Conservatism Inc.’s mouthpieces (“conservative intellectuals”—Rich Lowry?!!!) have made a last-ditch effort in National Review to frame the battle against Trump as a conflict between unprincipled “populism” and principled “conservatism” [Donald Trump or Ted Cruz? Republicans Argue Over Who Is Greater Threat, by Jonathan Martin, New York Times, January 21, 2016]. You won’t hear this from us often, but Salon has a pretty good demolition job. The bottom line: the late Samuel T. Francis has been redeemed.
It was nothing less than historic when talk radio titan Rush Limbaugh respectfully quoted Sam Francis on January 20, saying he was “undeservedly smeared” as a white supremacist. Limbaugh claimed “populism” and “nationalism” have overcome “conservatism” in terms of popularity and that Donald Trump is building a new kind of coalition on the American Right [Nationalism Trumps Conservatism Says Limbaugh, WND, January 20, 2016]
Significantly, rather than falling back on lame slogans about how “true conservatives” need to stamp out this rebellion, Limbaugh actually sought to understand why it is happening, turning to Sam Francis’s discussion of the Pat Buchanan insurgency in a 1996Chronicles article, From Household To Nation. And Limbaugh used Francis’s analysis to attack a GOP Establishment that he chargeddoes not understand its own voters.
Limbaugh argued ordinary conservative voters aren’t “wonks” who are “dyed-in-the-wool conservative theoreticians absorbed in such things as the free market and all these other bells and whistles.” Instead, they’re attracted to someone willing to actually confront and defeat the Left, after years of what voters see as continuous retreat in Washington DC.
Perhaps most importantly, Limbaugh specifically identified the refusal of the GOP to do anything about Open Borders as the catalyst for voters’ anger. [Understanding Trump’s appeal, Rush Limbaugh, January 20, 2016]
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Trump’s ... success confirms a more general point: Republican voters don’t vote for the GOP because of goofy rhetoric about enterprise zones and Social Security reform, but despite it.
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