In a conversation with Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity of Fox News appointed himself the official source for conservative credentials. He was reciting some of the criticism Gingrich has earned from a broad spectrum of analysts, and as a means of dismissing it, Hannity simply de-certified the source:

Hannity: You have Kathleen Parker, a CNN conservative, which isn’t a real conservative, accusing you now of hating mankind. Can’t get any worse than that I guess, if you hate all mankind.

Gingrich: Wait a minute. How could she possibly come up with something that goofy?

Hannity: I don’t know. I mean I don’t speak for these liberal conservatives that are hired by these other news networks cause they’re not conservatives.

First of all, let’s be clear about what Hannity is referencing. Parker was not on CNN when she made the remarks that riled up Hannity. CNN fired her months ago. She was on CBS’s Face the Nation and was commenting on what others have said about Gingrich:

Parker: He’s not very much of a campaigner. In fact, he’s been described as sort of a misanthrope.

Of course, Fox News has to provide a definition of misanthrope for their viewers because the word has more than two syllables. But more to the point, we now know that it is Sean Hannity who decides who is, or is not, a conservative. And first among those who fail his test are conservatives on CNN. By that he must mean RedState’s Erick Erickson, Andrew Breitbart’s editor-in-chief Dana Loesch, Glenn Beck contributor Will Cain, and even Glenn Beck himself who used to have a program on CNN’s Headline News. I suppose Hannity would also include MSNBC’s resident racist Pat Buchanan, former GOP chairman Michael Steele, and McCain/Palin strategist Steve Schmidt. Surely none of them are conservatives.

The irony is that Fox News has a penchant for presenting conservatives that they misrepresent as Democrats. People like Pat Caddell, Doug Schoen, and Dick Morris, who have not had anything to do with Democrats for years (and whom Democrats would have nothing to do with). Their sole purpose is to collect a paycheck from Fox while bashing their former party and any liberal initiative. Fox regularly scours the news wires to find any incident wherein a Democrat is critical of other Democrats. That’s the fastest way for a Democrat to get invited to appear on Fox.

We ought to be grateful to Hannity for clearing up the confusion as to who the real conservatives are. At least now we have an ideological benchmark from a bona fide expert to keep us from making a terrible mistake. We might otherwise have gotten the misimpression that Mary Matalin or Bill Bennett were conservatives.