Jen Rubin's Trump Derangement Has Made Her Into a Mindless Robot

#MuhPrinciples demand that I abandon all of my previously claimed principles.

The Washington Post columnist stands out among Trump-obsessed zealots who add nothing to our discourse.

The era of Trump has been as hard on the mind as it has been good for the muscles in the chest. Ours is a moment in which millions rush breathlessly to exclaim. In defense! In resistance! In bloody-minded persistence! "I will not back down!" we are told, by people who have not been asked to, and could not be compelled to. They won't be "intimidated" either, nor "silenced," nor "bullied" nor, it seems, pushed to any form of self-reflection.

Indignation, not analysis, is the perennial order of the day, and the tone of our debates is ineluctably Twitteresque. Retweets are points on the board, and hyperbole gets you oodles of them. The worst. Ding! Insane. Ding! Crisis. Ding, ding, ding! Congratulations, you have been promoted to the next level. Time for some game theory . . .

From this self-laudatory funhouse has emerged a host of cynical entrepreneurs, each with the same approach to our dismal, fractious moment: Take no prisoners, brook no opposition, and never, ever step away from the umbrage.... [T]hey pepper their analyses with eschatology; and, as is apt for a cult, they are promiscuous with their accusations of heresy....

Which brings us to Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post's ostensibly conservative blogger. Rubin is not the only example of this president's remarkable talent for corrupting his detractors as well as his devotees, but she is perhaps the best one. Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, Rubin has become precisely what she dislikes in others: a monomaniac and a bore, whose visceral dislike of her opponents has prompted her to drop the keys to her conscience into a well....

If Trump likes something, Rubin doesn't. If he does something, she opposes it. If his agenda flits into alignment with hers--as anyone's is wont to do from time to time--she either ignores it, or finds a way to downplay it.

...

So sharp and so sudden are her reversals as to make effective parody impossible. \

Cooke then goes through Jen Rubin's whiplash reversals on climate change, the Iran Deal, and moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. All it took for Rubin to reverse herself on long-claimed positions was for Trump to agree with her.

It's not just that this "conservative" WaPo blogger is reversing her positions to attack Republicans -- she's also praising Democrats to the hilt. For example, though she's mentioned Chuck Schumer 76 times so far this year, this twitter thread notes that her criticism of Schumer has been... sparing.

In fact, the thread notes that many of the mentions of Schumer paint him as a voice of reason in #TheseDarkTimes.

She also mentioned Nancy Pelosi 66 times -- and criticized her not a single time.

Don't worry too much for Jen Rubin, though. She's getting some important endorsements, including one from the Trope Namer of the #SalonHot25.

David Frum, naturally, slumps to her defense, attacking Charles Cooke for his "savagely personal" attack on Rubin, an attack that consisted of... quoting her own words.

She also got special dispensation from the Pope of Liberal Neocons.

By the way, Frum is re-defining "conservatism" according to his (and Rubin's, I suppose) open brace of liberal ideological points, and guess who has two thumbs, and is bald and wan, looks like he knows his way around a glans, and is totally on board with that?

This guy--

Correction: Actually, Frum wasn't arguing that "conservatism" was now defined as what he and his fellow neoliberals believe (though his argument does indeed have that implication). Rather, he was claiming that Trump was a "fact" of current conservatism, and by defending Trump, people are allowing Trump to define conservatism.

However, Trump is pushing actual conservatism -- of the type that Jen Rubin, and her very white knight David Frum, now have decided is distasteful and needs to be abandoned.

posted by Ace at 01:04 PM

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