The battle between Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group — which has created an operation to promote electable Republican candidates over right-wing extremists — and self-proclaimed “real” conservatives has ramped up considerably.
During a radio show appearance, Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio called Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, who has led opposition to the Crossroads project, a “hater” for opposing it, adding that Bozell has “a long, sordid history, like, hating Karl Rove, too. So he has, like, a weird personal axe to grind.”
In response, several right-wing leaders have issued a letter proclaiming Bozell to be “a beloved and critically important player in American history” and demanding that Collegio be fired.
But Collegio is right — Bozell is a hater who has personal axes to grind.
Check out Bozell’s mean-spirited farewell to the Clinton administration in which he spewed numerous insults. Or his vicious verbal attack on a liberal analyst for daring to disagree with him in a TV appearance. Or the numerous other examples of hateful and unhinged rhetoric he has spewed, including calling President Obama a “skinny ghetto crackhead.”
Collegio is correct to question whether someone who acts like a foul-mouthed bully is a legitimate conservative leader. Will Bozell’s defenders admit his legacy of hate, or will they continue to whitewash it?