Populist tsunami: Don't fear the people

Pundette highlights this quote from Peter Wehner:

The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.

Peter Wehner. Does that name ring a bell? If you're a Glenn Beck fan, it certainly should. When a well-connected Bush administration insider like Wehner starts celebrating a populist "wave" that he and his Beltway GOP cronies had nothing to do with, it's time to remember how this all got started, and who made it happen:

The thing about a populist wave is that anybody can ride it, even the snobs who sneer at the people who made the tsunami happen. And I don't mean famous people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I mean Donna Scala of Beaver Falls, Pa., and Kell Gringa of Charlotte, N.C. I mean Rhonda Lee Welsch of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., Jenny Beth Martin of Atlanta, Ga., and Andrea Shea King of Cape Canaveral, Fla.
These are just a few of the Ordinary Americans I’ve met during the course of my travels over the past few months, people whose individual activism helped turn widespread public discontent into an organized movement that even Beltway Establishment elitists like Peter Wehner can no longer ignore. There are hundreds of thousands of you out there, far more numerous -- and ultimately far more important -- than the Washington insiders who look down their well-connected noses at you. . . .

That's posted over at RSMcCain.com, the new WordPress version of the blog that Smitty and I are trying to get ready for launch next month. The current sucky look of the new site is temporary, but the true history of this populist tsunami is something we need to make permanent, so please read the whole thing.

Merry Christmas to everyone, especially the people who hit the tip jar during this holiday season!

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin was stuck in an airport when the Senate finally passed ObamaCare, but appeared last night on Fox News to talk about how this swindle of the American taxpayers is part of the Culture of Corruption:

Michelle has consistently sided with the people against the bipartisan Big Government trend and she gets prominent mention in the "tsunami" post, so once more, please read the whole thing.

Neurasthenic geek decides Glenn Beck is 'harmful to the conservative movement'

Clearly frustrated because Moe Lane is still laughing at that dull-as-dishwater "Path to Republican Renewal" article he co-authored with Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner scapegoats Glenn Beck:

[T]he role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now-and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn't the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism.

I suppose the "face" and "disposition" Wehner wants is somebody more like him. You know, the "Mama Wouldn't Let Me Play Football" type who resents real ability and real success, because he's never had any.

If you want to know what's wrong with the conservative movement, take a look at Peter Wehner's biography:

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Wehner was executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative public-policy organization. Mr. Wehner also served as a special assistant to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and, before that, as a speech writer for then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.

In other words, the David Kuo type. They spend years as second-teamers in the GOP policy hive, writing other people's speeches, going from job to job, hired on the basis of being a Republican with good recommendations. Sooner or later, they become envious of people who are actually out there doing something. It is this envy that informs their elitist disdain of the conservative grassroots and of anyone who is genuinely popular with the grassroots, like Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh.

Lords of all they survey -- so long as what they survey is a Beltway think-tank policy shop -- the ambitious policy geeks look at somebody like Glenn Beck and say, "Hey, why is this bozo on TV? He's never attended any Heritage briefings and I never see him at the Wednesday morning meetings at Grover's!"

The GOP establishment in Washington has a surfeit of such parasitical careerists, who think that the Republican Party is about them, and not about all those millions of grassroots people who are, in fact, the conservative movement.

Wehner's attack on Beck is framed as if the problem is political or ideological, but in fact the problem is Wehner's own envy and ambition, which poisons his soul. And we know where that kind of attitude leads.

"Herewith, a brief primer," indeed!

Update: (Smitty)
SI VIS PACEM: "Glenn Beck and the Frog Pot"