Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:41:08 PM
No specifics on the how and why, but since party orthodoxy’s already
firmly hawkish, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and anti-amnesty (among
the grassroots, at least, on that last one), presumably what we’re
talking about here is spending and bailout backlash. Shouldn’t be a
problem: The One will give the GOP’s congressional minority plenty to
dislike, including a bailout of the Big Three to pound the table about.
No?
The House, at least, is heading right
Independents will head right too as the Democrats overreach, but note
those toxic party favorable ratings. Exit question: Which will happen
first, a return to Dow 10,000 or the GOP topping 50 percent approval?
Two editorials in the past two days have attempted to shift blame for
two successive election losses onto someone who has never run for
public office. Both Mort Kondracke and Karen Harper
blame Rush and other conservative talk-show hosts for the GOP’s descent
into the minority in Washington DC. Neither, though, explain how a
conservative talk-show host whose policy positions got largely ignored
over the last eight years cost Republican candidates votes.
Huh? Did Rush or any of the other people Kondracke mentions support
an explosion of pork-barrel spending? As far as I know, Rush never
uttered the phrase “compassionate conservatism” without irony or
contempt. Rush, Laura, Sean, and the rest of the talk-show circuit
certainly didn’t back the biggest expansion of discretionary spending
by the federal government in decades. Other than the war and judicial
nominations, Kondracke would be hard-pressed to identify which parts of
the Republican agenda as pursued by GOP officeholders over the last decade belonged to Rush.
Harper falls into the same trap, only more insultingly
Rush gives his opinion on politics, avoiding the incessant
talking-head shouting matches we see much more often on cable
television.
You know, it’s odd; when Republicans won elections, no one seemed to
mind Rush and his energy to bring conservatives to the table. When
Republicans stopped being conservatives, or at least stopped acting
like conservatives and more like the kind of Democrat Lite that
Kondracke and Harper prefer, they stopped winning elections — and
started blaming Rush Limbaugh for it. Kondracke wants Republican
politicians to ignore Rush, Laura, and Sean, but they’ve been doing
that since 2001, and that’s not Rush’s fault.
The GOP will go nowhere if it engages in scapegoating talk radio for
the next couple of years. Republicans have lost two successive
elections because American voters will choose Democrats when given a
choice between an authentic Democrat and a fake Democrat. We’re not
going to win elections by making Republicans more like Democrats. We
will win elections when Republicans do the following:
- Find a First Principles approach that will unite the conservative coalitions, as Reagan did in 1980
- Have a zero-tolerance policy for corruption
- Stop supporting pork-barrel spending
- Take concrete steps to shrink the federal government
- Take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences for them instead of scapegoating talk radio
Note to Kondracke and Harper: Rush doesn’t work for the Republican
Party. The Republican Party doesn’t follow Rush’s policy agenda, and
hasn’t since George Bush came to office. The notion that the main
problem with the GOP is Rush Limbaugh is profoundly foolish, so much so
that only Beltway insiders could possibly reach that conclusion.