So Rush Limbaugh is a little upset with your favorite correspondent today, because of some remarks I made on the Bill Maher program on Friday. Rush, usually an astute observer, is off-target here: He has simply misunderstood what I said.

What I said was that the Republican party has a problem telling its entertainers from its elected officials and office-seekers. It is one thing to have Rush say something outrageous or cutting, but another thing to have a governor or a would-be senator say the same thing in the same way — or, more accurate, to try to say the same thing in the same way. Rush has a particular rhetorical gift that is seldom found in other talk-radio hosts, much less in office-seekers. That is why I once described him as the “only man in the Republican party who speaks English.” When office-seekers try that, they usually end up embarrassing themselves and, not infrequently, losing their races.

This all took place in the context of a discussion of Mississippi governor Phil Bryant’s boneheaded remarks about working mothers. It was conventional-wisdom stuff — that children do better when the mother is at home rather than working outside it — and, as is very often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong here.

Rush seems to think that I was attributing Governor Bryant’s errors to him. I wasn’t, and in fact would be surprised if Rush had taken that point of view: He is nothing if not consistently pro-entrepreneur, pro-working, and a reliable voice for the self-sufficiency and self-improvement that comes from having a job. Rush is simply arguing with something I did not say. 

I don’t mind that Rush misunderstood my point, which is the sort of thing that happens all the time, but I could do with a good deal fewer butt-hurt lamentations from him and his radio brethren about how National Review “used to be a conservative magazine.” Given that Rush has filled up many minutes of his precious airtime reading my work to his audience, it is strange that he would think of National Review, or me, as something other than conservative. 

The Republican party is plagued by leaders who really want to be Fox News personalities and talk-radio hosts rather than politicians. Those professions have very different skill sets and very different success metrics. They simply are not the same thing. There’s a reason Bill Buckley never expected to win his mayoral race. Rush of all people should understand that. If you are good at what Rush does, you end up becoming Rush; if you’re not very good at it, you end up becoming Christine O’Donnell. Q: Who thinks the Republican party or the conservative movement needs another Christine O’Donnell? 

If Rush has a signature weakness, it is thinking that a conversation that is about something else is a conversation about him.  It is a common error. My advice to Rush is to take a minute, have a cigar, and read my new book on the transformative and revolutionary powers of capitalism, which I suspect he will find useful, as he so often has in the past, back when National Review used to be conservative.