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A 3-by-5 Love Letter to PowerLine’s 2-by-4, Steven Hayward
This is a common theme, and I see it discussed in the PowerLine comments as much as I used to see it here.
I remember Hugh Hewitt and the Northern Alliance, and all that good stuff. The Throbbing Memo! Back when Dean Barnett was the radio sex symbol representing all of us to that dear lady in Colorado. CHOWDAH! SFH was a fixture back then, and PM was one of the founders (IIRC) who made PLB go.
“Things have changed, Jerry.” Political blood has been shed, and I don’t mean the PLB dust-up. Here are links to two of my overly-wordy posts (here, a poll on the question and here a post including the recent PLB dust-up) discussing the much-discussed fact that the party is grievously split, which fact both precedes and will outlast anything about Trump. So it’s not about Trump — it’s about Mirengoff.
We can get Mirengoff-style commentary anywhere. I don’t care about baseball or soccer, and civil rights is hardly a dry well. Hayward types (among other greats, just not building a list here) are what we can only get at places like PowerLine and Ricochet. The exo-beltway conservative commentary and community; without the food fight. I have my beloved sources for the food fight as well, but that’s a different post.
Mirengoff’s obsessive (but not exclusive) focus on strafing Trump, as Hayward says, chases away the right people. Which people? People like me. I’m weighing a subscription to PowerLine. Sounds like a great companion to this site — different mechanisms, different community structure. Same family. I’m not threatening or promising, not laying out conditions above my station. Just thinking about it.
I won’t slag Mirengoff. But I don’t read him. As with Chemerinsky’s stuff (ain’t seen in a decade, thank God), I don’t appreciate the tired and labored fascination. Well, I’m now cramming this into the bottom corner on the backside of this 3×5 card.
I’m with Hayward.
Published in General
Yeah. I’m already a Powerline VIP. But, frankly, if it’s a matter of Paul vs Steve, Steve wins every time.
I’m on record here as not being unequivocally in Trump’s camp. Although I’ve been unfairly and offensively tarred with the “NeverTrump” label a number of times, I still find myself trying to be objective.
I’ve read the Powerline posts that have generated the recent outbursts. Paul is, as usual, relying on the “people are saying” school of “proof” for his assertions. A few instances, from a couple of his recent posts:
Lord, PL guys. Grow up, please.
Paul is exactly what can be read someplace else.
I go to Powerline and Ricochet every day. They are my two websites for political news.
Frankly, I loved seeing Steve take Paul to task. Paul had it coming.
Concerning Mirengoff’s Trump archives issue:
My take was the (D)/MSM found one more LifeStyle section worthy faux controversy to poop on Trump, and Paul stepped right into it and dragged it all over the PL site.
I don’t mind conservatives disliking Trump, I just prefer they don’t take their Trump dislike as far as promoting Leftist manufactured narratives in the process …. (Mr. Robbins call your office)
In the end, the small section of the Country who followed this story found out some of the minutia of the archiving protocols for sitting Presidents …. who knew?
And now that we know Trump evidently didn’t follow the prescribed archiving protocols what happens next concerning Trump and the National Archives ?…. If the documents in question were destroyed/disposed of and never recovered what could possibly happen next? ….. Nothing obviously …. so it’s all essentially a story about nothing.
Another (D)/MSM “Trump is bad” story for the consumption of the “Trump is bad” crowd, and we will just move on to the next (D)/MSM “Trump is bad” story … it has become so predictable you can set your watch to it.
Exactly.
Steve Hayward knows that I’m not the only one who can’t bring himself to subscribe to Powerline Plus on account of Paul Mirengoff’s insulting TDS-inspired trolling.
I’m waiting for PowerLine and PJMedia to ditch their Disqus comment systems before I join their VIP programs. Can’t see any comments on either of those sites because I block Disqus’ servers. (Like I block Facebook’s servers. Just as evil, but under the radar.)
Dang! I had hoped that the VIP thing was a less surveillance-state thing.
Yeah, I flipped my lid over Disqus a year or two ago. Gravatar etc. to be continued elsewhere.
We have gas prices soaring, empty store shelves, Americans still trapped in Afghanistan, crime way up, energy independence gone, Iran emboldened, our border wide open, the White House telling social media who to ban, Russia about to invade Ukraine, toddlers in masks, $30 trillion national debt, Covid still killing, China threatening Taiwan, and a “president” clearly suffering from dementia. And we still have self-described conservative pundits who think that the real crisis facing the country — in fact, the only thing worth commenting on — is some guy chilling in Mar a Lago. And those icky people who like him.
It beggars belief.
They keep churning out the same tired columns about Jan. 6, white evangelicals, and whatever dumb thing some GOP state senator tweeted last week. You know, the same subjects the left kvetches about 24/7. Yes, we know, you don’t care for Donald Trump. Five years of copy-and-paste op-eds tipped your hand. Yes, we know that you’re one of the good conservatives who religiously watches the hip new HBO series and is up to date on all the booster shots.
