About ten years ago National Review put Limbaugh on the cover and called him the leader of the conservative movement. The irony is that by that time the conservative movement was essentially dead, and people like Limbaugh were merely Republican Party hacks and hangers on. This is another of the Reagan administration’s “accomplishments”: movement conservatives got too close to government, so close that they began to like it. They ceased offering principled conservative arguments aimed at nudging the government in their direction. Thus, Limbaugh’s “coronation” by Buckley signalled the end of genuine conservativism.
Evidence in support of this is a visit Jim Bennett and I made to the Heritage Foundation in 1985 to discuss our book, Destroying Democracy, with about two dozen Reagan appointees. The book was about the illegal use of tax dollars to fund partisan lobbying for bigger government. Every one of the “conservative” Reagan appointees said “we’re with you, but if we tried to enforce the law such a political stink would be made and we’d probably lose our jobs.” Some twentysomething smartass, know-it-all Heritage staffer lectured Jim and me like we were two idiot children on the strategy to keep these people in the government long after the Reagan administration was over. Well, it’s been over for sixteen years, and these people are probably still there, and the strategy has failed. This is what happens when you abandon principle to political careerism.
11:48 am on June 12, 2004
