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Rush Is Right, Sort Of

Rush Limbaugh sees a sinister conspiracy. Again. Thing is, this time he might be on to something:

“But the resentment for the base that the Republican establishment has is obvious, and of course the Republican establishment knows that. They know that the Tea Party is not embraced, that the Republican establishment’s trying to marginalize the Tea Party. So really, at least for me, it’s not hard to understand. Now, there’s an abject sense of panic that has set in over, ‘Oh, no! You mean this race is gonna go on? Oh, no!’ Yeah, the race is gonna go on. See, they thought that this would be over before it started. Remember what I told you. ‘They’re gonna split the conservative vote and elect the moderate.’ They were gonna stand traditional theory on its head.…

They decided, ‘We’re gonna lose from the get-go. We’re gonna nominate a moderate. We’re gonna take conservatives in our party that we can’t stand and we’re gonna have as many of them up there as possible splitting vote.’”

Okay, so he’s a little bit batty with the “The Republican establishment wants to lose” and “they encouraged tons of conservatives to split the vote” paranoia. Rick Perry jumped in because he had money and a lot of people telling him he could win. Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich wanted to sell books and get a gig on Fox. Michele Bachmann wanted to hear the sound of her name. Rick Santorum just wanted to be in the mix. None of them were there because the Wizard of Oz ordered them there.

But the other, potentially stronger GOPers that could have challenged Perry all had good reasons to demur, above and beyond their calculus that an incumbent President, even a black man in a bad economy, would be tougher to beat than an open seat in 2016. Jeb Bush needs more time for people to forget his brother. Mitch Daniels couldn’t convince his family. Chris Christie decided, probably wisely given his often anemic approval ratings in New Jersey, that he wasn’t ready. Sarah Palin didn’t want to have to work. Haley Barbour was smart enough to cop to the fact that a fat white man from Mississippi challenging the nation’s first black president was terrible optics. And all of them saw what happened to the money supply when others tried to tap the same fat cat money base Mitt Romney has had sewn up for two years. You remember Tim Pawlenty, right? Jon who?

For the same reasons, none are about to jump in at the last second. Plus, they all value their chances in 2016 too much.

And, so, the Republican field is what it is: no conspiracy necessary. But Limbaugh is correct that the GOP powers that be are in full panic mode over the emergence of Newt Gingrich. Romney and Gingrich (and Santorum and Ron Paul, for that matter) don’t match up well against Obama, but for different reasons. Romney, with all his millions in SuperPAC money, still can’t buy enough consultants and Madison Avenue magic to fool people into thinking he’s authentic. He’ll say anything to convince people of it, true, but he’s never had a real emotion in his life – his public life, anyway – and the GOP crazies know he’s not one of them. Not to mention that whole Mormons descended from ancient aliens thing, and that Romney himself may well have been an anchor baby. Willard is a bizarre combination of plastic panderer and smug, unapologetic banner-carrier for the one percent. And, it turns out, he’s also an inept campaigner. No wonder the base hates him.

Gingrich, on the other hand, is a skilled server of red meat to the GOP base – but has extraordinarily high negatives among everyone else. You need a good chunk of that everyone else to win the White House.

And, so, panic. Romney doesn’t excite anyone, and unless he taps a so-far-not-seen flair for connecting with, well, anyone, Obama will probably beat him. But the GOP establishment panic comes because the more volatile Newt is more likely to drive people to vote against him. They see their chances at winning the Senate and even keeping control of the House as much lower with a Gingrich nomination.

And, so, with the regularity of a stopped clock, Rush is right on this one. The big money and elected officials who traditionally run the GOP really are going to pull out all the stops to torpedo Gingrich. But Rush is wrong that they want to lose. Quite the opposite: unlike His Flatulence, they know that the special brand of craziness that the GOP has become is, fortunately, still a recipe for slaughter in a general election. They’d rather not go there. Even if it means nominating a lameass like Willard Romney.

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