So, Mike loves Rush Limbaugh. I do not. This has been a source of contention for years, and since Rush is the belle of the ball this week, we had a discussion about Rush that began on Twitter and carried right on over into GChat. In lieu of a podcast, we edited the chat (trust me, our punctuation and capitalization is not this good normally).
Michael: I just disagree with you. Rush is doing just fine — Republicans need to embrace what he’s saying, which apparently they already do, they just don’t say it. But when the stimulus/porkulus whatever fails, Rush is gonna look pretty smart for saying “I told you so.”
Katherine: I’m sure he will. I just finished the speech, I can’t find a solution to any problem in there. It’s less about what he says, anyway, and more about his image and the public conflation of entertainer and ideologue. He speaks in absolutes into an echo chamber and does not offer a communication of those values in terms people outside the base can understand.
Michael: See, I just disagree with that right there.
Katherine: Which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if he didn’t take up such an enormous spotlight.
Michael: Yes, but here’s the issue…he doesn’t claim to be a Republican leader and he isn’t one. Okay, so Rahm and all them are trying to make him be one…who cares about them? The problem is that there are no elected leaders, political leaders of the party.
Katherine: Well, we did just give him KEYNOTE AT CPAC.
Michael: Yes, but conservatives are different than Republicans. CPAC is about conservative activism. It’s not an RNC meeting.
Katherine: I don’t know that CPAC is helping conservatives get elected then.
Michael: Hmmm, good point. Here’s the problem: Who won the last 3 CPAC straw polls? Mitt Romney.
Katherine: Which…fail.
Michael: You think Mitt Romney could have had a better chance than John McCain? You betcha — are you kidding? Mitt Romney would have been totally mopping the floor with Obama on economy. He’s got his own problems, yeah, but I think the point is that all these conservatives, rush included, are well tapped into the base, and the base is what raises money, raises issue awareness, gets people excited and interested in politics. The American people want principled stands on issues, they don’t want wishy-washiness.
Katherine: I’m not saying we need to trot out McCain again. God, no. I’m just saying that Rush’s speech is basically, “They hate you. We get it. The end.” (*We get it, as in, “We understand how things should be,” not “We get that they hate you.” Well. That too.)
Michael: Right, well that really wasn’t what I got out of it. I got a real definition for my values, a passionate definition. It makes me want to go out there and beat the other guys, because I’m angry about how they want to run this country.
Katherine: What was the passionate definition? That we are not them? Angry does not draw people in — it’s why populism fails.
Michael: No, here’s the passionate definition: That we, as conservatives, believe that people deserve to pursue their own interests, create their own wealth, and be successful without being impeded by an overbearing government. We believe that individuals are more equipped to determined their lives than government bureaucrats. We believe that this country was founded on this idea, and that it is a travesty for Obama and the Democrats to want to try to remake this country into something we don’t like.
Michael: I think that speaks to people. Maybe not immediately, maybe not even soon, but Rush tells it like it is, to me, he says what I already know. I’ll tell you what he offered as a plan: Start talking about philosophy, and the policy will flow forth. It’s what Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney and Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are all saying, too. You have to have the philosophy guiding it, you have to start talking about it. You don’t start by saying “Okay, libs, we’ll play by your rules, but we’re gonna do it better or cheaper or whatever,” because we reject their game. We don’t believe people are made better by a more active government. We don’t believe tax money is the “government’s money.” We don’t believe the constitution is a living document. There is good policy that comes out of this ideology, but we need to get people on our side philosophically first.
Katherine: Look how many times you just said “don’t.”
Michael: Okay, I said don’t a bunch of times, yes, but there’s a do for every one of those don’ts. These are not groundbreaking things here, we don’t believe all those things, but liberals do and we can’t let that happen. We can’t let them set the agenda.
Katherine: I think Rush — because that’s where this started — focuses too much on the “don’t” without the secondary part.
Michael: See, that’s a caricature. You don’t get his show — I am serious. I am not being patronizing, I am not talking down, I am just telling you straight out: you think he’s negative. He’s the most positive person out there speaking on our side. He talks ENDLESSLY about individuals are able to do ANYTHING. He praises individuals and institutions and these things. He just has lots of negative things to say about people in government, which we all should.
Katherine: John Mark Reynolds the other day brought up an interesting point: “Philosophically it relied on the dubious notion (to conservatives) that ‘the people’ are good . . . as opposed to the ‘checks and balances view’ of people and government that trusted neither people or the state with total power.”
Michael: He’s not saying people should be in charge of their government, he’s saying people should be in charge of THEMSELVES. He’s no populist democrat. Ed Morrissey is right on this, I think in his post about Jindal being a party leader. You lose Rush Limbaugh? You lose everything, because it’s not just Rush Limbaugh you lose, you lose the entire base. Rush Limbaugh is successful because he tells people what they already know, what they think they aren’t supposed to think. He says, “No, these are legitimate views for you to have,” Without him, what’s the point?
