Rush addressed this blog post yesterday. He said he’s “not opposed to policy,” while arguing that policy has to flow from principle. Of course, he’s right. But Rush also said that policy will more or less inevitably follow from our principles. This is more doubtful.

If our principle is that the tax burden should be as light on people as possible, that doesn’t necessarily tell us whether it’s best to try to cut the income tax or the payroll tax, to go for a flat tax or a family-friendly tax reform emphasizing a bigger child tax credit, etc. All these things have to be carefully thought through, and they involve many considerations–including political ones.

I think Rush is wrong to insist we shouldn’t think about how our proposals will affect specific voting blocs. We have to guard against this becoming rank special-interest politics, but crafting your policy to help you appeal to big, strategically crucial parts of the voting public—the middle class, independents, investors–is an inevitable part of forging a majority. How did “Reagan Democrats” come about after all?

I think Rush both over-romanticizes Reagan and doesn’t give him enough credit. He portrays Reagan as someone who simply instinctively believed a conservative philosophy, and then everything else fell into place. But Reagan had his wonky side. I remember WFB telling a story of a late-night conversation with Reagan about inflation. After Bill retired for the evening, Reagan stayed up, further elucidating his views on the CPI in a hand-written letter he slipped under Bill’s door. When it came to the Soviets, Reagan had very firm convictions, but he also adjusted his policy as the Cold War endgame developed.

Anyway, I think there’s a lot of talking past each other going on here. What Rush really objects to is people who are out to fundamentally transform conservatism. He’s pounding away at them–and he should. But let’s not discourage legitimate internal debate and creative thinking–it took a lot of argument and experimentation to arrive at what has been handed down to us as the tablets of conservative policy circa the 1980s. We need that process again.

Final two points: 1) WFB, the very model of learned conservatism, loved Rush Limbaugh, as Jay pointed out today. Remember that when some conservatives tell you we have to shun Limbaugh to recapture the conservatism of WFB. It’s nonsense. 2) Rush has been proven correct in his estimation of Barack Obama’s radicalism. Rush nailed him better than many of those on the right who consider themselves his intellectual betters. So I think some modesty would be in order on the part of his critics.

UPDATE

E-mail (a good point):

In your post you say the following: “If our principle is that the tax burden should be as light on people as possible, that doesn’t necessarily tell us whether it’s best to try to cut the income tax or the payroll tax, to go for a flat tax or a family-friendly tax reform emphasizing a bigger child tax credit, etc. All these things have to be carefully thought through, and they involve many considerations—including political ones.”
I may be misunderstanding the use of the terms principle and policy.
The way I view it is that principles are far deeper than the desire to have lower taxes. The lowering of taxes seems to be a particular policy that would stem from the principles of a) preserving the freedom of individual citizens, and b) preserving the property rights of individual citizens. The debates you seem to be suggesting of flat tax vs payroll tax seem to me focus on mechanisms by which these policies can be implemented.
I believe (and think that Rush believes so as well), that debates of over implementation/mechanism are worth having. But the founding principles guide the policy objectives that these mechanisms are meant to achieve.

E-mail (I agree, by the way, that there’s not much to disagree about):

…As you yourself would acknowledge, I believe, Rush is more inspirational and thematic than wonkish. He is not someone who spends a lot of his time providing detailed policy proposals, although he is not uncomfortable at all engaging in policy debates, or he would not have invited President Obama to a debate on his program. His newsletter and his previous books are, indeed, full of policy proposals and some quite detailed. In the transcript which you reference, Rush as much as admits that ” . . there have been people working deep down with the sleeves rolled up on the intricacies of the operation (welfare reform) and how to implement it. . . ” and he acknowledges that theirs (policy wonks) usefulness and necessity. Rich, I also think that you are right when you suggest that Rush may fail to clearly articulate and acknowledge the need for honing our policies, grounded in conservative principles, in such a way as to effectively direct them at strategically significant voting blocs. I think in this regard, he is just very concerned about what you have so righly characterized as “rank special interest politics” – seeing individuals as members of groups and not as Rush sees every one of us — as his very special and beloved INDIVIDUAL AMERICANS –those non-hyphenated Americans TR wrote about.
In all honesty, Rich, I believe that there is very little in your comment with which Rush would disagree except your comment about his romanticizing Reagan. In this regard, he waxes lyrical about The Gipper because he was so outraged by comments from some other conservatives (especially David Brooks, I think) who said the era of Reagan was over. He went through the roof and proclaimed: “Do liberals ever say the the era of FDR is over?”…

E-mail (I haven’t checked any of these numbers):

You ask how the Reagan Democrats came about?
A lot of them were in response to the absolute dismal performance of the economy under Carter. After 4 years of watching a democrat drive the economy into the ground, not to mention a completely feckless foreign and military policy with regards to the USSR, and especially the hostages in Iran, coupled with the fact the party was very split in the 80 primary between Carter and Kennedy and never really reconciled, that had a lot to do with it.
It was a lot different when Reagan came along after 4 years of Carter and offered a new program in conservatism that had never really been tried before. Neither Nixon or Eisenhower offered conservatism in the Reagan mold. So, after 4 years of failure under Carter at home and abroad, not to mention the fact that many voters still recalled the horrors and implosion of liberalism in the late 60s under LBJ, Reagan’s approach had a lot going for it.
It would have been a lot different for him, if like McCain last year, he had come along after 8 years of what was seen by many as a failed Presidency under a conservative administration and was promising by and large the same program. I doubt he’d have won in that scenario. In 2008, Obama was basically the Reagan figure who came along when the country was fed up and promised a totally new direction.
And keep in mind there were already a lot of democrats voting Republican. In 1976, Ford, even after Watergate and the pardon, and a pretty bad economy of his own still got 20% of Dems against Carter. Reagan got 27% of them in 80 and 26% in 84. Given those numbers and what Ford got, I’d think just about any GOP nominee in 1980 would have gotten around 25-27% the dem vote. If that NH debate had gone a tad differently we might be talking about Bush democrats or Connally democrats. By contrast Bush got 11% of dems in 2000 and 2004.
The parties are much more loyal nowadays. for all the talk of Obamacans he got about the same amount of Republicans that Gore did in 2000 and Dukakis did in 88, and less than Clinton did in 96 or 92, or Carter did in 76 or 80. Similarly with Obama getting all these conservatives. Again, not so. He got 20%. The same # as Clinton in 96. Dukakis in 88 got 19% and even Mondale in the uber year of 84 got 18% of conservatives against Reagan.
So, if 2012 looks much like 1980 and Obama ends up looking much like Carter, I suggest we may see quite a bit of Romney democrats or Palin democrats or Jindal democrats or whoever…not really because of anything they do but more in reaction to the failures of Obama…