Was the argument always just about which fat, soft comfortable elites would be in control?

Ace of Spades writes,

...There seems to be a lot of avoidance of the discussion of actual ideas by the party which once upon the time styled itself -- no, really, it did -- as the "Party of Ideas."

Now ideas are passe and kind of dangerous. Now the idea is to hide ideas from the public, and just talk about pablum and loving American and loving grandpa, and having a handsome-but-not-threateningly-so guy deliver this pablum, and thereby manage the voters into giving up a vote without ever actually giving any consent.

You can't avoid the ideas you plan to implement and run on a variety of trivial distractions and then claim some kind of mandate to implement them later.

This isn't the consent of the governed. And this isn't treating the voters as peers worthy of respect.

This is the management of thugs, morons, scoundrels and various sorts of social inferiors who you plainly do not trust to do the right thing (or to believe the right things) by manipulating them by all means except honest persuasion and argument.

Conservatism used to have this sort of everyday egalitarian populism to it -- we trust the people to do the right thing when provided all the information. It's the dreaded liberals who wish to hide their agenda and thereby avoid any actual engagement with the electorate.

Where did that conservatism go?

Or was that always, like so much else, just a stupid faithless lie?

Was the argument always just about which fat, soft comfortable elites would be in control?

Proposed Debate: Let's actually have a debate on open borders, huh?

My nominees for the border security/restrictionist side are David Frum (yes, he's on this side), Mickey Kaus, Mark Krikorian, and Tucker Carlson.

The other side can nominate whatever Open Borders hucksters they like -- probably mostly from the WSJ editorial board and Jorge Ramos. Whoever.

And let's actually see what the public really thinks.

Read more here.