who seem to be hanging on my every word. They just don’t happen to be Republicans.
I don’t expect this will change anything, but I appreciate your letting me vent. I feel a lot better.
Next time, I promise to get back to attacking Obama and his enablers. At least I know they’re paying attention. And, yes, I do expect to be audited by the IRS.
