Crumbling

Glenn Beck has had to lay off 30 percent of his staff at the Blaze, and cut back shows on his radio network.
Lloyd Grove has this report at The Daily Beast.

Principles over party

Hadas Gold reports at Politico,

Daily Caller editor-in-chief and Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson is not happy with how Glenn Beck acted at the Facebook meeting for conservatives this week.

In an interview, Carlson blasted the radio and television host, saying he was sucking up to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"I went to that meeting expecting Beck to cry, rend his garments while quoting James Madison, but that's not at all what happened. He began the most extended assiduous suck-up I think I've ever seen a grown man commit. He acted like he was auditioning to be Mark Zuckerberg's manservant — it was awe-inspiring,' Carlson said. "I don't know what his agenda is; it's either he's looking to put his tanking Web properties up for sale or he just can't help himself. There's a billionaire there, so he sniffs the throne."

In April, Beck's company The Blaze laid off about 40 employees and announced that it was relocating its operations almost entirely to Texas, where it is headquartered. Matt Frucci, whose hiring to run The Blaze's television operation in New York was announced the same week of the layoffs, quietly departed the company about a week later. In an unsigned post, The Blaze announced a reorganization and said that the changes were made because the company had "grown into a company [Beck] no longer believed in" and urging people to "stay tuned" for the company's next chapter.
In a post after the meeting, Beck offered up high praise for Zuckerberg and his team, saying he "was convinced that Facebook is behaving appropriately and trying to do the right thing. They were humble, open, and listened intently to everyone in the room."

But Beck also hit on some of his fellow attendees for asking for what he called "affirmative action for conservatives."

"When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges. I sat there, looking around the room at 'our side' wondering, 'Who are we?' Who am I?'" Beck wrote. "What happened to us? When did we become them? When did we become the people who demand the Oscars add black actors based on race?"
Carlson said he was one person at the meeting who brought up increasing diversity at the company, and that Beck's description was a "total mischaracterization" of what he was trying to say.

"My point was a simple one, which is diversity is deeper than ethnicity," Carlson said. "You can look different but have the same values. That's not diversity; it's conformity. … You want people with different life experiences as a backstop against bad decision."

Carlson said he "despises" affirmative action but was "making a pretty conventional point."
"It's hardly a deep insight. [Beck] turns around and says 'You're acting like Jesse Jackson trying to shake down Facebook or demand quotas.' Which of course is the opposite of what I'm in favor of,' Carlson said.
A spokesperson for Beck's company The Blaze did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UPDATE 7:56p.m.:
In a statement Beck responded to Carlson:
"I have no beef with Tucker or any other progressive Republican, I just disagree with shakedowns of private or publicly traded companies. It is a proven fact - and Small government Conservatives have made the case - that affirmative action, quotas and sensitivity training do not work. The movement on the right is split, just as it is on the left. The left is now choosing between progressives and Marxists while the right must choose between progressives and constitutionalists. There are those who believe winning at all costs is the goal. While I understand the frustration, a Conservative by definition conserves. I don't believe we wish to conserve winning or affirmative action --- I wish to conserve principles over party."

#Always Constitution

I heard a little bit of Glenn Beck's radio show tonight. Glenn was magnificent. He does not identify himself as #Never Trump. He identifies as #Always Constitution!

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg writes at National Review,

Indeed, this is what unites Clintonism, Sandersism, and Trumpism: the idea that the government in Washington is too weak. Get the right person in the White House and they’ll fix all our problems by bringing the malefactors to heel. They also all believe, as Trump says about health care, that the federal government has to “take care of everybody.”

All of these ideas and impulses have popular support. Millennials, recent polls show, are remarkably cool to capitalism and dismayingly receptive to socialism. The demographic base of the GOP — older white voters — agrees with Trump that entitlements should be left alone.

...Although they have different goals, leading Republicans and Democrats alike want to go back to the way things were — and they think they can take us there from Washington. Trump says he’ll cut deals in the Oval Office that will make America great again; Clinton promises “universal” everything (education, retirement, health care) to restore the American Dream.

What would be so terrible about letting diverse communities decide how they want to live and spend their tax dollars? The culture wars would still rage, but at least the winners would have to look the losers in the eye. As it stands now, the federal government, mostly through unelected judges and bureaucrats, thinks it can best determine how more than 300 million people should live. The cure for powerlessness is power, not ceding even more of it to Washington. This is the only way to cut the Gordian knot choking our politics, and the best path forward for opponents of statism — in all parties.

Read more here.

Politically correct madness

Jonathan posts on Glenn Beck's Facebook page,

With the New York primary firmly in the rear view, Sen. Ted Cruz joined The Glenn Beck Program on Thursday to talk about the state of election going forward, and the “controversy” over North Carolina’s new law requiring men and women to use their respective restrooms as determined by their natural body parts.

