Rush Limbaugh’s remarks at the MRC dinner were important. They were important because there are caricatures out there of this man and what he does and anyone who listens to him knows that’s not him. He’s not easily caricatured – accurately anyway. He’s got a clear principled view of the world out there and he’s not timid in taking those principles and applying them day after day as he analyzes what’s going on and what’s being said and how it’s all wrong – or all right (sometimes, sometimes it is).

I know I’ll hear from many who think very differently, but I admire the guy — always have. Let’s face it — Rush is a rich guy. He could have given up doing the hard work and research and hitting the heavy topics a long time ago. But he doesn’t coast through that show. I’ve heard him give some of the clearest, most moving, adamant monologues – which inevitably become effective dialogues when the calls start rolling in – on life issues. He doesn’t have to do that. In the case of cloning this past election cycle , for instance, he took a lot of hell for it. But he does what he does on that radio show of his and it’s important that he does.

About WFB, Rush said, “If Bill Buckley hadn’t done what he did, none of the rest of this would have happened.”

Well, no NR, for sure. No MRC. No Rush on the air. No NRO blogging about it!

Rush humbly acknowledged everyone else: “I owe my success to a lot of people who are a lot smarter than me.” People like WFB who “provided my education.”

And then he basically ended the night talking about being at Walter Reed recently and the “different breed of people” he met there. He was embarrassed, he said, to be in their presence – amputees, double amputees … — “I haven’t done anything like that [like these injured volunteers] in my life.”

In his talking about the war heroes, you had the sense of what motivates Rush Limbaugh. What motivates WFB. What this whole conservative movement thing is all about. There are ideas bigger than us and they have consequences. And wherever you fit into that movement – in whatever way you can fit in and try to explain or inspire or publish or broadcast those who do … it’s important that you’re doing what you do, wherever you best fit in. It’s important that those guys who are on the frontlines have someone back here doing that. It’s important we’re not all indifferent to what’s going on in the new Congress. It’s important that we’re not all letting the conventional read of the scandal of the moment –whatever it is at a given time — stand. These are necessary things when done right.

And WFB and Rush are examples of being doing it successfully. Thank God.