How Conservatives Learned to Fight

                     How Conservatives Learned to Fight

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal 12/3/17

            There is one primary reason for the political divide that characterizes America today.  It isn’t President Trump or his tweets, nor our two political parties, per se; nor race, religion, or regionalism.

            The primary reason for the constant heated arguing is that both sides now have a platform from which to speak their piece.  This was not the case before cable television and Rush Limbaugh marched onto the stage of our political consciousness and firmly planted their flags.

            By both sides, I mean liberals and conservatives, though it’s clear these two labels are fading due to the rising populism/nationalism made manifest by Donald Trump’s election.  Before cable, Limbaugh, Fox News, and conservative talk radio, there was little fighting, essentially because there was no debate stage for conservatives to stand on to engage in philosophical battle.  Conservatives had no megaphone.

            ABC, CBS, and NBC reigned supreme. When these three big networks ruled the airwaves, practically all of their news anchors and reporters were FDR/JFK/LBJ/Clinton water boys.  Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, and Tom Brokaw weren’t exactly closet conservatives.  Their allegiances were just as obvious as are those of Wolfe Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, and Rachel Maddow today.   

During the decades of liberal media dominance, there were conservative voices, but they were muted.  William F. Buckley was an unrelenting undercurrent of conservative thought, but  despite his intellect and his stellar National Review magazine, he and his readers remained strangers in a strange land.

            Just as Barry Goldwater birthed Ronald Reagan, so did Buckley birth Rush Limbaugh.  In 1988 a liberal friend asked me if I had heard “that Limbaugh guy”.  I had not.

            “You’ll like him,” she added.  “He’s pro-life.”

            Hearing Limbaugh for the first time, I was surprised by joy.  Never on radio or television had I heard anyone challenge – and cheerfully, at that – the default philosophy of the media and higher education.  Although Reagan was in office in 1988, many Republicans were still merely Democrat lite, sadly resigned to the hold liberals had on the culture.

            Not that William Buckley wasn’t still trying.  But his greatest strength, his erudition, was also his greatest weakness.  Like his protégé, George Will (whose recent fall from grace would render the now deceased Buckley heartbroken), Buckley simply used too many big words.  Limbaugh used big words too, but he knew when his audience needed them broken down.

            By 1994 when Republicans gained control of the U.S. House for the first time since 1952, conservative voices were everywhere.  Goldwater’s stern face had yielded Reagan’s smile.  Buckley’s intellectualism had yielded Limbaugh’s common touch.  Newt Gingrich was offering hope by teaching conservatives how to fight.  What Buckley, Limbaugh, and Gingrich sowed, Donald Trump reaped. 

            The voice that really broke free conservative expression and started all the yelling between pundits of different persuasions was John McLaughlin and his PBS show, “The McLaughlin Group.”  Since then, we’ve been yelling.  At least television personalities have been.

             Friends have asked me if I am not bothered by Donald Trump’s past and his overly quick responses.  My answer is “Yes, but…”  George W. Bush, a man of class and dignity, suffered the slings and arrows of the media without saying much. So did Mitt Romney.  I always wished they would fight back as Trump does now.  Did they not see that the media engages in advocacy?

            Statesmanship doesn’t mean that an elected official should take everything that’s thrown at him or her.  Frankly, I enjoy seeing the media stars turned into pretzels by the President.  The first amendment grants to the media neither priesthood nor freedom from criticism, and President Trump is the first president I know of who has told them so. 

As the saying goes, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who have one.”  With technology in the palm of our hands, all of us now have free press, so why not use it?   FDR did just that with his radio “fireside chats,” bypassing and angering the press as well.

  Critics want Trump to be “proper” and “dignified,” yet, since the ‘60s the White House press corps has been everything but “proper” or “dignified.” 

Children and grandchildren of the ‘60s, having re-defined marriage, made abortion legal, and even created a new “gender” for us, may be gasping their last political breath.  If Mr. Trump can continue to frustrate them, I’m with him. 

Conservatives would best view Trump as their clear and present hope and acknowledge that sometimes you just have to fight.

Roger Hines

11/29/17