Katherine: But he also makes those views unsavory to a huge portion of the electorate, and I’m not sure that’s entirely ideological.
Michael: Well, is that Rush Limbaugh’s fault? I doubt it. There is a media/government effort to completely discredit him, and ipso facto, people like me, as if we are some kooky weirdos.
Katherine: That’s a dangerous outlook to have.
Michael: What outlook?
Katherine: That it’s some concentrated effort against the base, it does exactly what he argues is a bad thing in his speech, isolates the group as a minority — the only people who “get it.”
Michael: Oh see, I don’t think its a conspiracy or anything — like the media and the Dems are talking, because they don’t have to. They just all think the same thing. Obama doesn’t need to tell CNN what to run, CNN’s already running it. It’s about what Breitbart talks about. The establishment is what it is, we have to break through it. It’s exactly the problem…it’s not concentrated.
Katherine: I still think this is a relevant piece. The environment stuff is BS, but I think this part’s important:
“It’s like they’re frozen in the 1980s, waiting for the resurrection of Ronald Reagan — this, despite the fact that the world has changed immensely since Reagan first won. The world that produced Ronald Reagan is no longer with us (thanks in part to Reagan’s successes). Some of these Republicans today remind me of old-fashioned Democrats when I was younger, who consoled themselves with the false narrative that there was nothing wrong with them and the way they saw the world and reacted to it. That the only reason people weren’t voting Democratic was because they were stupid, racist, greedy, or had been tricked.”
Michael: Okay, but I don’t think Rush Limbaugh is saying “let’s keep doing it how we are doing it.” Keep in mind, Rush Limbaugh is not the guy running the think tanks or any of that stuff. He’s by and large an extension of the base, I think that principles are universal and don’t change. I think he wants to say, “Look, remember these principles? Why don’t we go back to them and see what they have to say about policy today.”
Katherine: Maybe this just derives from the fact that you are from the base and I am not, and that informs my feeling that his delivery of principles will not draw people in.
Michael: Well, perhaps. I don’t know, maybe you are from the base, maybe I’m not. My point is that Rush Limbaugh isn’t the problem anymore than conservatism as an ideology is a problem. The institutions, the politicians, the party? Reform ‘em, they need it. They need an image makeover, they need new ideas, new policies, but the ideology? The philosophy? It should always be the same. Tweak it here and there, no more Soviet Union, obviously.
Katherine: But Rush Limbaugh’s an institution — he alone is not the message. Er, institution in the less formal sense.
Michael: How do you mean?
Katherine: Well, he’s not AEI.
Michael: Rush? No.
Katherine: But he’s one of the focal points people think of when they think of conservatives.
Michael: Sure. Here’s the thing: So Rush has been pretty much saying the same things for 20 years. You wouldn’t say he was the leader of the GOP in 2004, would you? No, that’d be GWB. 1995? Newt Gingrich
and so on. To me, the problem is within the GOP
Katherine: That’s true.
Michael: They don’t have an answer. Rush is gonna keep on being Rush, because it’s his right to, and I applaud him for it. But Michael Steele? I’m sorry, the chairman of the RNC is not the leader of the GOP either. The RNC is about fundraising and campaigning, there’s no leadership for a whole party in that spot. Bobby Jindal? Perhaps. Mitt Romney? Perhaps. Sarah Palin? Perhaps. But they have to work for it and on it. It’s stupid to go say anything about Rush Limbaugh as if he’s the reason the GOP loses elections…the GOP has won and lost with Rush behind the mic, it’s not his job and I wouldn’t want it to be, to elect Republicans. He has influences over the base, but honestly? I doubt he turns people away from the GOP, unless, and this is important, he is tied to the GOP like Rahm is arguing, and that’s up to the GOP to make an identity for themselves.
Katherine: I think he’s reflective of larger problems within the party, admittedly, but my central problem is the means of delivery.
Michael: Which is why I think Jindal did such a good job on CNN. He made it clear that republicans have these things to work on and do, and also that rush speaks for a large number of conservatives and conservative republicans — you don’t dismiss him, but you don’t give him some central position within a party.
Michael: Well, last thought from me on this, and it goes back to the populist/elitist thing, if you want to put it in those terms.
Katherine: Sure.
Michael: A party is best governed from the top down, but a movement is best run from the bottom up, and that’s what the GOP and conservatives have to deal with right now — how to bring those two dynamics together. That’s why it hurts to see “elites” criticize Sarah Palin when she’s so energizing, and it hurts to see dumb people on internet forums decry the policy makers.
Katherine: I think we can both agree that we need a politician, or small group of them, to rise with ideas and plans and communicate that beyond Rush Limbaugh, then.
Michael: Yes, I agree with you on that.
I win! I win! No, just kidding, we’ll never agree about 90 percent of this, but it will be interesting to see how the culture war surrounding Rush Limbaugh shakes out in the end. And, yes, our GChats always are this riveting with super cool political debate like all the other kids on spring break.
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Our punctuation and capitalization really is that good. I swear.