Today in blogosphere slapfights:

Conservatives, and especially conservative bloggers, continue to purge anyone with a brain not willing to go Full Metal Wingnut with them. John Hawkins at Right Wing News has an extended whine today about his reasons for refusing to let David Frum join the Conservative Blog Hive Network:
Why I Denied David Frum’s Website A Spot In The Blogads Conservative Hive.

Hawkins also takes this opportunity to whine some more for his reasons for purging Charles Johnson from the network:

whom, ironically, I sponsored at Blogads and invited to the Hive, and then later booted from the Hive after his blog went completely off the rails to the Left.

Hawkins is outraged, outraged, that anyone should offer any criticisms of the current state of the GOP or the conservative movement. Indeed, he says as much in his little rant:

the mainstream media loves “conservatives” and “Republicans” who will trash whomever the Left hates most. So, if you’re willing to talk about how Sarah Palin is a hick, Glenn Beck is a crank, Rush Limbaugh is bad for the country, and the Tea Party is bad for democracy, the mainstream media will reward you — and because conservatives pride themselves on being open minded, they’ll all too often give you a pass for your atrocious behavior — especially since the MSM doesn’t insist you play their game all the time.

First: Palin IS a hick, Beck IS a crank, Rush IS bad for the country, and the Tea Party IS bad, period. Pointing this out isn’t ‘trashing who the Left hates most’. It’s being a member of the reality-based community. Once upon a time that phrase was a joke by Stephen Colbert. Now it’s no longer funny: the right (and especially the rightwing blogosphere) appears to have completely removed itself from reality.

And this:

because conservatives pride themselves on being open minded, they’ll all too often give you a pass for your atrocious behavior

is simply laughable. To hawkins, criticising any fellow conservative is ‘atrocious behaviour’. If he’d like to see atrocious behaviour, he ought to take a look at what the conservatives are doing and saying.

The real reason he seems to have blocked Frum, naturally, appears to be simple envy:

Note all the places that Frum said he appears in that AEI related article,

His weekly columns for cnn.com, The Week, and the National Post of Canada; his biweekly offerings for TIME and American Public Media’s “Marketplace”; and his three TV and three radio appearances in a typical week. […] why is David Frum getting a column at CNN? How is it that Time has a guy like this writing for them?

Because he won’t go along with the runaway crazytrain that is now your movement and party, John. Why do you think?

Let’s see who passes Hawkins’ purity test, and who he believes does deserve the “cushy job(s)” as he puts it (apart from himself, that is):

Morrissey & Allah at Hot Air. Ace from Ace of Spades HQ […] Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit does phenomenal work and probably draws and holds 4 readers a day for every one Frum has. How come those guys aren’t writing for CNN? Where’s their column at Time? Where’s their blog on the Washington Post explaining the conservative movement?

Because they’re lunatics, that’s why. Jim Hoft’s ‘phenomenal work’ includes smearing a rival blogger as a child molester. Ace of Spades runs a hate site stuffed with misogyny and homophobia.

And let’s not even talk about HotAir. Search the LGF tags for detailed information on each of these nutjobs.

That’s what Hawkins thinks should be in Time, the WaPo, and on CNN.

Reagan’s 11th commandment was supposed to be a call for party unity. Not a call for leading lemmings over a cliff.

Check the link for much more schadenfreude, as well as a fun exchange of emails.