Rush Limbaught the Oracle

Ross Douthat of The Atlantic's blog has a great item up that I would like to take and talk about too. Douthat found a great monologue given by Rush Limbaugh last week where El Rushbo basically excoriates people who suggest that the Republican Party needs to create a big tent to attract moderate voters and others by nominating moderate Republican candidates. The title of the post on Rush's webpage is "Good Riddance, GOP Moderates" (emphasis mine).

Like Douthat, let me paste some of Limbaugh's words here, taken from a monologue from his radio show:

I wish to reach around and pat myself on the back. Way back during the Republican primaries -- when the battle was between Huckabee and Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and McCain -- we were told by the Republican Party hierarchy that the only chance the Republican Party had (by the way, we were told this also by some of the intellectualoids in our own conservative media) to win was to attract Democrats and moderates; and that the era of Reagan was over, and we had to somehow find a way to become stewards of a Big Government but smarter that gives money away to the Wal-Mart middle class so that they, too, will feel comfortable with us and like us and vote for us.

In that sense, it was said the only opportunity this party has to regain power is John McCain. Only John McCain can get moderates and independents and Democrats to join the Republican Party, "and we can't win," these intellectualoids said, "if that didn't happen." Well, the latest moderate Republican to abandon his party is William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who today endorsed the Most Merciful Lord Barack Obama. He joins moderate Republican Colin Powell. He joins former Bush press spokesman Scott McClellan. He joins a number of Republicans like Chuck Hagel, Senator from Nebraska. I don't know if there's been an initial endorsement from Hagel, but Obama is out there talking about how Hagel might be secretary of state or have some position in his cabinet.

Here, Rush is assailing those who backed McCain because McCain was the candidate many people felt had the best chance of defeating Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter) in a general election this year. That John McCain is about to be defeated is iron-clad proof for Limbaugh that this was a foolish strategy from the beginning.

Now, I wish to ask all of you influential pseudointellectual conservative media types who have also abandoned McCain and want to go vote for Obama (and you know who you are without my having to mention your name) what happened to your precious theory? What the hell happened to your theory that only John McCain could enlarge this party, that we had to get moderates and independents? How the hell is it that moderate Republicans are fleeing their own party and we are not attracting other moderates and independents? How in the hell did you people figure this to happen? So the Republican Party's own strategy here not only has it backfired, it's embarrassing. I don't have any brief for William Weld, don't misunderstand, but he's a moderate Republican.

"The Republican Party, we gotta be a big tent," and that's code words for, "We gotta have some pro-choicers in our party to get rid of the influence of these hayseed hicks in the South who are pro-life." Well, they have gone, and I, for one, say, "Damn well good riddance!"[...]

Reading this, I get the sense that Limbaugh is angriest about Republicans who have endorsed Barack Obama, men like Colin Powell, Scott McClellan, and William Weld. Rush is incensed that well-known individuals who call themselves Republicans could cross party lines and back, gasp!, Barack Obama. As a result, he views them as apostates.

Yet, here are the key parts of Rush's monologue, in my opinion:

And this is why I said to you earlier in the week, "I don't care who wins this election. The task at hand is going to be rebuilding the conservative movement and making sure that the Republican Party is its home," because the Republican Party hierarchy, bigwigs, people running McCain's campaign? [...]

They have just admitted that Republican Party "big tent" philosophy didn't work. It was their philosophy; it was their idea. These are the people, once they steered the party to where it is, they are the ones that abandoned it. We have noticed [...]

What Rush saying here? Pretty simply, that he sees no value in reaching out to moderate voters. In Rush's view, that men like Powell and Weld have gone to Obama, despite John McCain being the most moderate option in the GOP option, proves his hardline view that trying to have a big tent party is worthless. Indeed, Powell looked at the moderate McCain and went with Obama anyway, and this infuriates Limbaugh.

Moving beyond his mere emotions, however, Rush says a lot of important stuff here with regards to the GOP's future and direction going into 2009. Rush Limbaugh is one of the most important and influential figures in the Republican Party today. He has the highest-rated radio show in the land, and it has been that way for years and years. Rush has major cache with all Republicans: both rank-and-file and those decision-makers at the top of the party. As a result, what he says has enormous power in shaping the GOP down to its very essence.

