Quick Hits: Cruiservatism Now, Cruiservatism Forever Edition

Julie Kelly @julie_kelly2

Be wrong about everything in politics for years. Run your once-influential "conservative" magazine into the ground over Trump. Have no political instincts and zero connection to "conservative" GOP base. Have a hissy fit over Tucker, quit Fox before you get fired.

Get gig at NBC:

Sean Davis @seanmdav

Nothing says "muh principles and integrity" like joining the network of Al Sharpton, Joy Reid, and Brian Williams. Deranged hoaxers of a feather flock together.

Meanwhile, NeverTrump continues proving it is the Most True Conservative of all True Conservatives. Here's Bill Kristol defending Brandon's explicit sex-and-gender discrimination in hiring:

Bill Kristol @BillKristol

I say this as someone who would prefer no prior public limitation by race or gender of the field of possible Court nominees: What about Trump limiting his picks to a list produced by the Federalist Society, a private group led by unaccountable individuals funded by dark money?

I preferred reading that in the original Salon.

The first is a comment from an apolitical friend who wandered into the room where the roiling crowd was on the screen in the early afternoon yesterday: "Is that Black Lives Matter?" No, it's not -- but also, it is. An apolitical viewer of the summer of 2020 would learn one distinct lesson: If you want to be heard, if you want to be listened to, you need to go into the streets, make a ruckus, set things on fire, and tear down icons of America. This disrespect will be welcomed, hailed, and supported if your cause is just and your motives are righteous.

Just about everyone who showed up on Capitol Hill yesterday believed that about why they were there. The only difference between the horned man standing in the Senate chair or the smiling man hauling the speaker's podium out the door and the fellow who attempted to tear down Andrew Jackson's statue or the criminal who set fire to St. John's Church is a matter of jersey color.

The second is that blaming this on Donald Trump isn't just too simplistic, it's whistling past the graveyard of our norms. Of course, he egged on his crowd to go up to the Capitol and be loud and irritating. But he didn't tell them to break down doors and crash the gates, and he didn't need to. Blaming this on Trump assumes this type of attitude will go away when Trump himself does. That's way too easy -- it's wishful thinking. The iconoclasm of the right is a real development, and it is here to stay. You'll wish for the old man in the tricorn hat waving a Cato Constitution when you see the new right blasting statues with graffiti...

The obvious result of yesterday's conflagration will be a feeble attempt at a purge by the Mitt Romneys, Liz Cheneys, and Adam Kinzingers (ha!) of the GOP. This will fail because their constituency is not just outnumbered, it is utterly dominated by the populist iconoclasts. A party of the right that rejects the mob of people who spent their hard-earned, working-class money to drive to Washington, D.C., and wave a flag as deplorables will never win, or deserve to, any more than a party of the left could reject naming something Black Lives Matter plaza.

What will happen next is obvious: A total crushing, anti-free speech effort that treats Trump-supporting groups like Branch Davidians. An effort to restore the fundamentally unserious neocons as the voice of reason in the room. A hardening of the bounds of the People's House to keep people away from politicians. A use of any levers of government power -- including audits, regulation, and lawfare -- to harass conservatives now categorized as seditionists and terrorists by the incoming president who falsely claims to want to unite the country. And above all, a doubling down on all the policies and efforts put in place to crush exactly the type of people who showed up at the Capitol yesterday in a foolish, desperate attempt to make themselves heard.

-- Ben Domenech from the day after the Capitol riots, January 7, 2020

Now that is some prognostication.

I included that for the Romneys, Cheneys, and Kizingers.

NR writer and former Federalist writer David Harsanyi linked a Federalist piece about manliness, which took a shot at David French:

This is why someone like David French, for example, is unmanly. It has nothing to do with his appearance or demeanor. He is unmanly because he attacks the weak. He targets, repeatedly and viciously, those who are most hated and reviled by our ruling elite: Christians, the working class, conservative families who object to their children being taught critical race theory in school, or do not want their kids exposed to Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library.

These are the people French should be fighting to protect, even at great cost to himself. But instead he denigrates and scorns them for accolades and rewards from the powerful, who have rewarded him indeed. French, then, exemplifies an ancient species of unmanliness better recognized by its common name, cowardice.

I single out French because he has lately weighed in on this matter, intentionally misrepresenting the right's defense of manliness as a "dangerous cult of toughness" focused on Donald Trump and the most shallow stereotypes of manliness imaginable. He takes particular aim at a piece by Hillsdale College's David Azerrad, who wrote in 2018 that Trump might not be manly in the way a soldier who charges into battle is manly, but "Trump's manliness is that of a man who is not afraid to say out loud what others only whisper and to incur the wrath of the ruling class for doing so."

This led to petulant foot-stamping whining by David French at Harsanyi, for having linked the piece:

As someone said long ago: "David French Hurt Feelings Threads are the Best Threads."

And this guy talks about Trump being a thin-skinned narcissist.

I guess French just resents the competition.

New Emerald Robinson piece on the "Cruise Ship Cvckolds."

Just a little reminder for our NeverTrump friends who vouched for Waffle Cone Joe's good character: Here's this nasty son-of-a-bitch mocking, interrupting, talking over, jeering, and sneering down their hero Paul Ryan in just two minutes of a single answer. He did this to Ryan all night, and the weakling Ryan just took it.

#MuhCivility. Muh Supineness. Muh Craven Begging for My Enemies to Confess That I Am Human.

posted by Ace at 04:44 PM

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