Sometimes, Steve M. can be very concise, which is a nice skill to have as a writer and an analyst. In this case, what struck me was how efficient he was in explaining the basic problem with the right-wing model of stoking perpetual fear and outrage without even the slightest regard for a factual foundation for their claims.
[Chris] Cillizza admits that Jeb inspired walkouts, that Jeb got heckled, and that Sean Hannity was a surprisingly gentle to Jeb in their CPAC Q&A. (I don’t think the mostly softball nature of the questions is a surprise at all — Hannity may make a living stoking purist right-wing rage, but every four years the guy who signs Hannity’s paychecks decides it’s time to find some Republican who’s electable and try to catapult him into the White House, even though Republicans struggle in presidential elections precisely because they first have to appeal to voters Fox has made into a hysterical mob. Murdoch and his henchman Roger Ailes don’t even want to dial down the mob-goading long enough to fluff a presentable candidate properly, which is why Mitt Romney got a cold shoulder from Fox for much of the last campaign, but the folks at Fox think they want someone electable, so of course Hannity was nice to Jeb.)
Jeb is still for immigration reform. He’s still for Common Core. As Martin and Maggie Haberman remind us in a separate Times article, Jeb supported giving driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and allowing them to pay state college tuition at in-state rates, although he’s repudiated those positions.
So he’s not what Republican voters want.
We can go over this again and again and again, but the Republican base hasn’t had the candidate they wanted since Ronald Reagan ran for reelection in 1984. It isn’t necessarily a problem for a candidate seeking the Republican nomination that they are unloved by the base, even though the base theoretically has some influence on who will lead the party.
But, recent history suggests that the base is powerless to stop squishes like Poppy, Dole, McCain, and Romney from beating out their more conservative competitors. What the base is good at is freaking out their nominees and getting them to commit fatal errors. Poppy didn’t really need to promise no new taxes, but it was a broken promise that cost him dearly. McCain overcompensated for his weakness with the base by giving us Sarah Palin. And, in his contorted efforts to speak to a base that had become completely unmoored from terrestrial reality, Romney set the land-speed record for lying by a human being.
I don’t know if Jeb helped or hurt himself by speaking at CPAC. I really don’t.
I do know that when addressing a room full of untethered zoo animals, you’re lucky to emerge with your life. That Jeb felt the need to bus in some tame animals demonstrates that he doesn’t actually understand the nature of the threat.
“I do know that when addressing a room full of untethered zoo animals, you’re lucky to emerge with your life.”
Which is why the “no firearms” policy at GOP presidential primary debates has to STOP. Second Amendment! Freedum!
Oh, I don’t know about Reagan in ’84 being the last candidate the base wanted.
They LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED them some George W. Bush!
They knew “The Compassionate Conservative” line was total bullshit, meant for the MSM and the non-rabid conservatives.
And sure, after he blew the 2 unnecessary wars and occupations, and the economy was spiraling down the toilet, they kind of dismissed him as a RINO.
But, that dismissal was in name only.
Take a look at his popularity rating today with conservatives:
Yes, ‘They DO miss miss him” yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have to agree with this. The base was crazy about W. The reason that we often refer to the base as 27% of the US population is that this was W’s approval rating as of the time he left office. No matter how bad things got on his watch the base believed any theory that deflected blame on someone else.
Dubya was an aberration. He was the Establishment choice running against the media’s choice.
But W. became the base’s choice as well. They ate up his aw-shucks, cowboy-booted bullshit with two spoons.
I agree he was an aberration. In fact, with a little historical perspective it’s becoming clear just how much of an aberration he was.
While Karl Rove’s stock has recently crashed after a long time of being far too overrated, one thing he did get right earlier than most was that the strongest GOP candidate was the one who:
a) Could fool swing voters that he was moderate,
b) Yet the base voters “knew” he was “one of us” by the way he used code words, etc.,
c) And, yet, despite getting two critical voting segments to believe that the candidate would represent them, the candidate would actually do whatever the wealthy GOP backers wanted.
They’ve tried this ever since. This is why I thought Jeb would have been such a strong candidate – yes, the Bush name was severely tarnished, but Jeb was clearly of the wealthy establishment, was seen by the media as moderate, and I thought would also be embraced by the base.
I was wrong on that last point. As we know, the base has been shifting to the extreme right at a rapid pace since the growth of conservative media in the aftermath of the 1987 death of the Fairness Doctrine. What the base consensus believed in 2000 and 2004 is positively liberal compared to what they believe now. W could claim to speak Spanish and that was ok in 2000 – now it’s a severe liability. W could say “compassionate conservatism doesn’t end at the border” in 2000 and the base figured that this was just a good slogan for the MSM – now any GOP candidate saying that would be Cruzified by Ted and the others.
This means that there probably is never going to be a consensus candidate. The base will destroy any candidate who has any history of compromising with the Satanic Democratic Party. This is also why their entire bench of possible candidates – excluding the base-despised Romney and Jeb – are potential candidate with either only recent elected office (Gov/Sen/Rep or above) experience or with no office experience at all. If you were a GOP Gov/Sen/Rep prior to 2004 you probably did what politicians did back then – you compromised to get laws passed and you made statements that sounded conciliatory. Today those get you ejected from GOP conferences. So your top candidates are recent Governors like Christie, Walker, and Perry (even the relatively recent Jindal fails this test); or first-term Senators like Rand Paul, Rubio, and Cruz; or non-politicans like Huckster and whatever Uncle Tom they got excited about this week.
