A Great Week for the GOP
Is conservatism recovering its balance? Three positive signs in this past week.
1) The Republican caucus accepted a deal to avert a government shutdown. The deal is a huge victory for governance Republicanism over talk radio conservatism.
2) Glenn Beck's show was canceled. There remains plenty of angry extremism on the airwaves: Limbaugh, Levin, and so on. But the collapse in Beck's ratings represents a heartening repudiation of John Birch society conspiracy-mongering by rank-and-file conservatives - despite the shameful attempt by Fox News to mainstream this junk.
3) Donald Trump shouldered aside Newt Gingrich in Republican primary preferences. This may not sound like good news but bear with me: It used to be that the person offering the Obama-is-African-not-American message to the Republican primary electorate was a former speaker of the House, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Fox News contributor: in other words, an eminent and respectable personage. Now Trump has stolen the Gingrich spotlight, knocked Gingrich out of the top 3. With the result that the bearer of the Obama-not-American message is a clownish TV personality in an absurd hairdo. That's progress. Birtherism is being quarantined within the GOP. Better if it were repudiated and extinguished, but although this week was positive, it was not miraculous.