You can tell a lot about how the news media feel about conservatives by watching how they talk about Rush Limbaugh. They want his influence curbed. They pine for the day his career hits the skids. They're constantly looking for a moment where they can declare that conservatives no longer have -- that Rush Limbaugh no longer has -- the Grand Old Party in a menacing trance. They don't want Republican candidates seeking a Limbaugh endorsement.

They think they found that moment on Jan. 19.

When McCain won the South Carolina primary, The Washington Post sharply declared the next day that he had "defused conservative attacks, from Rush Limbaugh to Tom DeLay." CNN's Carol Costello sounded boastful a few days later: "Conservative radio talkers bragged their influence helped put George W. Bush in office. How times have changed. Now leading many Republican polls -- John McCain. And those same talkers aren't bragging anymore. Voters have betrayed them, despite what's playing on Rush Limbaugh's show."

No one chortled more loudly than that expert on conservatism, former NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw. He proclaimed on "Meet the Press" that the voters of America are now rejecting "dogma" and that they are a "nomadic herd" hungering for "solutions" rather than ideology.

Translation? The Reagan ideology is finished (thank God); the conservative movement is gone (good riddance); and happy days are here again, with Republicans embracing Democratic policy prescriptions instead (as they should).

Brokaw doesn't want Republicans to have any troublesome litmus tests to decide which candidate is most conservative, not only because moderates like McCain will fail the test but because it leads Republicans to pitch campaign promises at that conservative base that the media would like to believe is irrelevant.

"I was listening to Rush Limbaugh for an hour yesterday, who is determined to not have this campaign, as he put it, 'redefine' conservatism," proclaimed Brokaw. "And one of the dittoheads, one of his followers, called and said, 'Well, help me out here. What do I think now about Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich?' And it's one of the few times I've ever heard Rush Limbaugh kind of temporarily at a loss for words. And he ended up saying that they're not true conservatives. And that debate is not going to help the Republican Party, if they get bogged down in that." Continued...