Limbaugh is basically giving us all a preview of where the GOP might be going after the race mercifully ends. In Rush's ideal world, moderates will have no place in the Republican Party. Rather, only "true conservatives" who hew close to the party line, his party line, will find a place in the Grand Old Party. This is not my hyperbole -- this is exactly what he said above, whether colored with anger and frustration or not.

If Rush gets his wish, and the likely outcome of this election is making it more and more likely that his party is moving in the direction he would like, the Republican Party is in for a world of electoral hurt. We've talked about this issue before. The Republicans are veering into territory where they would embody a regional party that only appeals to and accepts strong conservatives, and banishes everyone else from the fold.

There is a good chance that come January 3, that not only will there be a single Republican congressman from the northeastern states (New England plus New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), but there may only be a handful of them left for the entire region! You cannot run a national party where you completely write-off a large region of the country. That is not a sound plan for future development.

On the flip side of the coin, Democrats have been able to maintain a good presence in regions more hostile to their party, such as the South and states in the West. And it is almost certain that this election will end up strengthening the party's hand to that end. For example, today there are 60 House Democrats and 6 Senators in the 13 Southern states, out of 140 House and 26 Senate seats. Come November 5, there may be another 5-8 Southern Democrats in the House, as well as up to 5 new Southern Democratic Senators. That is what you call growth and reaching out across political views and ideologies. It is one of the very reasons why the Democrats will win more seats in Congress this year.

For reasons we have discussed and will continue to look at, particularly after the election, Rush's "plan" for the GOP after 2008 is a disaster in-the-making. Elections are won in the center, not at the margins. Look at all the tracking and national data, Obama is winning independents by around 10 or more points. For whatever reason or reasons, and there are many this year, he has so far made a better case to voters in the middle of the political spectrum, and as a result he finds himself ahead.

There are also many factors for why John McCain is losing right now, and the fact that he is losing is not an indictment solely on him being perceived as a moderate Republican in what was a field of more conservative potential nominees earlier in the year. To hold this view as Rush does is illogical and foolish, and really just an emotional response.

I wanted to end with the final piece of Rush's monologue here, which I think speaks for itself and says a lot about the folly of Rush's words:

Sarah Palin, by the way. Fred Barnes has a column at the next issue of the Weekly Standard about her future. Let me just give you one little pull quote from this. He asks her what her role in the Republican Party's future is going to be. She says, "I don't know what kind of role the Republican Party would want me to play." Well, make her the head of the party, for one thing! That might be a good idea. "In the past I've not been one to be considered for anything by the hierarchy of the party, certainly not in my state. In some sense, I ran against them in my party," and she's doing it again now!

She's running against her own party. Then she said this: "I would love to promote the party ideals if we're going to live out the ideals, and maybe allow other American voters to understand what the principles of the party are. We've gotta be assured we have enough people in the party who will live out those ideals as not just rhetoric, otherwise I'd be wasting my time. There are a lot of things I would and should be doing." So what she's saying is: "I'm not going to be a Republican if they're not going to be Republicans. I'm not going to beat my head against the wall. If we're going to have just a bunch of flourishing rhetoric people, if we're not going to have people in the party who actually live it and believe it, I'm not going to be part of it.

This says two important things to me. First, that Rush views Sarah Palin as one of the future leaders of the Republican Party says a lot about the sorry and really, misguided direction that men like Limbaugh would like to take his party. If Sarah Palin is the leader or architect of the GOP, they way as well take their ball and go home, because they will be out of power for a long time as a result. Palin is too polarizing, too extreme, and frankly, too stupid to assume that kind of position, whether official or unofficial.

While I want to return to the theme of Palin's future in greater detail after November 4, let me just get this out of the way right now:

If Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee for President in 2012, both she and her party will be annihilated at the polls.

I know better than most that your words can come back to haunt you (heck, I was the idiot who said in June that Palin exactly what John McCain needed!), but I feel comfortable in making this prediction. Sarah Palin is not a leader, but a gimmick, and a failed on at that.

Second, Rush's kind words for Palin reinforce my current view that regardless of what happens next week, Sarah Palin will come out far better with many conservatives than John McCain. We see that clearly here. Many GOPers will blame their loss on John McCain's weaknesses and the party's inability to move further to the right. As a result, Palin will come out smelling like a rose with many Republicans.

What does this mean in the scheme of things? Simply that she will have a future in the conservative wing of the now-apparently-wholly conservative party. Her career will not be totally dead. Even though it should be.