©Jack Cashill
WND.com - May 12, 2011

T

his past Saturday syndicated radio host Neal Boortz presented the Media Research Center's annual Obamagasm award at the MRC's annual awards gala in Washington.

After watching a clip of ABC's Terry Moran gush about how Barack Obama, not unlike George Washington, had to take "a step down into the Oval Office," Boortz let fly.

Boortz zeroed in specifically on Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, "a convicted American domestic terrorist who, by God, wrote that book 'Dreams from My Father.'"

For a second, the Atlanta-based Boortz paused as through waiting for some sign of affirmation from this crowd of Beltway conservatives, many of them prominent.

Save, finally, for some scattered applause from the cheap seats, the affirmation was not forthcoming. "So hold me responsible," Boortz added, conceding the faux pas but not caring he made one.

Had I known, I could have warned Boortz. Since September 2008, when I first introduced the thesis on these pages that Bill Ayers was the primary craftsman of Obama's "Dreams," I have gotten the coldest of cold shoulders from our Beltway brethren.

In March 2009, when Grover Norquist graciously allowed me to present my argument at his famous Wednesday morning meeting, I actually got a few boos from the peanut gallery. Boos? What was that about?

Unlike Monica's dress, my thesis has no embedded DNA. Those who read my book "Deconstructing Obama" can only be 99 percent confident that I am right, and for the timid souls of the Beltway right, 99 percent is not nearly percent enough.

As Boortz learned anew, Beltway conservatives are like no others. It is not so much that they are less conservative than you and I – though that seems to come with time in D.C. – but rather that they are less confident in their own conservatism.

For one, they tend to be "professional" conservatives. That is, they actually get paid to shop conservative ideas around – in government, in think tanks and foundations, in the media.

Given their positions, often overpaid, they fear that if they make a mistake, if they say something out of turn, the media lilliputians of the left will descend on them and make their lives miserable.

Misery takes many forms in D.C. A careless conservative could be branded a conspiracy theorist, called a racist, uninvited to Georgetown cocktail parties, exiled to the provinces, handed a pink slip, or, even worse, dropped from the Rolodex of TV talk-show hosts.

If a young Beltway conservative applauds when Neal Boortz says Ayers wrote "Dreams," he has to worry about how that applause will be interpreted by people who control his future. Conservative principles, alas, do not trump human nature.

I expected resistance even before my book was published in February. As I told my publicist, I needed to identify one Beltway champion, someone with confidence and clout enough to inspire our anxious friends to overcome their inhibitions. I am still looking.

Although my book has gotten wonderful reviews from the blogosphere, not a word about its content – good, bad, or unhinged – has appeared in any conservative print journal that I am aware of.

I put a frog in the Beltway Kool-Aid bowl. Although the inhabitants have stopped toasting Obama's literary genius and largely stopped drinking the Kool-Aid, they refuse to acknowledge the frog.

All my champions have come from outside the Beltway, way outside, like Trump Towers. Donald Trump publicly advanced my thesis at least half-a-dozen times.

If you thought that an accusation of fraud against the president by a leading Republican candidate would prompt our commentators to at least comment, you would be wrong.

The Los Angeles-based Andrew Breitbart also defended me by name both on the Bill Maher show and on MSNBC with Martin Bashir.

Given Bashir's eerie Torquemada turn as the official grand inquisitor of race, this interview went wildly viral. Breitbart mentioned me by name three times. Still, no one on the Beltway right asked me about Breitbart's defense, let alone defended Breitbart.

The lack of defense excites the teeny minds of the lilliputian media. Although they know the anxieties of the Beltway right even better than the Beltway right does, they publicly interpret the right's fear of rejection as the right's rejection of a given idea, in this case mine.

So emboldened, the lilliputians then feel confident to attack its defenders like Trump and Breitbart as racist. Who is to say otherwise?

My case is hardly unique. This pattern plays itself out on any number of issues, the presidential eligibility issue most notably.

And then on election days, as they did in 2008, our Beltway brethren look around and blame Sarah Palin, "Internet zanies," the blogosphere, the birthers, the religious right – everyone, that is, but their scaredy-cat selves.

Who is Jack Cashill?

Webmaster's Note:  Jack Cashill's Book-TV presentation of "Deconstructing Obama" can be viewed at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/298382-1