For years, Glenn has warned a time would come when we wouldn’t recognize our country. That time is clearly upon us, and Ted Cruz wasn’t arguing. “That’s crazy. It’s just . . . that’s not a reasonable position. It is simply crazy. And the idea that grown men would be allowed alone in a bathroom with girls . . . you don’t need to be a behavioral psychologist to realize bad things can happen. And any prudent person wouldn’t allow that. And it is only the lunacy of political correctness,” Cruz said.

This madness has also made its way into the sports world, where free speech is being squelched and punished. “ESPN fired Curt Schilling for making the rather obvious point that we shouldn’t allow grown adult men strangers alone in a bathroom with little girls. That’s a point anyone who is rational should understand,” Cruz said in disbelief.

Glenn called out the hypocrisy of the situation, using a liberal argument to drive the point home. “We always hear from the left on gun control, ‘If it will just save one person, then we should do it.’ If this would just save one little girl from being molested by a heterosexual pervert, we should do it,” Glenn said.

In a rapid-fire style interview, Glenn turned the conversation to the economy, asking how Cruz plans to bring business back to America. “I’m not going to punish companies and force them to come back, groveling on their knees through force of government power. What we’re going to do is we’re going to pull back the regulations that are killing small businesses,” Cruz said. “And in four years, Glenn, I promise you this: Other countries are going to be talking about corporate inversion and complaining, ‘Why are our companies fleeing our nations and going to America?'”

Listen to the segment here.

Principles matter

Tonight on his radio program Glenn Beck contrasted Ted Cruz and Donald Trump based on their principles. Cruz is indeed very fortunate to have a man like Beck in his corner.

Living and voting his principles

Glenn Beck is joining Senator Ted Cruz tonight in Nevada, where Republicans will vote Tuesday. Why? Breitbart News reports,

This week Beck also expressed his belief that God allowed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to die in order to “wake America up to how close we are to the loss of our freedom” and to the necessity of electing Cruz to name Scalia’s replacement.

Beck also stated that “if the country is lost, it will be lost because of the Christians” who did not support Cruz.

“There will be no one else to blame,” he added. “You can’t blame the progressives. You can’t blame the left. You can’t blame Hillary Clinton. You can’t blame anyone else but the Christians who are not living and voting their principles.”

Read more here.

Glenn Beck's endorsement of Ted Cruz

Tonight Glenn Beck explained why for the first time in a primary season he decided to endorse a candidate this year. It is all about credibility. Glenn says that for the first part of his life he had no credibility, as he depended on drugs and alcohol. When he gave up that dependence, he realized that personal credibility was the most important thing he could achieve.

It would be easy for him not to stick his neck out. That's what others are doing. You can tell by listening to Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh that they stand for the same principles as Glenn Beck and Ted Cruz, but they stop short of endorsing Cruz, because of fear of losing audience share to listeners who agree with them on the issues, but are backing other candidates.

Read Glenn's endorsement speech he gave yesterday in Iowa here.

Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and the issues

I listen to both Glenn Beck and Mark Levin while preparing supper each weeknight. Greta Van Sustern claims that Mark and Glenn are fighting over Donald Trump. I have not heard any of that. What I have heard both do is discuss issues, and where candidates stand on issues. Because of where Cruz and Trump stand on issues, both Levin and Beck more often stand with Ted Cruz. For example, Ethanol. Cruz goes into Iowa, which is heavily dependent on the Ethanol subsidy, and says he does not believe the government should be subsidizing the industry. Trump goes into Iowa and panders on the issue, saying the subsidy and standards should be increased.

Levin offers Trump helpful advice. Mainly he wants Trump to become informed and stick to discussion of issues. He wants him to use his big lead to avoid stupid personal attacks on people, which is easier said than done, if you're Mark Levin! Levin says Trump's campaign is Nixonian, as in Nixon's campaign approach of the 1960s. Levin would prefer candidates who are more like Reagan than Nixon, even though he acknowledges that Nixon won reelection by a landslide in 1972.

Beck is clearly in the Cruz camp. He is going to be campaigning tomorrow in Iowa with Rafael Cruz, Ted's father, whom Beck greatly admires.

A bookend to the Tea Party era?

Before the Palin endorsement of Trump today, Jim Geraghty wrote his morning newsletter for National Review, speculating on the meaning of such an endorsement:

Support from Palin would give Trump some cover on the inevitable attacks from Cruz that he’s an establishmentarian in populist clothing. That’s Trump’s biggest vulnerability; any cover he can get for it from another populist with a national profile will help him. The larger meaning of Palin endorsing Trump, though, would be the signal it sends that populist conservatism is now less about conservatism than it is about populism. If you have enough of the latter, you don’t need to worry much about the former. It would be a bookend to the tea-party era, which started with Palin and Glenn Beck yelling at Obama about progressive tyranny and would end with Beck yelling at Palin and Trump about progressive tyranny.

