What Rush can’t admit is that the number of voters who subscribe to his definition of Conservatism has been shrinking, thanks to the half-arsed efforts of the Republican Party in trying to implement it. That pool of true-believers is now too small to win elections.
That, and that real conservatism CAN include something other than open-borders/free tradism.
I spoke with a Libertarian-leaning friend in TX who has a big business that does a lot of stuff overseas and I asked him if he was a “free trader or a fair trader.” He gave me a long reply but it came down to the fact that we don’t have free trade, that we are hugely regulated as are our competitors. So when he sells in Europe, he is at a huge disadvantage from their tariffs. He said under those circumstances, he was a “fair trader.”
Rush’s version of ‘conservatism’ is heavily skewed to the desires of the US Chamber of Commerce and the Wall St Journal editorial page.
But after a few decades of watching their jobs and job prospects leave the country the little people “who make the country work” have had enough of corporate boardroom conservatism and its apologists, Rush included.
And that’s why a patriotic economic nationalist like Donald Trump is clearing the board.