One of his best friends runs the most powerful media organization on the right. He dined in the office of perhaps the most consequential Republican speaker of the House. When Republicans control the White House, Rush Limbaugh gets invited to stay over and socialize with the president. Now, not all of these people are what I would call close friends that I'm in daily contact with, don't misunderstand. Krauthammer I met at Tony Snow's funeral, for the first time. I've been the recipient of caustic phone calls from the Huckster, but that's all. (interruption) Well, the Huckster I've not really met. I can't mention some of the other people that were there, but there are other Fox News people I've met over the course of the show. But I've been at a strategy planning session with Chris Christie and some of his supporters way, way back. Who else in the presidential field? Chris Christie has called me enraged on the phone. “It’s very hard when you know everybody involved,” he began, “and when you consider them friends.” Then he spoke frankly about a number of his friends on the right. And the clearest illustration of why it is absurd came Wednesday on his radio show, when he was explaining to his listeners why it is difficult for him to cover the dispute among Donald Trump, Megyn Kelly, and the Fox News Channel. One can easily find figures who more fully embody “the Republican establishment” or “the ruling class.” It is nevertheless absurd for him to speak as if he somehow exists outside of this power system. Now, Rush Limbaugh isn’t the chair of the Republican National Committee. The Republican Party, whatever you want to call it, Republican establishment, the ruling class, I don't care what you want to call it, they are responsible for Donald Trump. ![]() “You know, the bottom line is, you know why there’s a Donald Trump? It's very, very simple. Does that surprise you? I am being blamed for Trump now,” he said earlier this week. “Now, as you will hear, I’m being blamed for Trump. And he always does so while holding himself apart, as if he’s describing a rival tribe. Every week he speaks about it on the radio with disdain. There is no one who rails against “the Republican establishment” more frequently than Rush Limbaugh. He added that “the lack of self-awareness blinds members of the ruling conservative counter-establishment to their complicity in the rise of Donald Trump.” And no sooner did he publish than a perfect illustration of his argument was broadcast to millions. The Iraq War and its outcome may be the most egregious and disgraceful example of such shirking, but it's not the only one.” ![]() “By thinking of themselves as perennially outside the Republican power-structure, members of the counter-establishment conveniently exempt themselves from the need to admit and learn from their own mistakes,” Linker writes. In this telling, the self-delusion of these movement conservatives contributed to many of the failures of the Bush years, Republican Congresses, and recent GOP primaries, who are very influential but feel no responsibility for good governance. But the insurgents who ultimately elected Ronald Reagan saw their movement grow so much in strength and influence that today, National Review, AEI, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and right-wing talk radio are simply part of the Republican establishment, even if that isn’t how they see themselves. Buckley and his co-ideologues were mounting an insurgency against the people who ran the country. They criticize “the establishment” as if it’s 1955, when William F. ![]() Prominent figures in the conservative movement are in denial about their actual role in American politics, Damon Linker argues in a thought-provoking column for The Week.
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