- Will this end with another apology?
- How will the audience that Rush speaks to respond to Newt?
In some ways, these two are the same questions. What I mean is that the power that Rush has comes exclusively from his having an audience. The only reason anyone ever apologizes to Rush is because they don't want to offend that audience. This is the audience that Pitts describes as "culturally intolerant, intellectually incoherent, perpetually outraged and willfully ignorant cohort". I don't agree that that is a correct characterization, but that is a matter for another post. My point here is that there won't be an apology because Gingrich is speaking to a different audience altogether.
Understand that Rush repudiated Gingrich's policy-based at the CPAC event.
We know that Gingrich has a clearly delineated policy...well, they are bullet points more than "policies" (and the points are primarily tax cuts). But who reads this kind of thing? I'll tell you who. Republicans who don't see themselves as "the sort" to listen to Limbaugh.
Now, I don't think that this "Republican Civil War" is coordinated. It does seem interesting, though, that for every appeal to the "ignorant" base there is an equal and opposite response to another part of the Republican base (Be it David Frum, David Brooks, or Newt Gingrich) that bristles at being lumped in with those they feel are beneath them.
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