The Roar of the Unwashed

 

C. Edmund Wright at American Thinker:

... what the voters are craving in the debates and on the stump is someone who can look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them why we are right and they are wrong.

The American conservative base has had to put up with being called stupid, racist, greedy and unfair for decades by not only the Democrats but the vast majority of the media.  The pent up frustration of these decades is magnified by the fact that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain would not or perhaps could not confront this. 

In fact, rare is the Republican candidate at any level who refuses to put up with this and fights back.  When they do, they become sensations.  Even Chris Christie and Donald Trump -- neither one a real conservative -- earned the love of the Republican base by simply deigning to fight back.  Marco Rubio and Allen West are far more popular and well known than they have any right to be simply because they refuse to accept the argument on liberals' terms.  They fight.  They elicit the roar.

Which brings us back to the crowd roar in South Carolina.  In Myrtle Beach and Charleston combined, there were probably 3-4 thousand folks total in attendance.  Now while that is not significant in and of itself -- consider that every day we look at polls with far fewer folks and consider them gospel truth on everything from elections to mouthwash....

Yet the elites ignored the roar.  After all, the roar came from the unwashed. It came from the fans of cockfights.  It came from tea party folks and other such rabble.  Inside the sterile cable studios and on their laptops, the pundits scored their debate and their election prospects without the roar.  They have their little formulas about who has to raise doubts here and who has to score points there.

What they don't understand is what the roar means.

The roar is passion.  The roar is intensity.  The roar is pent up frustration.  The roar, put another way, is the national mood of conservatives.  It is a roar that will demand a fighter.  It will demand that those who want our votes must not cower in the face of the liberal template.  If fact, it is a roar that demands that we do not accept any liberal templates.

That's why Newt has gotten all the roars, and why he has vaulted into serious contention only days after being written off....

 

At the Daily Beast, Paul Begala pegs the reaction of the Republican Ruling Class:

 

Reactions to Newt Gingrich’s stunning and impressive victory in the South Carolina primary form a symphony. First, of course, we hear the cheers of South Carolina Republicans who have chosen their champion. From Ronald Reagan in 1980 through John McCain in 2008, the winner of this primary has always gone on to be the Republican nominee.

Then, of course, we can hear the buttons popping from Newt Gingrich’s shirt as his ego swells to Macy’s parade size. If you listen carefully, you can hear the soft sobs of Mitt Romney and his consultants, crying in their chocolate milk.

But above it all we can hear the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth of the Republican establishment as Gingrich’s victory sends them into full-blown panic. I’m not talking about mere fear, nor normal nervousness. Not even the feeling you get when the captain says, “We’ve lost power in one of our four engines.” No, this is worse. Worse even than when your doctor says, “I don’t like the looks of that shadow on the X-ray.”

This is terror. Chest-clutching, breath-sucking, soul-shaking panic. This is your teenage daughter telling you, “I think I’m in trouble.” This is a Turkish border guard pulling you into a holding room when you’ve got a baggie of coke in your pocket. This is what George H.W. Bush famously called “deep doo-doo.”

The Republican Party has never seen anything like it. Republicans are hierarchical, orderly, disciplined—everything the Democrats are not. They nearly always nominate the guy who was runner-up last time: Ford beat Reagan, and Reagan got the next nod. Reagan beat George H.W. Bush, so Bush Sr. got the next turn. And then Bush beat Dole, who in turn was rewarded with the 1996 GOP nod. Then they got all wild and crazy and nominated the son of a former president, but then quickly reverted to form and nominated the guy he defeated, John McCain. And who did McCain beat? Mitt Romney....

 

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Funny, isn't it? The GOP establishment is in fear of being disestablished because one man excels at the most neglected subject in the entire curriculum these days: rhetoric. It's hard to find even five Americans who have ever studied rhetoric -- but, if Gingrich becomes our next president, historians will write that he did it largely because of his mastery of an almost-dead subject. Newt said it himself the other evening, when he told supporters that he's not a great debater, but that "I articulate the deepest-held values of the American people." Who knows? If Newt becomes president, we may even see rhetoric return to our schools. We could do much worse.

[scp]

South Carolina...again. "The roar" began in South Carolina.