Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Patterico has a poll of sorts up, asking people to answer this question in the comments to his post (yes, with bullets AND numbers!):

However, when [Rush Limbaugh] says “I want Obama to fail,” what did he mean? His line could have meant one of two things:

• 1. Rush opposes President Obama’s policies, and feels that they are likely to lead to more suffering. He hopes Obama’s policies are never enacted to begin with. However, if they are enacted, as seems likely, he wants to see them succeed. He wants the economy to do well. He doesn’t want Americans out of work.

• 2. Rush opposes President Obama’s policies, and feels that they are likely to lead to more suffering. So, even if the policies do get enacted, Rush still wants them to fail. This is not because Rush wants more suffering for the American people. But he feels that, in the long run, the quick and dramatic failure of the policies might lead to Rush’s own proposed policies being adopted: namely, spending less and employing the free market. In the long run, this would be best for America.

Patterico says #1 is a “no-brainer,” with which I agree, but it’s hard for me to tell if he also means that #2 is a view conservatives should not hold.  If that’s the case, I don’t agree.

Government programs and their bureaucracies become hard and harder to kill the longer they go on.  Swift failure is the only chance of having liberty-killing agencies killed off.  Even temporary success would make killing off horrible programs next to impossible.  And simply putting down a bad program is not enough — it needs a stake driven through its heart, or it comes back.  (See, e.g., mohair subsidies.)

The Left doesn’t really mean what it has been screaming for nearly eight years (and misquoting Ben Franklin in the process): that it is not acceptable to give up liberty for security.  They mean that only when it comes to unimportant types of security, like keeping your kids from being blown up.  But when it comes to really important types of “security,” like satisfying class envy, they throw liberty out the window like old dishwater.  (Well, maybe not like old dishwater, which would have detergents that could harm the environment if thrown out the window.  But you get my drift.)

And remember, the Left says the Right is fixated on money.

UPDATE: Patterico now has a post up at HotAir in which he elaborates on the need for Rush and others to state their positions clearly and, in the process, takes apart David Frum’s longing for lefty love to illustrate that neither Frum nor Rush speaks for him.  Maybe I’m missing something (I only read his post once, and that’s not always enough for me), but Patterico doesn’t seem to come down on which of the two meanings he thinks should be attributed to Rush’s comments, (emphasis  original):

Some say: conservatives can’t worry about how they say things. They know their arguments will be distorted anyway, so they shouldn’t worry about being misinterpreted. I completely disagree with this argument. I say: when you know people will distort your meaning, you have to be extra careful to express yourself clearly.

I agree with this, but only up to a point.  The Left will ALWAYS distort what is said by the Right, not always in what was said or intended, but why it was said. In the mind of the Left, the Right has no good motives.  They are never motivated by what they think is good for the country, good for individuals, or good for society, but by greed, “mean-spiritedness,” (apparently for its own sake or to satisfy greed) and a desire to see people suffer (again, apparently for its own sake or to satisfy greed).  

So, Patterico seems to think that an interpretation of Rush’s comments as #2 is a bad thing because it plays right into the Left’s “evil motive” thesis:

But you can be forceful and clear all at the same time. For example, Rush could have said: “It doesn’t matter what I hope for. I know he’ll fail.” That would have been just as effective and compelling — but possibly less controversial. And while the controversy generated by this uncertainty over Rush’s meaning has been good for his ratings, it’s doubtful that it has been good for conservatives.

I agree with Patterico on the need for clarity, but we need to be clear motives as much as positions. A public perception that Rush meant #2 is bad for conservatives only because it is being dished out without context.  And by context, I don’t meant whatever else Rush may have said on that day, but the animating thought behind the “hope he fails” comment. I mean why Rush and other conservatives want socialism to fail, and that is because it strips away liberty.

To my mind, the person speaking most clearly about this at the moment is Mark Levin.  Rude, bombastic, and angry, yes, but crystal clear on his unwillingness to trade liberty for economic recovery. I don’t think it’s the kind of clarity Patterico wants, but it’s the kind we need.

Unfortunately, Levin’s clarity will likely be for naught.  Because he has a grating style, the Left will be able to attack him without ever actually taking on his ideas.

UPDATE #2: Gabriel Malor at Ace’s:

If the argument is merely about how rude and crude the party should be defending its principles then it’s just a waste of time. We’re always going to have folks who are more apt to foam at the mouth than sit down at a table and work out a winning coalition. Telling them to change their methods just results in another round of argument (as it did with Limbaugh this past week). This is what we see with folks whose livelihoods depend on ratings. Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, I’m looking at you.

Maybe I’m reading Malor wrong, but this strikes me as another plea for acquiescence in the bullshit double standards employed by the media instead of calling bullshit on those standards.  It’s surrender.  ”We’ll never change the media, so let’s play their game.”

Someone’s going to have to explain to me how Michael Moore, Maureen Dowd, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olbermann is any less offensive than Coulter, Limbaugh and Malkin (whom I do find shrill, but maybe that’s mostly because she’s not also funny, like Limbaugh and Coulter are).  The big difference, again, is that the lefties a vilify conservative motives, while righties vilify lefty policies.

This difference needs greater exposure.  Sure, it gets talked about, but mostly in the right-wing echo chamber of talk radio and blogs.  What are we doing to take that criticism mainstream?