I will admit to never being much a fan of conservative talk-radio or Fox News. Nor am I huge on most political punditry. For certain there are some writers whose opinions I respect (Charles C.W. Cooke, Kevin D. Williamson and a handful of others) but, for the most part I don't put much faith in the ramblings of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or, especially, the walking bag of racism and stupid that is Ann Coulter.
The important thing to remember about most of these people is they are entertainers first, capitalists second and exhibitionists third. They can at times offer up some good, entertaining conservative writing or they can offer up thoughts that can only be classified as bat-shit crazy. They exist to make money (not a bad thing) and increase ratings (again, not a bad thing). What they are not intent on doing is forwarding, at all costs, conservative dogma.
Because of this I'm less than shocked to see most of them abandon conservatism and move behind Trump as his candidacy gains momentum. If you've paid much attention to them, and their business models, this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise.
Trump is good for ratings. His histrionics draw both eyes and ears to television and radio broadcasts throughout the conservative entertainment network. Fox News, Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, et. al could care less who wins any election. As a matter of fact they benefit when the Democrats are in the White House. President Obama and his assaults on so-called "traditional American values" is better for business than is President Mitt Romney and fiscal sanity and competence. Competence doesn't energize the base and drive book sales. (Also, it's much harder to write a book about paying down debt then it is to write about the loony left and the dangerous things they do.)
When contained to the sphere of cracking on the opposition this is all fairly benign stuff. It's the right's version of Paul Krugman (the clown) banging away at increased deficit spending and declaring all and sundry on the right to be idiots. In the end, it doesn't hurt anything and provides low-information fodder for the base to digest before the next round of political fundraising occurs.
When that's happening the two parties (Yes Democrats, your side does it too) turn a blind eye to some of the crazier things said because hysterical, apocalyptic rantings are good for the party coffers. People are more likely to donate to the treasury during times of war, or after they are told that there is a war on Christianity, and the political entertainment industry is very good at stoking those fears.
The problem, for the GOP especially, is when the carnival barkers become the main voice in the room, when their Step Right Up! entreaties become the main sound that the electorate is hearing. This is when the core messages (reduction of the regulatory state, restoration of the rule of law, Constitutionalism) become lost in a sea of bile, racism and ignorance.
Then you have the problem of a weakened party. A party that has lost, or turned away from, those core principles in exchange for fealty to a patronage system which has rigged the game against everyday Americans, and set the GOP down an unsustainable path. With this party, and these fractured messages, the core siren of conservatism gets drowned out by populist, and nativist howling. Building a wall and making Mexico pay for it creates more coin for the realm than does forcing the Country to live within it's means.
The continuing problem for the GOP is this. A party that can no longer clearly communicate its core message to voters is no longer a party at all. It's a collection of special interests continually vying for a bigger piece of the government pie. The Democrats have seemingly accepted this and more importantly learned to control it. The difference between the two parties is that (for the most part) voters who lean left find this acceptable (provided their side is at the trough) while GOP voters (ostensibly) do not.
The anger directed toward the GOP, and embodied within the #NeverTrump movement (full disclosure, I'm a #NeverTrump guy if you haven't figured that out) is a natural reaction to a party that speaks out of both sides of its mouth. The GOP preaches about the rule of law, Constitutionalism and limited government while implementing and supporting policies that do just the opposite. Party heads such as Reince Priebus, Mitch McConnell and (formerly) John Boehner were quite happy defending Statist (and somewhat Corporatist) positions, provided their side was given a position at the trough.
Despite all of this, suggesting that the GOP is D.O.A. is not entirely accurate. While I'm titling this series #PostGOP even I don't think that the party is going to fully dissolve. What I do see is a diminished GOP that functions, on a National level, much like the Texas Democratic Party. A Trump nomination has the potential to be a disaster for the down-ballot races and could threaten conservative majorities in both the Senate and the House.
Of the root causes for this the most recent is the party's reliance on the squishy entertainment class to forward the message. There are other root causes to be sure (for one, the Democrats message a LOT better than does the GOP, for two, leadership is weak, ineffectual and rotten) but none is on more prominent display right now than the intellectual kiddie-pool that is Fox News, so-called conservative talk-radio and the newly minted collection of web-sites, pod-casts and internet broadcasts that I call DigiCon. (Digital Conservatism. See what I did there)
In order for conservatives to thrive going forward there's going to have to be a commitment to improving the message pertaining to the core issues. In large part, that means finding a group of pundits who have real conviction, and continually holding their feet to the conservative flame. Of course, before any of that can happen the current crop should be, mostly, required to just go away.
