Below The Beltway

Patrick Ruffini has a great piece at The Next Right about what the Joe The Plumber phenomenon says about the state of the Republican Party:

If you want to get a sense of how unserious and ungrounded most Americans think the Republican Party is, look no further than how conservatives elevate Joe the Plumber as a spokesman. The movement has become so gimmick-driven that Wurzelbacher will be a conservative hero long after people have forgotten what his legitimate policy beef with Obama was.

A movement self-confident in its place in American society would not have made Joe the Plumber a bigger story than he actually was. Since its very beginnings as a movement, conservatism has bought into liberalism’s dominant place in the American political process. They controlled all the major institutions: the media, academia, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, large segments of the Republican Party, and consequently, the government. Liberalism’s image of conservatives in the ’50s and ’60s as paranoid Birchers gave birth to a conservative movement self-conscious of its minority status. As in any tribe that is small in number and can’t fully trust its most natural allies (i.e. the business community or the Republican Party), the meta-debate of who is inside and outside the tribe is magnified exponentially.

The legacy of that early movement — alive and well at CPAC and in the conservative institutions that still exist today — is one driven inordinately by this question of identity. We have paeans to Reagan (as if we needed to be reminded again of just how much things suck in comparison today), memorabilia honoring 18th century philosophers that we wouldn’t actually wear in the outside world, and code-word laden speeches that focus on a few hot button issues that leave us ill-equipped to actually govern conservatively on 80% of issues when we actually do get elected.

(…)

In these serious times, conservatives need to get serious and ditch the gimmicks and the self-referential credentializing and talk to the entire country. If the average apolitical American walked into CPAC or any movement conservative gathering would they feel like they learned something new or that we presented a vision compelling to them in their daily lives? Or would it all be talk of a President from 25 years ago and Adam Smith lapel pins? This is why I love Newt’s emphasis on finding 80/20 issues and defining them in completely non-ideological terms. We need to advance our ideas without ever once saying the word “conservative” or “Republican” in a speech. We need to define these ideas not as conservative, but as American. We need to be confident, like the left is, that we are the natural governing party because our ideas are in alignment with basic American principles, and quit treating middle class, working class, or rural Americans like an interest group to be mollified by symbolic, substance-free BS.

Given the fact that it was fairly clear that the Joe the Plumber meme was not resonating with the public during the campaign, it’s somewhat inexplicable to me that some conservatives have tried to turn him into a poster boy for the movement and the party. He’s gotten a book contract, become a war correspondent, a political consultant, and, most recently, asked to give a response to Obama’s address on Tuesday and “advising Young Conservatives at CPAC.”

Joe The Plumber is a gimmick, and it’s one that’s not resonating at all with the public. It’s time to put a stop to it.