Yesterday was a bad day for conservatives in Kansas, and by extension nationwide. Dan Spencer had the breakdown earlier today of the extent to which the moderates and Chamber of Commerce types consolidated power in one of the most conservative states in the country. This was yet another example, following closely on the heels of the Republican convention itself, of how the Republican Party is using the depression and disarray caused within the conservative movement that has been caused by the Trump campaign to consolidate power in the party and marginalize actual conservatives.
A certain narrative has sprung up about the Trump phenomenon that conservatives have been unwilling or unable to counter. That narrative is that unreasonable conservative anger over Republican failure to achieve impossible goals is what led to the rise of Trump. There’s a surface-level appeal to this sort of argument, but it’s lazy and incorrect. It doesn’t even make factual sense – that voters who demanded an unreasonable amount of ideological purity would have been responsible for the least orthodox conservative in the entire field, a guy who had spent most/all of his life donating to Democrats and who openly mused about supporting Planned Parenthood, opposing the free market, raising the minimum wage, and speaking out both sides of his mouth on virtually every issue.
Here’s what’s probably true: hard-line conservative anger (reasonable or not) is what led to the refusal of conservative voters to consolidate behind someone who would have been better suited than Ted Cruz to appeal to the moderate Republican voters who were needed to stop Trump. I’m not here to re-litigate the primaries, but I think in prior years, without the simmering anger that has been building since at least 2004 with the fecklessness of the Republican primary, many voters would have been more willing to overlook Rubio’s relatively mild deviations from conservative orthodoxy and unite behind him as the best candidate to confront Trump in the more moderate post-Super Tuesday states.
More:
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/08/03/kansas-prim
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What really angers me is the false narrative that conservatives elected Trump. Yes, some did and are still on his bandwagon. However, looking at the numbers, conservatives overwhelmingly supported Ted Cruz, but with crossover voting of democrats, Trump won. Trump won with between 10-12 million democrat votes, which translates to less than half the republican votes that Cruz won. Cruz had over 8 million republican votes.
Yes, Trump is taking down the GOP, but also the conservatives because, instead of uniting and saying that he is undesirable, they are joining themselves to him and will be destroyed in the aftermath of a Trump debacle. The GOP has no desire to close the primaries because it is more desirable to them to have democrats voting to make sure it destroys any ideological purism, something they have been trying to undo from the party’s platform the past century. We conservatives have always believed we could change the party from within. Utterly. Not. Possible. The elites are too well entrenched, have the money, the clout, the support of the democrats to destroy the conservatives. Better to start over again NOW and let the GOP implode.
Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem
Kansas Hasn’t been a conservative state since the ’80s.
Anyone who says he is a conservative, but supports Trump, is not a conservative.
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