Limbaugh Conservatism Versus O’Reilly Conservatism

There are various ways to describe the civil war rising inside the Republican Party: insiders versus outsiders, pragmatists versus true-believers, establishment versus Tea Party. Here’s another: Bill O’Reilly conservatives versus Rush Limbaugh conservatives. … O’Reilly and Limbaugh are both conservative; they both idealize an older, pre-lapsarian America that they believe leftists want to destroy in the name of progress. The difference is that Limbaugh’s conservative vision is more static and more personal. For O’Reilly, traditional morality is not an abstract, coherent set of beliefs; it’s the folk wisdom of ordinary people at any given moment, and it can change.

— Peter Beinhart, in the Daily Beast.