One of Rush Limbaugh’s often-repeated observations that strikes me as true is that Republican presidents tend to have success when they are leading a conservative political movement. The great example of this is of course Ronald Reagan; the great supplementary example is Newt Gingrich, who had a great deal of success leading a conservative political movement not as president but as speaker of the House.
This is a useful observation for this moment, because Donald Trump is indisputably the leader of a national political movement. But he is not the leader of a national conservative movement.
This has real consequences in ways that are both obvious and subtle.
Consider the maddening inability of Republicans to put together a legislative package to repeal and replace the grievously misnamed Affordable Care Act. It was, for a long time, one of the most hated pieces of legislation in existence. Its poll numbers have improved as the prospect of a Republican replacement effort has come under slightly more serious consideration. What Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell cooked up in Congress was not all that inspiring, but imagine, arguendo, that it had been. Neither Ryan nor McConnell is especially popular within conservative circles (that does not make any sense to me, but it is true), and it is difficult to imagine either man as the one who goes out to into the theater and makes the case to the people that this is a terrific health-care package that deserves their support. At the moment, Ryan and McConnell are focused on selling policy ideas to other congressional Republicans. And Trump, being Trump, is focused on himself. Even if he understood the policy questions under consideration — perhaps Andrew Jackson could offer him some advice, as apparently he did Lincoln after Gettysburg — he isn’t going to be the national salesman for a conservative political agenda. For one thing, he isn’t a conservative. For another thing, the only thing he knows about pitching, or cares about pitching, is Donald Trump Inc., whether that is manifested as a failed casino proprietorship or a failing presidency.
One of the keys to the Republican victories of the 1980s was that Ronald Reagan was more popular than Reaganism. That meant that while he was on his way toward doing popular things such as cutting taxes, he could also do hard things, like staying the course on an anti-inflation program that induced a painful recession that hurt his political standing significantly while it lasted. And Reagan could sell Reaganism as a matter of broad principles — government is too big, too expensive, and too bossy; the Soviets need to be defeated rather than contained — even if it was not especially popular in every jot and tittle.
Republicans have two problems with health care: One is that so long as they want to keep replicate Obamacare’s coverage for preexisting conditions, they have to replicate a great deal of the rest of Obamacare, too. Another is that there is no conservative figure on the national scene who has the principles, the knowledge, and the political skill to forge a usable consensus making conservative health-care reform a politically viable project in the short term. The second problem is not limited to health care; it threatens to stall the entire Republican agenda, in spite of the Republicans’ commanding political position.
Because conservatives are obliged to act through the Republican party, the Republicans’ selection of a leader who is not only non-conservative but who is in many ways anti-conservative means that while conservatism is not without intellectual leadership it is effectively without national political leadership.
There are a great many Republicans who should have taken Rush Limbaugh’s observation into account.