All can concede that the purest strains of conservative media have prodded Republican members of Congress into unyielding, obstructionist positions. But what’s inherently wrong with that? Just because Republicans made deals with Democrats a generation ago when they were a minority party doesn’t mean they’re wrong to drag their feet now, when they have real power. To lift a quotation from Nigel Lawson, to govern is to choose. A party that acts unilaterally to prevent things from happening—government-mandated health care; the rewriting of immigration laws; the blocking of new taxes, et al.—is governing no less than a party that acts unilaterally to cause things to happen.
If conservative media is as powerful as Calmes posits, why can’t it discipline the 17 squabbling presidential candidates and unify the party behind its candidate? (Which would be who? Ted Cruz? Rick Santorum? Ben Carson?) If conservative media is so powerful, why has Speaker of the House John Boehner, who is as much a “governance” Republican as walks the planet, been able to cream two recent challenges to his leadership by hard-line conservatives? How did the conservative media ever allow the nomination of such mushy Republicans as John McCain and Mitt Romney? George W. Bush, anyone?
The conservative media possesses a megaphone, all right. You can hear it. I can hear. But it’s not so loud it’s going to drive the Republican Party deaf.
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