It’s truly laughable all the
Trump supporters damning the perfidy of the conservative intellectual elite and
blaming them for their hero’s demise – Trumpism isn’t populated by people who
spend much or any time reading
Krauthammer or George Will or Jonah Goldberg or the many lesser known right
wing commentators – never mind the more erudite musings of the Edmund Burkes
etc etc. I doubt if even Limbaugh reads or has read these people - probably
just has an assistant browse what the perfidious rascals are up to and if
something can be worked into his usual anti-establishment rant it’s spun
accordingly. Krauthammer et al are just props in the ‘conservative’
infotainment’s rhetorical rampage – Trumpsters don’t support the man because
they’re pissed off at George Will – they support him because Limbaugh and
Hannity etc etc have told them the establishment is corrupted by self interest
and therefore complicit in the left’s ruining of America and only a tough guy –
ie someone who doesn’t play by the rules – can put an end to this menace.
Intellectuals support the rules therefore they’re with the enemy.
Thing to understand about
this argument is that it may be substantially ludicrous but is not entirely
wrong – under Obama the idealist progressive world view and agenda has been
pushed forward regardless of ‘the rules’ and Republicans for a variety of
reasons can’t seem to figure out how to effectively push back. For this reason,
the frustrations driving Trump supporters are understandable and it would be a
big mistake for conservative intellectuals not to acknowledge this – just
because the average voter tends to be quite naïve and highly susceptible to buying
the snake oil doesn’t mean that there isn’t a very good reason why they want to buy the snake oil – they’re sick
and tired and looking for answers.
A perfect example of this was
the Gang of Eight bill – in an attempt to fix an obviously broken immigration
system while making yourself more palatable to Latinos it may have indeed been good policy, I don’t know – but here’s the
problem: there’s absolutely no way you could trust Obama or the left in general
to honor the agreement because for them more Latinos and more right wing
grousing about more Latinos means more left wing voters and that’s all they
really care about. Limbaugh understood that inherent weakness in the deal and
milked it to death making it sound like the bill was just one more capitulation
by the wussy right wing establishment to the America destroying left. Add to
that fact that the right simply does not know how to address the problem of big
business wanting immigration reform because it wants cheap labor and how that too
can be milked by the Limbaughs etc etc and you’ve got the whole Trump
phenomenon in a nutshell.
