Rush Limbaugh made a startling admission on Wednesday,
in the course of discussing the staying power of Donald Trump and the
value of the Sarah Palin endorsement: “It’s now out in the open that the
Republican conservative base is not monolithically conservative …
that’s not the glue that unites them all.”
The proof of
that is Trump: “If conservatism were the glue … then Trump would have no
chance. He literally would have no chance. Because, whatever he is he’s
not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative.”
If it’s not
philosophical belief and positive ideas, then what is the glue? Per
Rush, it is “united, virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat
Party and Barack Obama.”
In other words, they know what they hate, but not what they like.
In other words, they know what they hate, but not what they like.
That would
explain why the Republican debates have been so bereft of policy ideas
and discussion, but loaded with broadsides against President Obama (and
Hillary Clinton). If the base doesn’t know what it wants, and doesn’t
even agree on the direction in which to go, then proposing detailed
plans isn’t going to get you very far.
The fault of a
rudderless base should not fall on the individual voters. Parties lead.
Parties develop policy ideas and hammer out platforms. It’s the job of
the parties to build an agenda based on philosophical principle and
rally supporters around it.
This Republican
Party wasted its time in the minority wilderness of the Obama years.
Sure, it could win low-turnout backlash elections in the midterm years
with simple hatred of Obama. “Repeal Obamacare” is easier to say than an
actual alternative approach to expanding coverage and restraining cost.
But without a
real set of ideas that go beyond bumper stickers and Reagan-era rehash, a
party is vulnerable to being hijacked by a demagogue who shows no
fealty to policy principles – only to whatever will keep him in the news
for the next 24 hours.
I am not one to
assume the entire Republican Party is represented by those in the “base”
to which Rush is referring. The noisiest voices on the right usually
fall short – by miles – of dictating the Republican Party nominee.
But there is no
question that the Know-Nothing faction of the party’s base has shaped
the party’s image and framed the intraparty debate – to the party’s detriment according to the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Limbaugh’s
candor is a sad commentary on conservatism. For a long time liberalism
was the ideology that its adherents and sympathizers were uncomfortable
acknowledging. Today, it is conservatism that is proving so weak it
cannot hold its party together.
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