You can't spend five minutes listening to conservatives talk without hearing someone invoke the word elite. Rush Limbaugh rails against the Washington elite while Newt Gingrich has received remarkable electoral traction with his attacks on the elite media. Meanwhile Mitt Romney has used his status as a Washington, DC outsider as a selling point against Messrs Santorum and Gingrich who are of course Washington insiders, and by extension elite.
Digging deeper it is difficult not to notice a chasm of discourse between bombastic populists like Mr. Limbaugh and the conservative punditry who write columns and appear on news shows. I have been particularly struck at the reaction received by attention to social issues. Not even a decade ago it was the top Republican operatives in Washington who used gay marriage as a rallying cry to turn out voters for George Bush's reelection. Today none of the Washington crowd--including former Bush aides--want anything to do with Rick Santorum's firebrand stances on social conservatism. Running against sex and college--as Mr. Santorum has--is not a message most Republican commentators and Washington insiders want anything to do with. Naturally this makes them elitists.
I have written before about the problems with the permanent political establishment. This entire discussion about the elite is part of the same argument, and it is clearly a timely one. Congress is wildly unpopular, economic times are tough, voters are frustrated if not outright angry. It should be a good time to be anti-elite. Which is why I think it is time for the entire Republican apparatus to disestablish itself. I don't mean dissolving the party, I mean disassociating itself from anything elite.
Here are a few modest proposals:
