All explicitly supported him in the name of conservatism.
Now Jeb Bush says that Republicans have to stop Trump lest conservatives lose control of the GOP. And Limbaugh is rejecting a Bush who is no less conservative than his brother, insisting that establishment guys like him want to destroy Trump out of disdainful elitism, even though Trump has been uniquely successful building a coalition out of the ostensibly conservative voters that constitute the GOP’s core.
.. But for now, Trump remains the man to beat, even halfway through January 2016, and that tells us something: A large part of the GOP base supports a man who has never been an ideological conservative, and is less conservative than many of his rivals, because ideological conservatism is relatively unimportant to it.
In this, they resemble their favorite radio host.
Without admitting it to himself, more fully than ever before in his long political-talk career, Limbaugh has abandoned conservatism as his lodestar. All else being equal, he still prefers the ideology. But it’s now negotiable. He’d rather have a non-conservative nominee who attacks and is loathed by the Republican establishment than a conservative who is conciliatory and appealing to moderates.
And Trump was uniquely suited to bring him to this point.
.. It’s no wonder that Limbaugh likes Trump. The talk-radio host also got fantastically rich selling ego, bombast, and brazenness to the masses, elitist tastemakers be damned. They’ve both been used by politicians who don’t, in truth, have much respect for them.
.. The DJs who sound so suave and confident were usually not seen that way when they were growing up. Even the most successful disc jockeys have usually had to move from city to city every few years. Limbaugh’s early life sounds as if it fit this pattern. Moreover, he was by objective standards a failure well into his thirties. He was fired from several DJ jobs, had two short and unsuccessful marriages, was chronically broke, and spent five long years as a public-relations man for the Kansas City Royals, fearing that his radio career was over.
.. Limbaugh could mock liberals and “feminizes” on the air, but in person he was (Dowd made clear) very eager to be liked.
.. his tremendous success on the radio didn’t translate into the sort of respect or influence or deference or validation that he had once imagined it would. I don’t think lack of pedigree is high on the list of reasons that Limbaugh is disliked so intensely by so many, but I can see why he would tell himself that story.
.. But rather than carry no water this cycle, Limbaugh is carrying a lot of it for Trump, as if seeking validation from him will go any better than it did when he sought it from Bushes.
.. And Limbaugh is right that Bush doesn’t dislike Trump due to a lack of conservatism. Bush dislikes Trump because he’s a crude, thrice-divorced bully with no sense of propriety or noblesse oblige. Trump is antithetical to Bush’s values and manners. As a kid, Barbara never would’ve allowed him to play with a boy like that!
.. But Limbaugh seemingly no longer believes in the Buckley rule. He no longer considers conservatism the most important factor in elections. The impulse to destroy the establishment drives him more than any constructive vision. If Limbaugh can antagonize the Bushes, the mainstream media, the Hollywood liberals and the GOP establishment all at once by aligning himself with a Sarah Palin or a Donald Trump, the opportunity is too good to pass up, because Limbaugh is less invested in winning some ideological battles than fighting a culture war.
.. Like all successful reality TV, half the audience is watching in horror and the other half in aspiration.
“He gets criticized for being low-key, but as a farmer I try to stay low-key and not get easily wound up,” said Gary Schroeder, who heard Mr. Bush speak on Monday night in Goose Lake, Iowa. “After 40 years of farming, I like that.”
Mr. Schroeder shook his head at Mr. Bush’s predicament, saying: “You wouldn’t think with all the money, he’d be sitting at 4 percent.”
.. But his expressions of confidence can sound as though Mr. Bush is reassuring himself. “As people get closer, they’re going to want to know who has the leadership skills to actually be president, not to feed on people’s fears, not to turn a phrase in a way that gets people all riled up,” he said in Iowa, where the first votes in the nominating race will be cast in less than eight weeks. “We’re electing a president. And it’s a pretty serious job, and it requires serious leadership skills.”
.. One reason for Mr. Bush’s lack of traction, polling suggests, is that immigration continues to be a deal-breaker with the Republican base. Large majorities in both Iowa and New Hampshire say they will only choose a candidate who agrees with them on the issue — and those majorities do not share Mr. Bush’s support for a path to legal status for people in the United States illegally.
.. Mr. Bush’s sustained rough patch comes as his donors are set to gather in Miami this weekend for a quarterly retreat. Privately, donors and Bush supporters concede they are worried about Mr. Bush’s downward trajectory and had expected his numbers to start ticking up by now.
Mr. Rubio has aggressively embraced the cause of wealthy pro-Israel donors like Mr. Adelson, whom the senator is said to call frequently, and Mr. Singer, who both serve on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, an umbrella group for Republican Jewish donors and officials. Mr. Bush has been less attentive, in the view of some of these donors: Last spring, he refused to freeze out his longtime family friend James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, after Mr. Baker spoke at the conference of a liberal Jewish group.
The lobbying of Mr. Singer intensified in recent weeks as Mr. Bush’s debate stumbles and declining poll numbers drove many donors to consider Mr. Rubio anew. Last week, Mr. Bush’s campaign manager, Danny Diaz, and senior adviser, Sally Bradshaw, flew to New York to make personal appeals on Mr. Bush’s behalf, in the hopes of heading off an endorsement of Mr. Rubio, according to two people close to the former governor’s campaign.
.. Among Mr. Bush’s supporters after the debate, the tone was often one of despair, but it was rarely projected in public comments. Several of them said they took heart that Mr. Bush had acknowledged that he needed to be a more artful political performer in the weeks ahead.
Jeb Bush’s problems are temperamental and thus most likely permanent. He would probably be a very effective president. And he would have been a very effective candidate — but in 1956. These are harsher times.