David Brooks and Ross Douthat are sober, serious men who don’t overstate their case. I disagree with them (especially Douthat) more often than not, but I almost always take them seriously.
Both of them wrote columns in the NYT this week in which they reminisced fondly about a conservative intellectual golden age in which the rank and file were persuaded by their good shepherds to support limited, not swaggering, government. The wolves of white nationalism were thus kept under control. As the story goes, the good shepherds were outcompeted by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity in a new media marketplace that provided lots of new outlets. It is, therefore, the duty of the shepherds to regain their dominance of the flock by providing an ideological alternative which meets the concerns of the white working class without serving up a steaming side dish of bigotry.
Parts of this story are true (most notably, the race to the bottom), but mostly, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe that white car dealers in Mississippi spent any time reading the National Review in the 1980’s. Reagan still has the hold on the party that he does because he connected with the voters with his swaggering. Coded racism was always a big part of the GOP’s message; Trump’s “accomplishment” is to lay that bare.
The bottom line is that there is a huge disconnect between the Douthats of this world and the average GOP voter. The leadership does not appear to have a solution to the pandering/race to the bottom problem. Maybe some intellectual titan will emerge who can earn the respect of both the tax cutters and the reactionaries, but I don’t see one on the horizon. The bridge has been burned; it will take years to rebuild it.