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Who Needs Policy Ideas?

One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. ~Rush Limbaugh Not to worry–there seems to be no great danger of this “better policy idea” approach catching on anytime soon, but this is a practical suggestion that everyone who wants to heed […]

One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas right now. ~Rush Limbaugh

Not to worry–there seems to be no great danger of this “better policy idea” approach catching on anytime soon, but this is a practical suggestion that everyone who wants to heed Limbaugh’s words can follow. Yes, this is something you can do every day from the comfort of your own home. You can do this without getting up in the morning. Indeed, you can do this in your sleep, or perhaps even in a vegetative state. The latter would be the most appropriate condition in which to do this, as the higher brain functions will have already ceased, and you will never become aware of just how unsuccessful an approach Limbaugh’s recommended course of action really is.

If we want to take it seriously, there are two ways to take Limbaugh’s statement. He is either saying that conservatives cannot possibly come up with better policy ideas, so there’s no point in trying, or he is claiming that policy ideas are entirely irrelevant to all of conventional American politics*. If he meant it in the first way, there are two options for conservatives: surrender or wait until Democrats fail and try to pick up the pieces. If he meant it in the second way, this would seem to be an endorsement of an even more intensified use of gimmickry, phony populist rhetoric and symbolic biography politics.

* I am willing to grant that policy ideas and issues generally are not as important as many of us would like them to be in determining electoral outcomes, and for many swing and late-deciding voters they have little role at all in influencing voting behavior, but it seems crazy for any movement that is at all concerned with electoral politics to ridicule the work of developing policies as something detrimental to electoral success.

Update: In one of those priceless moments, Limbaugh said near the beginning of his endless speech that the Preamble to the Constitution says that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” revealing the sort of historical and constitutional illiteracy I have come to expect from his sort. Naturally, the geniuses at CPAC gave him their Defender of the Constitution Award. This is what you get from people who so cherish the Constitution and Declaration that they cannot remember what phrases belong to which document.

Second Update: Another truly bizarre element of Limbaugh’s remarks is the idea that liberals are somehow lacking in optimism. Optimism has been a constant theme in Limbaugh’s rambling for years, but in light of Jindal’s oddly-framed speech (“the American people can do anything!”) there seems to be this weird trend in trying to outdo the Hopemonger himself in optimism. Of course, optimism is the very last thing we need, and we have had far, far too much already.

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