[onyx]

For 26 years, Rush Lim­baugh has insisted that con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, clearly and pas­sion­ately artic­u­lated, will win every time. By con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues Rush meant: God, coun­try, fam­ily, com­mu­nity, lib­erty, indi­vid­u­al­ism, per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, lim­ited gov­ern­ment, and free mar­kets. Rea­gan was the model, and the promise: it had hap­pened once, and could hap­pen again.


Easier said than done.


~snips~

The dif­fer­ence between Ted Cruz and Don­ald Trump is that Ted Cruz looks out at a crowd and sees him­self, while Trump looks into a mir­ror and sees the crowd. Trump may be crude, inar­tic­u­late, and occa­sion­ally boor­ish, but he looks back to an older, bet­ter Amer­ica, the essence of which is its peo­ple, its cit­i­zens, them­selves crude, inar­tic­u­late, and occa­sion­ally boor­ish; but who, like Trump, are ani­mated by a vig­or­ous spirit that, once unleashed, will make Amer­ica great again. Trump is the means; the vot­ers are the end.


For Cruz, the vot­ers are the means, and he is the end. When he sur­veys a crowd his eyes are full of cold cal­cu­la­tion. His con­ser­vatism is an exoskele­ton designed to get him over the bar­ri­cades. The rig is impres­sive, but can­not finally hide the pale, pasty, flabby milk­sop under­neath. In this case, the clothes do not make the man.


A film critic once wrote that Alfred Hitchcock’s great film “North by North­west”, was not about what hap­pens to Cary Grant, but about what hap­pens to Cary Grant’s suit. Told by a fan that he wished he were Cary Grant, Grant responded “So do I.” Grant was being overly dra­matic. In his case, the clothes did make the man; the Cock­ney Archie Leach finally was Cary Grant.


Not so for Rafael Edward Cruz. It did not have to end this badly. Had Cruz real­ized that con­ser­vatism is not a clearly artic­u­lated set of prin­ci­ples that must be imposed on a recal­ci­trant mass, but is instead the sys­tem­atized expres­sion of the yearn­ing of indi­vid­u­als and peo­ples, as flawed and imper­fect as they are, he might have been born aloft by the wave that is now car­ry­ing Don­ald Trump to the White House. Instead, blinded by ide­ol­ogy and self-regard, Cruz missed the wave, and is being left behind.


Rush was cor­rect — con­ser­vatism, prop­erly artic­u­lated, will win every time. But con­ser­vatism is more than a set of bul­let points. It is ulti­mately a form of trust, in peo­ple, and that, if left alone, they can man­age to get things right. Trump may not have all of the bul­let points in line, but the trust is there. Trust is the ulti­mate gift — if a can­di­date shows that he trusts the peo­ple, the peo­ple will trust him in return. Cruz finally could not trust, could not give, and so receives noth­ing back. And so he grasps at the only hand being held out to him, the cold, dead hand of the estab­lish­ment, that destroys every­thing it touches.

[Durbin]

“the only difference between Trump and Hillary Clinton is that Hillary has bigger hands.”

LOL

[DoughtyOne]

[AllAmericanGirl44]

Great recap to show why I’ve tuned Rush out...it’s one Trump hater after another that gets through on the calls. It’s booooring.