Media Elites Underestimate a Conservative Actor – Again

It was remarkable watching the mainstream media fulminate against an actor and miss entirely how he connected with the audience.

This was a crowd not just of snotty baby boomers with fancy degrees and charter membership in the Smart Set, but real Americans who worked, raised families and fought for their country. The media called him out of touch and wondered darkly that perhaps his commonsense conservatism could best be explained by creeping senility.

Surely, they told each other, no one would fall for his act.

All that man did was bring America roaring back from economic decline and destroy the Evil Empire that was the Soviet Union.

The mainstream media elite hated Ronald Reagan, and it is now starting to hate Clint Eastwood. That’s no shock. As William Bigelow astutely observed here, the media and the rest of America’s liberal elite have nothing but contempt for its elders. In fact, undercutting prior generations and de-legitimizing their values and traditions is key to the progressive project.

The old must be out of touch, they must be irrelevant, they must, most of all, be uncool. If not, someone might actually listen to their wisdom, and wisdom is penicillin to the infection that is progressivism.

Eastwood is, always was, and always will be, cool. And devastating. 

He was devastating because Eastwood, unlike hate-filled Hollywood punchlines such as pastryophile Jason Biggs and father-of-the-year Alec Baldwin, understands real Americans. Brietbart alum Michael Walsh explains how Clint Eastwood is a powerful tool in the campaign for the heartland.

Eastwood gets real Americans, and he likes them – he famously does not live in La La Land but up the rugged California central coast where, when he wasn’t making wildly popular movies on his own terms, he ran an inn. 

Eastwood built that. He is a businessman. He gets it.

So, when Eastwood observes, more in sorrow than anger, that when a nice guy just isn’t performing, you have to let him go, millions of regular Americans nod in agreement. It’s just common sense. 

The greatest screen legend since the Duke just gave America permission to hand Barack Obama his walking papers.

And poor Joe Biden – how could he have imagined that the night after Paul Ryan figuratively asked “Do ya feel lucky?” about the debate would be even more painful?

Eastwood’s stiletto is even deadlier than his .44 magnum. And when he strikes, it resonates. If the liberal media elite ever watched any popular entertainment instead of lame art films about frustrated college professors that close with the word “Fin,” they might recognize that Eastwood fits right into the American pop cultural image of the wacky but wise uncle who always gets the best lines – and whose advice the young hero always seeks out and finds true.

Eastwood’s power was only enhanced by his even-handed attitude and fairness. This was not a partisan guy – as much as it frustrates those of us who are, millions of Americans refuse to be drawn into partisan battles, seeing failure on both sides. This is a guy who loves his country and wants the best for it. And his support of Romney-Ryan is clearly conditional. Anyone watching his performance can easily imagine him, four year hence should the new president fail, arguing that it’s time for another change.

Clint doesn’t believe in politics. He believes in the American spirit. And right now he believes that America needs a businessman with a proven track record of success creating jobs instead of a callow amateur whose only record of success is in creating excuses.

Millions of Americans will listen even as the liberal mainstream media – wait, I repeat myself – goes insane. Yeah, take on Eastwood, geniuses. See how well that works out.

Getting him on stage was a coup in an amazing convention, and the timing was perfect. He drew in the curious and until-now-disengaged who would otherwise be doing other things. Many would stay to watch what followed.

Marco Rubio’s speech was an astonishing reaffirmation of the American dream. My third grader, whose mother escaped with her family from Castro’s leftist island prison as an infant, had tears in her eyes. Rubio’s story is America’s story. And those tuning in to see Eastwood got that.

Romney himself was fantastic.  Ignore the media scoffers – this was a man talking not to the liberal elitists whose teeth grind every time they see the happy, functional Romney family but to millions of regular Americans who see Romney’s life journey as one to learn from and emulate, not resent.

One wonders what the Democrats will do to respond at their upcoming orgy of accusations and excuses. Perhaps instead of the instantly classic “Clint vs. The Empty Chair,” they can have Sandra Fluke addressing an empty box of contraceptives that someone else paid for.

Or they could be shrewder and just try to ignore the unspeakable beat-down Eastwood delivered Thursday night. Liberalism can never connect with real Americans the way commonsense conservatism can. Their party pros should realize that. After all, a party’s got to know its limitations.