the future of conservatism: mote in your eye or beam in mine?

There are the Bush apologists, the ones whose glaring inconsistencies stretch all the way to blaming Obama for our economic crisis while excusing Bush, and there is a whole crowd of people who think that sounds about right. There is Joe the Plumber, who has championed willful ignorance to a disturbing degree with his thoughts on Obama and Israel. Acting as general for these crusaders is Rush Limbaugh, the (mostly) unchallenged voice of the GOP.

The Republican Party took a hesitant step out of the wilderness in picking Michael Steele as its new chairman. He's black, duh (black=hope). Seriously though, he quickly laid out plans for pitching the GOP to a black, urban population. He was thinking beyond the white men who conceal who-knows-what motivation behind folksy, paper-thin tautology ("You can't sell principles; either you have them or you don't." -Joe the Plumber). Implicit in this strategy is the acknowledgment that the Republican Party, instead of everyone outside the Republican Party, might have something to do with losing the last two election cycles.

Limbaugh et al. are naturally on the other side of the fence. It quickly came to a head as Steele criticized Limbaugh as an "entertainer" who has said some "incendiary" and "ugly" things. Which would it be, GOP? Self-awareness and self-improvement? or beligerent irrelevance?

The GOP chose belligerent irrelevance. Steele quickly backtracked on his comments and paid homage to Limbaugh.

Maintaining a unified front doesn't necessarily mean being belligerent. In this case it does. It means continuing to ignore the central inconsistency of modern conservatism, namely championing economic freedoms while restricting social ones. Libertarians and the religious right rallied together in the 70s against the threat of communism, and Republicanism has chosen to continue to band together against a perceived threat.

The "irrelevance" part comes from the fact that the perceived threat has become crudely identified as "not us." This is how Sarah Palin convinced some that she was against earmarks after she accepted what became the symbol for all earmarks, the "Bridge to Nowhere." This is how Joe the Plumber is able to opine with a straight face that journalists shouldn't report from war zones AS HE WAS REPORTING FROM A WAR ZONE. The GOP has become so accustomed to external enemies that it's begun to think of itself as blameless. And now Michael Steele, in venturing to say that the GOP could maybe sort of think about doing something differently, is feeling the beginnings of mutiny. Criticism of the GOP, or even failing to rail against the rest of America for your own shortcomings, marks you as one of "them."

No, no, it's the media's fault. Not that the GOP will do anything about it except whine about the New York Times and continue to tune in to Glenn Beck. After all, they don't need to change, no matter how many elections they lose.

As much as I like ragging on the Republican Party, the Democrats do the same thing when they're down. Our rigidly bipartisan system tends to make the minority party into mere naysayers and armchair quarterbacks, insulated from a need to critically evaluate themselves by a dearth of competition. But of course, voting for a third party is throwing away your vote, because everyone else is wedded to one of the two big parties and third parties can't get a foothold. Oh wait, 30% of Americans identify themselves as independents.

Back to the GOP now, the hollowness of their newly embraced platform is most evident in this video, where the Republicans' braintrust, Rush Limbaugh, cynically discusses the formula for making talk radio hay. God be with us.