Rush Limbaugh knows a liberal when he sees one, and he sees one in Mickey Edwards.

Edwards, the former Oklahoma congressman who was run off by Oklahoma voters in 1992, recently engaged in a back-and-forth conversation with OKPNS after we exposed Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud’s ties to the ultra-liberal think tank, the Aspen Institute.

Edwards attempted to deflect the heat Cloud was catching after the public learned thorough OKPNS’ posts that Cloud was happily affiliated with the left-wing group. Cloud, whose poor work ethic is unattractive to the private sector, foolishly promoted his ties to the liberal group. While we do not know if Cloud was unaware of the group’s leftist pedigree, or if he simply didn’t understand, the damage was done, and Edwards tried to rescue his clueless pal by launching a broadside at OKPNS reporting, claiming he and the institute were not liberal, but nobody was buying.

So today, Rush Limbaugh comes to witness on the side of OKPNS original assertions: Mickey Edwards is indeed a Republican turned liberal, and his fellows at the Aspen Institute, including rate-raising Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud are too. From today’s Rush Limbaugh Program:

“Anyway, back to Mickey Edwards, a retired congressman from Oklahoma. Now, Mickey Edwards used to have a very conservative pedigree. Mickey Edwards was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation, and he used to be the national chairman of the American Conservative Union. However, when Mickey Edwards left Congress, he taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Law School for 11 years. He’d been ensconced at Harvard a long time. He’s also been one of those guys calling for a Republican Party reformation along the lines of the other sellouts in the party.

“Edwards is married to Elizabeth Sherman, Ph.D., well-known Democrat political operative from Massachusetts. Sherman directed the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts and served as a research fellow from 2001 to 2004 at the Center for Public Leadership and the Institute as for Politics, 1994, both at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.” Well, that explains it. There’s always — there’s always! — a woman involved in this somewhere along the way. A good conservative guy from Oklahoma, goes to Washington. He’s one of the original trustees at the Heritage Foundation, falls in love with some liberal babe and that’s it, it’s over. Read more…

Related:

OKPNS: Mickey Leftwings Strikes Again!

“Let me begin by citing a few of your statements with which I am in accord (and with which most liberals and progressives also agree)….I also agree it “would be wrong for conservatives to adopt a knee-jerk negative response to tax proposals or spending initiatives.” -Liberal Washington Post Columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. (5/21/08)

Former Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards, who was run out of town for his involvement in the house banking scandal, is busy today doing what he does best: back-stabbing the Republicans in a liberal setting.

Taking a cue from the Scott McClellan-Benedict Arnold wing of the party, the former Congressman was in the ‘conservative’ Washington Post back in March, slipping the knife into long-time colleague Dick Cheney.

“For at least six years, as I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration’s repeated betrayal of constitutional — and conservative — principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I’ve known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.“

For those too young to remember, Edwards is the former Oklahoma 6th-District Congressman who was a principal ‘perp’ in the house banking scandal of 1992. Edwards was one of 22 representatives condemned by the House Ethics Committee after it was revealed he had bounced 386 checks at the House of Representatives bank in 13 months, further illustrating Edward’s elitist reputation for playing by different rules than normal folks.

While many folks like his buddy Vin Weber simply slunk off into the sunset, Edwards had the temerity to try re-election in the 1992 Republican primary, and Oklahoma Republicans fired him as he finished last in a three-way primary that eventually saw Ernest Istook elected to replace the congressman.

Since his firing by the electorate, the humiliated Edwards has held a string of academic positions that allow him to criticize Republicans and dissemble on an unsuspecting public. Just this week, Edwards fabricated an easily-disproved tale when he attempted to fool our readers into believing that uber-liberal billionaire George Soros was not involved with the liberal think tank Aspen Institute. Ironically, Edwards attempted to use Weber, and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, as evidence that the Aspen Institute is “studiously, and carefully, non-partisan and non-ideological.”

From a 2006 Time Magazine article titled: “The Rise and Fall of Ralph Reed”

“For a high-profile religious conservative like Reed, the stories of being paid millions by one Indian tribe to run a religious-based antigambling campaign to prevent another tribe from opening a rival casino made him look like something worse than a criminal–a hypocrite. He had once called gambling a “cancer” on the body politic. And the e-mails to Abramoff didn’t help, especially those that seemed to suggest that the man who had deplored in print Washington’s system of “honest graft” was eager to be part of it. “I need to start humping in corporate accounts!” he wrote Abramoff a few days after the 1998 election.”

So today the bitter and arrogant Edwards is in the Washington Post: Obviously a much better opportunity to fool people than in OKPNS.

By Hon. Mickey Edwards

I suppose if one is going to screw up, it’s best to make it a real doozy. As OKPNS did with its really strange blog about Jeff Cloud — a blog that somehow managed to get absolutely nothing right.

According to OKPNS, Jeff Cloud is a member of an ultra-liberal Aspen Institute, which, also according to OKPNS, is a front for left-wing financier George Soros.

Actually, not to let facts get in the way, but George Soros is not connected in any way, directly or indirectly, or even remotely, to the Aspen Institute. The Institute is not only not liberal but is studiously, and carefully, non-partisan and non-ideological. that is, in fact, its essence.

Jeff (just a minor mistake)is not a member of the institute. That’s because the Institute has no members. Rather he was selected to be a part of a program for outstanding young elected officials which is run by Aspen Institute Vice President Mickey Edwards, a former member of the Republican leadership in Congress, a former national chairman of the American Conservative Union, Chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a founder of the Heritage Foundation, and Director of Policy Task Forces for Ronald Reagan’s Presidential campaign. Participants in the program are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, including, by the way, some very conservative Republicans. Among the people whose works they study when they come together are Milton Friedman, John Locke, and James Madison. Oh, and Ronald Reagan. Now that would be a strange thing for George Soros to be supporting, don’t you think?

Walter Isaacson, who by the way is not a liberal (OKPNS got that wrong, too), is president of the Institute (that was right), and its board members include people like Newt Gingrich’s close friend and ally Vin Weber, a former conservative congressman who is one of George W. Bush’s closest advisers (and helped manage Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign), and Robert Steel, one of the top officials in George W. Bush’s Labor Department. At least 25 prominent Republicans are members of the advisory committee for the program in which Jeff participates, including Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, and former conservative congressman and Reagan ally Jack Kemp.

I haven’t checked to see whether the date at the top of the blog was accurate; if it was, it was the only thing in the blog that was.

Mickey Edwards

Mickey Edwards, a lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, was a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma for 16 years (1977-92). He was a member of the House Republican leadership and served on the House Budget and Appropriations committees. Since leaving the Congress he has taught at Harvard, Georgetown, and Princeton universities and has chaired various task forces for the Constitution Project, the Brookings Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In addition, he is currently an advisor to the US Department of State and a member of the Princeton Project on National Security. His book, Reclaiming Conservatism (Oxford University Press), comes out in March 2008.