Rush Limbaugh has finally revealed his litmus test for a “true conservative.” It has nothing to do with conservative principles, or the consistency with which a candidate adheres to and applies them in word and deed. Limbaugh says Donald Trump is not a “true conservative” because he has attacked Ted Cruz, using the talking points of “the Republican establishment.”
And here I thought being a conservative had something to do with conserving the premises of God endowed right from which the American people derive their just claim to constitutional self-government. Or the extent to which an elected official, or candidate for elective office, proves faithful to the oath they must swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Or the courage with which they secure the integrity of the unalienable rights, material strength and just character without which the republican form of government the Constitution requires will not be sustained.
Not long ago Mr. Limbaugh was willing to take notice of the fact that “compared to Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump is not a conservative.” Even then, however, he highlighted what the two have in common, i.e., the adamant opposition of “the Republican Establishment.” The problem with this “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic is that it allows a shrewd enemy to choose your friends. That’s exactly what’s happening with Trump’s candidacy. In myriad ways the record of Trump’s business activities, political contributions and associates (like the Clintons, for example) more than justifies the presumption that his boisterous anti-establishment posturing is just a pretense. Given that record, it makes the most sense to assume that Trump is adapting the political strategy Bill Clinton pursued. Remember, the elitist faction media tools deceptively touted Clinton as a “more conservative” Democrat.
No wonder Trump called Clinton to get his take on whether Trump could successfully pose as a “conservative.” With this in mind, the overacted drama of his fisticuffs with Jeb Bush, Rubio and other GOP quislings must be taken with a measure of “methinks the lady doth protest too much” skepticism. (cf. Hamlet Act III, Sc. II) Therefore, it makes no sense to take what may be political stagecraft as evidence that Trump is a conservative in any sense at all.
These reflections force us to wonder about Rush Limbaugh’s reluctance to evaluate Trump’s supposedly conservative, anti-establishment political persona using anything like objective criteria. If he did, would any of the other GOP candidates withstand scrutiny? Not if every one of them has abandoned some indispensable pillar of America’s constitutional republic, some vital prerequisite of its survival.
Take the candidate Limbaugh held up as the sacred cow of his diatribe against Trump. Like Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and others, Senator Cruz appears to espouse the view that every Supreme Court decision, however plainly contrary to the Constitution’s provisions, is “the law of the land,” generally binding on the other branches and levels of government, no matter how conscientiously officials responsible for their administration reject it on Constitutional grounds.
This leads to the absurd notion that these officials must slavishly implement the Supreme Court’s decisions even when they conscientiously conclude that by doing so they forswear their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution; and/or surrender powers that the Constitution explicitly reserves to “the States, respectively, or to the people.” As founders such as Jefferson and Madison understood, such slavish obedience transforms the U.S. Government from a republican instrument, ultimately answering to the good will of the people, through their elected representatives; to a de facto tyranny. It permits a majority of five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to attack the moral and institutional prerequisites of the people’s independent will, with no effective resistance from the officials and institutions at the Federal, State and local level who should be bound by the oath they take to resist them.
So, insofar as Senator Cruz subscribes to the doctrine of judicial supremacy, I feel duty bound to criticize his view. Do I fail Rush Limbaugh’s test for a true conservative because I am attacking Ted Cruz? Probably not, since I am not using the talking points of the Republican establishment. In this case, Cruz agrees with the Establishment types. On the other hand, if Senator Cruz and his supporters attack me for citing his judicial supremacy stand as proof that he is unfit to be president, will their defense of the position Cruz shares with “the Republican Establishment” lead Mr. Limbaugh to declare Cruz et al are not “true conservatives”? But if Cruz, too is not a true conservative, would Donald Trump still be disqualified as such for attacking him?
Instead of wasting your time untangling that conundrum, just ask yourself if it wouldn’t make more sense to acknowledge that Trump, Cruz, Limbaugh and everyone else going along with the elitist faction’s sham party process serve an anti-conservative agenda intended, by hook or crook, to overthrow the liberty of the American people. From that perspective Obama, Hillary Clinton, et al are the poisonous stew that stinks of death for liberty. On the other hand, the cast and crew of the GOP’s elaborately staged theatricals are the poison pill, coated with colorful conservative rhetoric, and promises intended to work the gullible into a passionate lather. The pill is 99 percent pure, but the other 1 percent percent consists of one type of venom or another, guaranteed to bring the republic down.
While you’re considering this, take a moment to wonder why any member of the GOP’s cast of elitist faction characters can threaten to break with the Party (to mount what the media is pleased to call a “third party” bid) without being accused of insanity. But if the people themselves consider any alternative to the elitist faction charade, the thought is immediately dismissed as “un-American”, “crazy” and “impossible” — even if that alternative strictly corresponds to what the Constitution’s provisions plainly envisage.
Could it be that the “third party” line is a ploy, meant to keep people from grasping the simple truth that the only two parties that actually exist are the elitist faction and the people. And the whole point of the twin-party sham is to facilitate the permanent subversion of the Constitution by preventing the people from uniting, as such, to reassert their prescribed Constitutional role as the sovereign arbiter of government power, humanly speaking, in the United States.
If and when that permanent subversion of their sovereignty is complete, the American people will awake, at last, in darkness, like the bounty hunter Marlon Brandon plays in “The Missouri Breaks.” And the voice of the swelled head chosen, like the Wizard of Oz, to represent the virtual triumph of their elitist masters will ask with ironic satisfaction: “You know what woke you up? You just had your throat cut.” The choice is simple, my fellow Americans: As a free people, we either wake up now or wake up dead.