Rush won’t admit the conservative movement was splintered since Bush ruined his golden opportunity to be a conservative president, which he was not. The tea party was never a united front. Rush thinks conservatives should just be one mindless block doing what some leader says without questions. The conservative movement is not dead but it is supporting Trump now. But in reality there were too many voices who tried to hijack it so splintered. The tea party groups were fighting each other tooth and nail all the time. It imploded due to bickering. Conservatives don’t see eye to eye sometimes. So it is not dead but fractured. The Cruzers are just sore that their guy lost. Trump is a commonsense conservative populist nationalist. He got backing from Palin, Sessions, Coulter and Arpaio to name a few conservatives.
-PJ
For me, it's not about aligning around my principles, it's about aligning around my goals. I can tolerate a less principled candidate as long as I think he's best positioned to achieve my goals. Of course, there is a minimum principles line I won't cross, but I don't think that Trump is anywhere near that line. But we have to win the election first for any of it to matter, and I don't think the "principled" Cruz has the general crossover appeal to win.So what are my goals? Right now, they are simple: first, build the wall; second, screw Mitch McConnell. We can go from there.
So who's in the best position to do that?
Of course "conservatives" are all over the map - they value individual independence and personal accountability. The TEA party was about taxes, broad agreement there. The party insiders co-opted the name, and bamboozled the public into putting resources where they would not advance the "smaller government" agenda.
-- The Cruzers are just sore that their guy lost. --
I think that's a mixed bag too. Many are true believers in Cruz's message, which was a good one and I subscribe to it; others are #Never Trump for various reasons (big overlap between that group and the first); and a minority are concerned because Cruz was their ticket on the gravy train.
I probably shouldn't pile on, but I will - I think Cruz was a phony and a con man. The sooner he fades into irrelevance, the better.
I have reasons for not seeing Trump as a bigtime con man, but I do accept that many see him otherwise. Mostly I choose to not interact with them.
I agree with much of what you said here, but if you think Rush believes that conservatives “should just be one mindless block doing what some leader says without questions”, then you don’t really understand what Rush is saying...