Note that not only do their candidates have relatively little governing experience (and yes, that was also true of Obama, and frankly, it probably was a liability in his first term, especially the early years where he relied on Rahm), they also lack any real international/foreign policy experience (in stark contrast to Obama, Clinton, Romney, and the Bushes – and pretty much any nominee from either party for a very, very long time – probably Carter had the least and that also turned out to be a weak point, the peace agreement being a key exception).
So the GOP is forced into the model of 2008 and 2012 – the establishment rallies around one candidate who is disliked by the base, the rest of the candidates split the vote while generally self-imploding every couple of weeks, and in the end the base reluctantly supports the establishment candidate in the general election. I don’t see that there is an alternative model. Which means it’ll be Bush in 2016.
Google “Marvin Olasky”. This guy was G. W.’s spiritual advisor (ie, his religion guru). He writes books about “Compassionate Conservatism.”
Compassionate Conservatism was just a dog whistle to the Christians that went clear over the heads of the MSM.
What does Compassionate Conservatism mean, anyway?
Even the most hard line conservatives will claim to be compassionate.
“…bus in some tame animals…”. Funny.
Using the Big Money Boys to materialize InstaSupporters for Jeb! at CPAC was a general election strategy, I agree. Based on the post-1984 history of the GOP, it’s likely to be part of a successful strategy. The Big Money Boys have gotten the base to get back in line almost every time. When a Big Money Boy who talked all folksy and hateful of the establishment gave the base somewhere to stray off to that seemed viable, the base saw Bill Clinton get elected twice, and that’s an unacceptable outcome for them.
So they’ll support Jeb! in the end, I believe. If the funnies and crazies had an alternative candidate that they were coalescing behind, then I could believe that the base will finally get the bloody red meat candidate they want. Maybe it’ll be Walker, but I get the feeling he’s peaking too early.
LOL
Yeah, I read that earlier. Gotta say, Red State and Free Republic are very consistent comedy gold these days.
Movement conservatives have been intense acolytes of the Green Lantern Theory for quite a while now. These true believers like to non-person political opponents and those who they disapprove of; that makes the GLT pretty compelling for them. After all, if liberalism is unpopular for Real Americans, does only bad things, and Democratic Party electeds are illegitimate, then pushing past them, creating an American fundamentalist/libertarian paradise and, most importantly, HURTING THE PEOPLE YOU HATE is a matter of will. Republican elected officials’ failure to immediately destroy the 20th Century throughout America is proof that they’re RINOs or worse. Look, Scott Walker is quickly returning Wisconsin to feudalism: see, it’s a matter of will!
That’s what’s great about the RS and FR threads: conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. More exactly, MY brand of conservatism cannot fail. IOW, if everyone just did what I want everything would be like I want it!!!!!!
definitely not contained in only conservatism, I see the same thing on liberal blogs too
Including on this here Frog Pond. At least the Green Lantern Theory only makes occasional guest appearances here; on other blogs it gets quite the exhausting workout.
that’s for sure, I’ve limited my usage of other blogs a lot lately it’s too exhausting and I can’t handle that much negativity
Look at CPAC this year. A whole bunch of clowns vying to rip off the rubes yet again. Ther grift is too lucrative that they only get one or two candidates, and not 5. That way they have a hard time beating the “establishment” candidate.
Meant to write “fundies” instead of “funnies” in the post above. Damn autocorrect…
Spell-check is the spawn of satin.
Mullah Phil D. D. Robertson and the gun-toters, having seized all of the Second Amendment privileges they can think of for the right to kill “different people” turned in this CPAC to the Amendment.
And they doubled down on the First Amendment protection of the right to lie. No William Buckley preppy politically correct erudite lies for them. No sir. Boldly. Brashly. And with “attytood”.
And that’s before they’ve gotten to explaining an end to net neutrality as “freedom of the press”.
And asserting the Founding Fathers’ clear intention to create a Christian Nation just like that of Fernand y Isabel.
Just waiting for them for form the Roger Williams Brigade of Christian Soldiers.
As the only Gov, ex or not, to be circling the ‘yes, I’m running’ role who does not have indictments looming Jeb does offer the monied base something. But as Boehner demonstrated last night, being yesterday’s crappy leader doesn’t mean nuthin to the crazies. So the monied folk may do what they do best (writing checks and making stupid remarks) but the CPAC crowd will only go along with a candidate who is proven to deliver bad government.
Jeb is beginning to look even more naïve than GW. That’s strange.
The one I’m wondering about lately is Kasich. He could truly give Jeb a challenge.
Kasich tried and failed to decapitate Labor in Ohio, and aggressively pushed past the Republican Legislature to implement an expansion of Medicaid eligibility as authorized by the dreaded Obamacare.
Forget it; Kasich is dead to the national conservative movement. He’s got moments where he delivers the super-nasty rhetoric that the GOP base loves, but that won’t be enough. He helped the Ohio poors get health care, and Real Americans can’t hate him enough for that.