When President Obama lost control of his tongue last month and told congressional Republicans they couldn’t “just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he drew attention to the inner turmoil that has captured the conservative movement. After firmly holding two branches of government and then, in November, being thoroughly repudiated for the way they exercised power, Republicans are now attempting to cope with their impotent position on Capitol Hill.
Two questions hang in the air: first, how did things go so horribly wrong? And second, what will the new conservatism look like? Conservatism is in desperate need of a return to its intellectual heritage.
Retreating from Rush
The Obama/Limbaugh spat is instructive. Obama’s comments came soon after Limbaugh criticized Republican legislators for their bipartisanship. He said they “caved” to Obama in regard to the stimulus package. Instead of bipartisanship, Limbaugh suggested the true conservative stance would be to “hope he fails.”
Of course, Limbaugh is an entertainer and his shtick – white, male, populist and very angry – has always worked better as anti-establishment. He’s following the successful formula that has kept him the most-listened to man on the radio: criticize the liberals and moderates, and rally the Republican loyalists. And loyalty can easily be defined as adherence to whatever Limbaugh believes is conservative at the time.
One question facing Republicans is whether this kind of rhetoric will continue to be meaningful for conservatism.
It certainly has been in the past. After the GOP took over the House and Senate in ’94, Republicans made Limbaugh an honorary member of Congress and today he commonly refers to himself as the head of the party.
The trouble is, this kind of talk isn’t just a part of his on-air personality – it’s probably true in the real world. In so far as he influences millions of everyday Republicans and symbolizes the conservative brand, he is the most influential figure in the party.
The way the Limbaugh side of the party explains how Republicans got into this mess is very important. Before John McCain lost, they were rallying the troops for reform.
Back in October, Limbaugh declared war on the moderates who he believed led to the McCain failure. He lambasted the “intellectual conservative media types,” whose big-tent ideas “abandoned the party.”
Clearly, it was not the Republicans’ fiscal irresponsibility, interventionist foreign policy, war on civil rights, political corruption, support of torture, failed wars, failed economic policies or inept domestic policies that contributed to the problems they now face.
According to the talk-radio types, Republicans became too moderate and hoity-toity “pseudo-intellectuals” ruined the party.
Surely, more Sarah Palin populism combined with a little more insular thinking is the recipe for success. And they will conjure up a convenient version of saintly Ronald Reagan to testify on their behalf.
“Now the trick is to keep [the moderates] out,” Limbaugh said. In short, they believe Republicans must slough off the intellectuals, get back in touch with their inner-Reagan and everything will be okay.
There are, however, more sensible conservatives. As David Frum argued, “[Limbaugh and others] are offering flattering illusions when we need truth. They are leading us to disaster - and beyond disaster, to irrelevance.”
Return and Renewal
Instead of straining for some vague illusions of the golden-era 1980s and embracing a Palinization of the party, many conservatives are charting a new path that holds more fidelity to traditional conservatism. Believe it or not, conservative thought didn’t begin with Ronald Reagan and isn’t epitomized in Limbaugh, Hannity or Savage.
The conservative movement is in the midst of an identity crisis and must be renewed by a return to its intellectual roots. Its patrimony is rich; its heritage is found in the writings of Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Adams, in southerners like John C. Calhoun and John Randolph of Roanoke, or in the contemporary writings of Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver.
Conservatism has lost its way and ought to return to its role as the critical opposition, not just of Obama, but the entire system of the power elite in Washington and the culture at large.
It should be marked by a preoccupation with conserving. It should be known for conserving not only ecosystems and sustainable ways of life, but also conserving culture (i.e. localism over nationalism). It should be more concerned with the problems of Middle America than creating the New American Century.
As Andrew Bacevich recently wrote, “Conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means.”
To renew the movement, conservatives would do well to heed the advice of President Obama and not “just listen to Rush Limbaugh” or others who would claim the new conservatism ought to be a re-enactment of the 1980s.
Conservatism is much bigger and richer than that.
-Kyle Williams is a history and classics sophomore.
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jfreezy 3 years, 3 months ago
well said. I'm no conservative, but I would love to see them return to real conservatism instead of sound-byte conservatism. Nice Bacevich quote man
mfhayes 3 years, 3 months ago
Good article.
JJanowiak 3 years, 3 months ago
This is a great column. It seems like a lot of the conservatives who write for/comment on the Daily are of the far right Rush Limbaugh School of Conservative Studies, and it's refreshing to read an article by a conservative that's well-written and reasonable. There's been talk that booming voice of the far-right during the election alienated a lot of fiscal- and moderate Republicans into Obama's camp and it's scary, really, how they just don't understand that they need to tailor their message to the center-right to get a little something rather than nothing.
impatient_with_ignorance 3 years, 2 months ago
Excellent and very thoughtful column from one of this semester's few columnists whose work does not insult the intelligence of the DAILY's readers.