Conservative Donnybrook

Karl, I share your gloom about this. I haven’t thought as much about the need to curb the inevitable excesses and corruption that would stem from an alternative right’s hitting critical mass or taking over a major party because I feel (in my more pessimistic moods) that it would almost be a miracle if it achieved that level of success in the first place. On the other hand, the out-of-touch Republican party hasn’t exactly shown any signs of vitality lately, so perhaps it’s ripe for an insurgent challenge.

But there are some serious obstacles to building a movement. A lot of people who would form a natural constituency are in thrall to the Sean Hannitys of the world.  Freeper types regard libertarian and conservative dissenters from GOP orthodoxy with the same kind of special hatred that the old Stalinists had for breakaway leftists. Rush Limbaugh recently called for conservatives, when they next seize power, not to dismantle the State apparatus and return to our proper constitutional order, but this:

If they are going to bastardize the American system, if they are going to make this government large and powerful and intrusive, someday they’re going to lose it. But they’re going to lose it after having amassed all this power. We will control it, and we’re going to turn it right back against them. … It’s going to be a bigger, more powerful, stronger government — and we’re going to turn it against the left in ways they could have never imagined.

This is completely nuts. I don’t care what Limbaugh thinks, but a lot of the people we need to convince treat his words as gospel. There’s our biggest problem.