The Looming Limbaugh Syndrome

Ross calls Rush Limbaugh's latest diatribe against moderate Republicans "required reading for anyone seeking to understand one of the most powerful conservative narratives emerging around the looming GOP debacle." It is indeed:

When I saw the Weld thing today I smiled and I fired off a note to all my buddies and I said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! How can this be? How can this be?  This is the kind of guy that our candidate was supposed to be attracting, and we were supposed to be getting all these moderates from the Democrat Party," and we will, by the way. We're going to get some rank and file, average American Democrats that are going to vote for McCain.  But these hoity-toity bourgeoisie...

Well, they're not the bourgeoisie, but... Well, they are in a sense. They're following their own self-interests, so I say fine. 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.

It really does feel like the Tories in 1997. They got a thumping of a lifetime and yet they convinced themselves that they lost because they hadn't been hardline enough. And the actual remaining members of parliament, all in super-safe seats, marinated in their own juices and became more insular and blinkered before they lost again. And again. It's over a decade later and only now has the Tory party adjusted back to reality. Mercifully, American parties in the states and legislatures and Congress have more lee-way for finding and grooming new talent than British parliamentary parties. On the other hand, the British Tories never went so far off the cliff as to nominate a Palin.