Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and I was observing the strange cyclical habit conservatives have when it comes to the people they embrace as their champions. At least since Reagan, when the GOP controls the White House most conservatives look to the President as the leader of the movement as well as of the party. Bush the Elder did not fit this role well at all, and it is not entirely coincidental that it was during his administration that Limbaugh gained his mass following, which the Clinton years then expanded. When the President is not a Republican or does not inspire loyalty among movement conservatives, as both Reagan and (rather more inexplicably) Bush did, it seems as if conservatives end up looking to their radio hosts and to Limbaugh in particular as their guide. It is not just that Limbaugh has a national audience and can communicate more effectively with many rank-and-file conservatives than can elected Republicans, but both they and he believe that this is how conservatives will re-emerge from the political wilderness.

Contra Frum, Limbaugh is not calculating that he will gain from continuing conservative failure, but mistakenly (and I think genuinely) believes that conservatives “have the blueprint” (as he is always saying) and that he, Limbaugh, will show them the way back. There is a widespread and quite wrong conservative interpretation of the present political moment as being very much like 1993, but where Clinton mistook a repudiation of Bush for an endorsement of an aggressive Democratic agenda it is the GOP that has misread what just happened last year. Most of the right seems to expect a replay of ’93-’94, and so are sticking to the same tactics that they used then (including the turn to Limbaugh and the return of Gingrich).

To use a pop culture analogy, Limbaugh and most conservatives believe he is something like the conservative movement’s Laura Roslin, but he is, in fact, their Baltar. As the plot of that story suggests, however, even if he were Roslin the destination to which he is leading conservatives may be a barren wasteland rather than the far green country they expect to find.

P.S. Conservatives seem to have spent the last year rapidly regressing from cheering on lame politicians who could at least intelligently recite their platitudes (Romney) to worshipping pseudo-populists who could not even do that (Palin) to elevating random guys who didn’t like taxes (the Plumber) to rallying around a radio host who makes Romney’s own brand of Reagan nostalgia and three-legs-of-the-stoolism seem deep and meaningful by comparison. Of course, there isn’t that much substantively different between Romney’s opportunistic recitations and Limbaugh’s boilerplate, but at least with Romney you knew that he was capable of saying something else and would have said it if he had thought it was to his advantage. The boilerplate is not only all Limbaugh knows how to say, but if you pressed him to elaborate on any of it he would just repeat himself.

Update: See Reihan’s Forbes column for a less combative critical response to Limbaugh.

Second Update: Reading this John Hawkins post, I was reminded of my point the other day that “reformists” are currently the only game in town when it comes to developing a domestic policy agenda. This is inevitably what will happen when the only people inclined to adapt to changing political realities are those who already tend to be more moderate or meliorist in their views. The irony is that movement conservatives guarantee that they will become less and less relevant to shaping Republican policies if they ignore the need to adapt, and the very meliorist alternatives that they find so objectionable will win by default. To the extent that reformists are lamenting Limbaugh’s takeover, it is because they understand that the fortunes of reform conservatism rise or fall with the reputation of mainstream conservatism, and no amount of “tweaking” policy will make any difference if Limbaugh effectively brands the movement as one that is instinctively hostile to renovation and adaptation. I was tempted to describe Limbaugh’s speech on Saturday as the moment when movement conservatives hit rock bottom, but psychologically they have not yet reached capitulation. I’m not sure what more it will take, but apparently a few more defeats will be required before movement conservatives will begin adapting.