Going Over Their Heads

People like to say that Reagan beat the democrat-media complex by going “over their heads” straight to the American people.  Well that doesn’t mean just stepping in front of a microphone and holding forth.  Any fool can do that.  McConnell and Boehner are made of microphones and they never seem to get over anybody’s head.

A conservative must reject the progressive premises in order to be heard, or else he just sounds like them, and is beholden to them for meaning, and for reach.  If you accept what the progressives say, for instance that Latinos are going to vote democrat unless you beat democrats to the punch with amnesty, then all of your subsequent arguments are just progressivism in disguise.  You have to take the conservative approach of believing that people will rise to the occasion.  You have to give people credit for believing that which is true, and which we by conviction as American hold to be true.

Conservative principles, in the hands of leaders, will make the case.  Leaders don’t look at polls and decide what to say; they look at polls and decide what to fix.  If Latinos vote democrat, that isn’t because it’s in their DNA.  Despite cultural familiarity with institutional patronage and larger families which lead to a more familial view of society, Latinos are hard-working sons-of-bitches who know what a dollar is worth, what a man is worth, and do not confuse the two.

I have never been a Latino, so the closest I can get is thinking of the men and women I have worked beside, and later in life, whom I have had the privilege of leading.  To the extent that generalizations are possible, I have a mighty favorable impression of Latinos.  Treating them as if they are stupid or bound to vote by skin color is not going to win anything.  Likewise equating legal immigration with illegal immigration.  To the extent that Latinos favor amnesty, they are speaking from the cultural Marxism we all swim in nowadays.  There are plenty of white and black people who also favor amnesty, and we call them democrats.

Reagan went over the heads of the media by rejecting premises such as the “inevitability” of amnesty and the “necessity” for beating the democrats to it.  All that is is a chance to whitewash their fence in the hot sun while they sip lemonade in the shade.  Similarly, arguments that the social issues are killing us in elections, that conservatism is outdated, that reasonable people don’t “hate gays”, i.e., oppose gay marriage, are all just the predictable results of having accepted a bunch of progressive hogwash as true.  Once a Republican accepts that nonsense, they are of course bound to produce falsehoods such as those.  From where they are standing, it just makes sense, and opposition to amnesty, gay marriage, or welfare just looks like racism, hatred, or indifference.

So when people like Mona Charen trot out the accusations, just remember where they’re coming from.  They may feel that they are conservatives, but in fact, they are not.  Values determine views, which in turn determine actions, and as the adage goes, you may know them by their fruit.  Reagan went over the heads of the media not because he claimed to be conservative, but because he never needed to make such a claim.  It was obvious from his actions.