If you consider Ted Cruz the conservative ideal or near-ideal in terms of philosophical grounding, legal perspective, and ideological rigor -- and the case for that seems pretty self-evident -- then watching tea-party leaders flock to Trump over him is pretty damn disappointing.

...Trump, the guy who hosted two fundraisers for Charlie Crist in 2009. He donated to Harry Reid over Sharron Angle in 2010.

Trump, the guy who donated $50,000 to make Rahm Emanuel the mayor of Chicago.

In the founding days of the Tea Party, Donald Trump was exactly what they were fighting against . . . and now some of those adherents have embraced him fully.

read more here.

Ben Carson

I just heard a wonderful interview conducted by Glenn Beck with Dr. Ben Carson. I am so impressed with Carson. The interview was on Glenn's radio program. Try to find it on the internet.

"No apologies" conservatism

Jim Geraghty writes today in National Review about No Apologies Conservatism.

Appearing with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show, Donald Trump was in the mood to tweak his own persona — to a point. “I think apologizing’s a great thing,” he said. “But you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

It’s funny because it’s true: Trump’s steadfast refusal to apologize for his controversial antics may be the most striking thing about him. A significant portion of the Republican base craves it, and a handful of pro-Trump conservative pundits does, too. None of them looms larger, perhaps, than Ann Coulter.

It makes sense. Trump has given political expression to a model of conservative discourse perfected by Coulter and subsequently emulated by Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and others: 1) Say something controversial or provocative and get a ton of attention in the process. 2) When the media and the Left inevitably demand an apology, adamantly refuse to provide one, driving your critics batty and burnishing your conservative credentials with the base. It’s been Coulter’s modus operandi for her entire, lucrative career, and now Trump has brought it to the campaign trail: A real conservative never says he’s sorry.

...Past history suggests those demanding an apology should not threaten to hold their breath until they get one. After all, not apologizing has served Coulter so well over the years that even the politically ambitious have taken the hint, and to great effect: Trump continues, at least for now, to top the polls with a version of the same shtick. Its originator couldn’t be more pleased.

Read more here.

Stop requiring clerks to put their names on marriage licenses

The biggest story here in the United States has been the jailing of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who does not want her name to be on marriage licenses issued to gay couples. I heard Glenn Beck discussing it with his partners, Pat and Stu, yesterday. They were making a lot of really good points, including questioning why the government has any business being in the marriage business in the first place.

Glenn was explaining the concept of different levels of laws that govern us. He said the highest law is God's law, which atheists might prefer to call Nature's law. He also talked about our inalienable right to practice our religion.

They brought up another point: If Kim Davis is to be thrown in jail for refusing to sign marriage certificates, why are not the mayors of sanctuary cities thrown in jail for refusing to follow federal laws? Why is Barack Obama not thrown in jail for not following federal immigration laws, or even his own health care law? Glenn, Pat and Stu were not advocating those things, but simply putting the whole Kim Davis thing in perspective.

Although I think Glenn, Pat, and Stu spend too much time being sarcastic, I respect Glenn's activism in support of the founding principles of our country and the moral stands he takes for things like #All Lives Matter.

A solution to the Kentucky problem? Stop requiring clerks to put their names on marriage licenses!

Newsworthy

Rick Moran notes at PJ Media that the media was all over coverage of the 325 #BlackLivesMatter protesters in Minnesota shouting hate against police, while the mainstream media ignored a 20,000 person march in Birmingham, Alabama shouting "Love is the answer:"

You can bet if the Beck marchers had chanted anti-black slogans, the coverage would have been over the top. But I ask you what is more newsworthy: black activists threatening the lives of police — which isn’t reported anyway — or 20,000 Americans who say that love is the answer?

read more here.

Justice and mercy

Megyn Kelly interviews Glenn Beck here about his work to provide for the needs of the unaccompanied minors flooding our southern border. Glenn says he is interested in two things, justice and mercy. He also takes seriously his relationship to God, which is the citizenship that means the most to Glenn Beck.

I listened to Michael Savage Tuesday as I was driving to my dentist in Denver to get crowns and posts on my two front teeth. Savage was savaging Glenn Beck, as only Savage can do. Savage is always jealous of those who stand above him on the ratings chart.

Glenn Beck reveals Coup attempt by establishment Republican progressives

Do you want another centrist Republican progressive? Beck wants Mike Lee, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz to go up against Hillary Clinton.

Will Duck Dynasty go to The Blaze?

I am not a t.v. watcher. I understand that the Duck Dynasty program is incredibly popular. All kinds of Duck Dynasty products are flying off the shelves at the store where I work. I understand that one of the stars of the program has been indefinitely suspended from the A&E cable where the program appears.

Glenn Beck has said that he hopes the other members of the Robertson family will stand up for the family member who was suspended for stating what he believes the Scriptures teach. Beck wants the program on his network, The Blaze.