Beck's Changing Rhetoric

Mitt Romney went to the Values Voters Summit and slammed the bailouts this weekend, after offering them support not just at the time, but at the Conservative Political Action Conference back in February.

So what. Mitt Romney flip-flopped on an issue? Call the Guinness people, I think he's actually set the record now.

No, the real interesting trip down memory lane today is that Glenn Beck favored the bailouts a year ago, when TARP was being debated in Congress:

But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.

The “REAL STORY” is the $700 billion that you’re hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it.

Now THAT is an interesting reversal. Before his appearance on Fox News and in everyone's hearts, Beck ran a Morning Zoo-type radio show and had an unremarkable stint on CNN Headline News. He certainly hadn't latched on to any wave of discontent with federal spending or libertarian economic theories. He repeatedly called Ron Paul "a crackpot on so many issues" and prefaced every discussion of him by saying "I don't agree with Ron Paul on everything--not by a long shot." Here's Beck calling Ron Paul supporters terrorists:



"It's really not the way I would go, tying in my movement with a historical terrorist attack, especially in post-9/11 America."

This is the guy who put together a rally on September the 12th.

Beck saw a movement stirring on the furthest reaches of the right and got out in front of it. Before that he was pretty firmly behind his President in bailing out the top banks.

The difference is that now, the political energy on the right is with the teabaggers, and it makes sense to Beck to capitalize on that energy. But he has nothing approaching a coherent worldview. Whatever gets the most eyeballs.

I really hope that libertarians take a look at the guy who has appointed himself the public face of their movement.

...Here's a Paul supporter video that has the very clips of Beck supporting the bailout:



... This is amusing, Beck claimed on his show today that he hated Bush for those bailouts which he initially supported. I think this shows that the truth about his changing stories is coming out and he's trying to pre-empt the criticism.