Sean Hannity isn’t the most incendiary conservative talker on the radio dial. That honor goes to Michael Savage, with Mark Levin coming in a distant second on nights when a “lib” caller gets under his skin.
And Hannity certainly isn’t the funniest. Rush Limbaugh‘s blistering song parodies would be deemed dangerous — in a positive way — in elite comedy circles had they not targeted the left.
Yet few eclipse Hannity as a conservative warrior, someone whose direct, no apologies embrace of small government helped him rise to the top echelon of today’s talkers.
His latest book, Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda, is as thorough a deconstruction of the new president’s first year in office as you’re likely to find.
Few talkers are as well qualified as Hannity to beat back the arguments of our big government president.
It’s been six years since Hannity’s face last graced a book cover, but he spills the most ink documenting 2009 — President Barack Obama’s first year in office. Political junkies won’t find many revelations here, but simply compiling evidence of Obama’s weaknesses in economic policy, defense, and international relations is captivating all the same.
And more than a tad frightening.
The first two-thirds of Conservative Victory describe Obama’s blunders in near-numbing detail.
The opening chapter, “Obama’s History of Radicalism,” is the kind of connect-the-dots reportage the media no longer feels compelled to crank out. It’s one thing to accuse the president of being a radical, a socialist, or any other potentially demeaning descriptive. But Hannity details not only the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s ties to Obama but those of his innermost circle.
Doing the work that the legacy media used to do, Hannity was one of the first to document Obama’s connection to Rev. Wright, interviewing Wright for Hannity & Colmes on March 1, 2007, less than a month after Obama first announced his candidacy.
Suffice to say in his new book, Hannity’s aghast at what he finds — and what the media either ignores or covers up: it’s Wright himself who built the foundation for the president’s future actions, according to Hannity.
“This much was clear: the blueprint for Obama’s socialist agenda … could be found in the writings of his radical spiritual mentor,” he notes. We’re reminded of Wright’s greatest “hits” here, like the infamous “God [blank] America” line, but also of the black liberation theology that was the heart and soul of the reverend’s philosophy.
Not every attempt at painting Obama’s advisors as radical works as intended. The dirt dug up on David Axelrod, for example, is hardly damning. Neither is the information presented on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, although pro-life readers will recoil at her abortion stance.
Hannity, true to his gentlemanly demeanor, isn’t name calling — without reason. Yes, he trots out the “S” word — socialist — but then backs it up with Obama’s words and actions.
“I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness,” Obama once said, not to mention his infamous statement to Joe the Plumber regarding spreading the wealth.
Now, the Obama administration hasn’t transformed the U.S. government into a textbook socialist nation, but it’s not hard to see the similarities between Obama’s vision and the socialist utopia people like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez espouse.
Heck, Fidel Castro himself recently applauded ObamaCare. It’s just the kind of endorsement that leaves Hannity shaking his head in sadness.
Hannity’s prose is direct, conversational, and to the point. He’s doesn’t bother spinning arcane metaphors to belabor a concept, nor does he talk down to the reader. It’s a more refined version of his talk show monologues, and it goes down smoothly.
But what’s lacking is the sense of surprise, the feeling the author is about to uncork an opinion or fact that will shed new light on the subject. Hannity fans will know where each paragraph will lead, and even when the author lines up his facts in a cool, concise fashion the predictability wears thin.
That criticism falls aside when he offers up a full-throated defense of capitalism. Hannity’s passions are palpable as he deftly mixes speeches from President Ronald Reagan to a one-sided debate between Phil Donahue and economist Milton Friedman.
Reagan’s speeches are particularly timeless, and Hannity stitches them into the book in a way that makes them sound as if they were given last week, not decades ago.
Conservative Victory rarely slips into the extreme side of the political debate, but it goes too far when saying Obama’s policies will “leave our children and grandchildren in poverty and slavery.”
Hannity’s latest book wraps by updating his “Items for Victory,” a shopping list of core conservative principles which he thinks can lead the GOP to victory and prosperity in 2010 — and beyond.
He swears it’s not Contract with America Part II, but he wouldn’t mind seeing legislators adopt most of his items in their campaigns. And the same can likely be said of Hannity’s fan base, sure to gobble up every passage in the new book — and each item on the list.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member