A Time for Healing

Both Michael Medved and Rush Limbaugh have taken on the thorny issue of what Republicans should do in the wake of their recent electoral loss. And they both agree that attacking Obama excessively is a mistake. Limbaugh is the more pragmatic of the two, pointing out that attacking Obama just didn't work.

He's got everybody in the country enough behind him for all of the mythological reasons, for all of the public image reasons, the historical reasons and right now people don't want to hear anything bad about Barack Obama. They just don't want to hear it and if they do they're not going to believe it and they're going to resent anybody who runs around talking about Obama. He's going to have to do something first that illustrates that the criticism that we have mounted up 'til now is accurate. You know, we talk about Reagan-ism. We talk about social-ism, collective-ism, commun-ism. Obama-ism is the way to go after this.

. . . I think for however long is necessary 'til the bloom goes off the Obama rose -- 'cause it at some point is going to and this whole image thing will give way at some point to political reality, and until that happens -- personal criticism, or not even personal, but attacking Obama's ideas by attacking him is not going to fly.

I've bolded the key words; Limbaugh encourages laying off the personal attacks until such time as people are a little less enamored of Obama, then back to the personal attacks.

Medved largely agrees with Limbaugh, but, in his latest article, shows a bit more philosophical insight.

The angry negativity also helps the GOP avoid the painful soul-searching and re-tooling of the conservative message that faces any viable party after a bitter, sweeping defeat—and that's another reason to postpone the Obama attacks. Focusing on what's wrong with the Democrats allows us to avoid facing what's wrong with us, and figuring out why the public rejected our message in both 2006 and 2008. Trashing our opponents helps us to dodge the blame for public disillusionment with the Republican Party itself– blame that extends well beyond McCain (or Palin) and should rightly include some of the same commentators most eager to return to the partisan fray.

I wonder what commentators Medved is talking about who are eager to return to the partisan fray?