But maybe, just maybe, focus on current events. At least for a while.
It’s not all on them.
You helped.
I’d like to dispose of this for the purposes of this thread. Jon wrote an editorial which almost none of us liked. Once. And doesn’t he bang on about the same old crap day after day. He has *clearly* let it go, without renunciation or climbdown. It’s just a fact, not a disease as we see in others. No names.
@kedavis, I’m asking you to not carry on about that here. If you like, I will volunteer to write a post excoriating him for his position on that day. I figure I get a free shot, since I wasn’t here at the time. And in fact, I did so elsewhere. At the time.
Deal? With thanks beforehand…
He was bringing up the past, and so did I. Nothing unfair about that. He even mentioned those OTHER people writing columns about 1/6, etc. Like he wasn’t one of them, or something. Feh.
Thank you!
I’m pretty bothered by the fact that views that are not pro- Trump are seen as disqualifying for a site when coming from someone who is experienced, articulate, and intelligent. The authors are clearly visible. Don’t read what you don’t like, but at least consider the fact that there may be a point or two worth thinking about.
I’m a Powerline VIP, and commented on Steve’s post:
For what it’s worth, I just invited Steve onto my podcast. He might not want to address the subject more, but thought it would be a good conversation to have.
As do I. Conversation and communication is always good. Thanks for this!
It is not as though this argument has not been had. It seems to me that either the Trump-haters feel they must push back against the stolen-election narrative, or that they just cannot let the whole thing go — perhaps due to Fear of an Orange Planet (h/t tm 1990, not 2021). Please note that to a great swath of Trump supporters, the big picture is about losing our Republic to a runaway government, and not about Trump. As many of us (dozens? the mind boggles!) have said for years — Trump is an effect, not the cause. If he were to be shot dead on fifth avenue tomorrow, none of us would change our minds a whit.
Because it’s not about Trump.
I offer for your consideration the unlikely scenario that Republicans had engineered a deep-state takeover, a mutiny and coup against Obama. I have personally written about rejecting such nonsense, and at the risk of going all Fisher-Price (purveyor of fine children’s toys and a quality retailer near you tm), that would be bad no matter what. Or whom.
You don’t have to subscribe to a stolen-election narrative in order to appreciate the problem. I suspect that a great majority of us agree on that, despite differing opinions on the Orange Man. The salient point is that some think we are already there.
YESSSS!
Shorter: Some of us (perhaps in numbers) have already considered those viewpoints. Myself, I considered them in the Carter administration.
It beggars belief.
You forgot the mean tweets. So much mean. Many tweets.
I’d like to propose a truce making movement:
NeverGruber.
Let’s give peace a chance. Or, at least, let’s all collect 20% on it.
All well and good, but I’m unclear on what it has to do with dumping Powerline from one’s reading list. Heyward himself raised the issue of “losing readers” as a partial reason for his dissatisfaction with Mirengoff.
Mirengoff’s piece on the paper from Hopkins that appeared to trigger this whole thing was very interesting.
Enough.
What you say makes sense, but it’s not a point I raised. I’m not dumping anything. I fell off of PowerLine back in the Romney days. Water under the bridge. Now I just go there when somebody links to outstanding, cannot-miss content. Or the current kerfuffle. And the current kerfuffle seems worth commenting upon.
This is connected (somehow, wouldn’t you say?) to the idea that conservatism should get off of the left’s talking points and go on offense. I realize that some people think Trump is what prevents us from doing that, but this argument goes back to easily 2012, and it probably goes back to when Jesus was still Jewish. So I submit that it is truly not about Trump.
That is to say, we’re going to have this fight again. It would be nice to fight the left instead.
I confess that I haven’t seen it, and I also did not catch the “Hanke” contumely except once the beefsteak got brought into things. I have more caveats, and can gladly confess them if relevant.
I’ve noticed a rather surprising number of people on Ricochet who seem to think they’re in charge of… well, anything, really.
All joking aside, if you wanted evidence of a mass hypnosis or psychosis, the demonization of political figures until they’re all someone can talk about like Citizen Kane muttering “Rosebud” as he drops dead is all the evidence you need. I know people who can make the vein on their forehead look like a major interstate overpass at the mere mention of Trump’s name, never mind telling them I stayed at his hotel once.
Who appoints the Purity Police, by the way? Seems like a sweet gig.
Nothing about purity, but it does seem a bit rich when Jon criticizes those OTHER people writing about 1/6 without evidence, blah blah blah.
To borrow an old expression, If you look up “people who wrote about 1/6 without evidence” in the dictionary, you might find a picture of Jon Gabriel.
Deal or no deal?