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An Open Apology to Evan McMullin
Dear Mr. McMullin,
I’m writing to tell you how much I regret my part in making you someone who sucks up to Shaun King.
When I voted for you, I was desperate. I didn’t trust Trump to be any good, and I didn’t think Hillary could be any worse.
I was on the rebound from losing the primary. My original choice had a heart-breaking finish, but I would have chosen even Jeb Bush over you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that.
I turned to you as a protest vote. I heard you in an interview, and you seemed clear-eyed and down-to-earth about your chances. My vote was meant to tell the rest of the country, “Go ahead. You pick,” and they did.
I didn’t know you thought Republicans were racist. My fault. I read a lot of news, but much of it happens outside my radar. But here you are in October, telling Byron York that there’s nothing wrong with the GOP except racism. If I had known you thought I and other Republicans were racist, I would have gone back to my earlier write-in pick, Ted Cruz, although I briefly thought about voting for The Dread Pirate Roberts, but I wasn’t quite ready to deal with the first Fictional-American president (is that racism?).
I apologize, Mr. McMullin, that I helped give you the idea that you are Somebody.
You apparently got fewer than 500,000 votes in the election. More than I got, but it does not make you a player on the national stage.
I know. It hurts to put yourself out there like that: the headlines, the interviews, the hoopla, the begging for donations, and the money! I’m sorry you thought we really, really liked you. In that interview I heard, you seemed to understand that your “path to victory” was probably, at best, a 250-to-1 shot (which by my not-so-stellar-math is what it turned out to be). You spent a lot of money. You made yourself a name.
And now — Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! — Donald Trump won. And made some surprisingly good nomination picks. And continued being Trump. And sent the Left into paroxysms of the Derangement Syndrome du Jour. He will make good moves and bad moves, like all presidents. History’s train is trundling down the tracks, and we’ll see where we go. But in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not driving.
In the future, when I ask where conservatism is going, I won’t look to you. I’m just not that into you. I’m sorry I led you on. I thought you understood that you were an emergency vote. A protest vote. Not a lasting political relationship.
Don’t go away mad. Let me give you a trophy.
And of bit of advice: It’s not too late to go into politics, if that’s your passion. But start over, with a school board or something. And don’t hang out with fakes like Shaun King. It makes you look like a loser.
Your former voter,
Jan Bear
Published in General
Then please don’t ever read anything I write ever again because King’s character is far worse than those chunks and as this dog returneth to his vomit jokes this fool will also continue his folly.
Never heard of him or Evan whats-his-name, and proud of it.
That was Ricochet from 1/1-2016 to 11-8-2016. More anti-Trump than not. Now it’s the cross our fingers and hope website. It’s a roll up our sleeves and work website since we do have a conservative speaker/house/senate to give US opportunities to undo President Obama. It’s an open minded website that hopefully criticizes lousy choices the potus makes and praises the good ones.
By the way I think almost everyone that’s American on this website loves their country more than Trump. It’s not a straw man website either.
Cannot Like this enough.
Get well soon my friend. We cannot afford to lose your sorry @55.
I tend to agree with Jim Geraghty on this.
How can we know how much Trump loves the country? This is so difficult. Doc, I need a cure for semantic confusion and dual quad hematoma v8s.
I voted for Trump, but Richard Spencer is the kind of person I recoil from with loathing. How does that make me a racist?
This.
It doesn’t matter what your opinion of him was before (and I was against him, for the record) Donald Trump will be President of the United States in less than three weeks. That means the Pro-Trumpers need to let go of their bitterness, and the Anti-Trumpers need to come to terms with reality and try to make the best of the situation. Right now that means working with him wherever possible. Maybe the time will come when we will be proven right and conclude that we can’t work with him, but let’s not jump off that bridge until we get there. We need to at least give him a chance to prove us wrong.
It doesn’t. My point is just that there is obviously a segment of the Republican party which finds Spencer’s rhetoric attractive. The whole damn reason Trump got popular in politics in the first place was because he kept going on about Obama’s birth certificate. That has a racist tinge to it whether we like it or not.
Ignoring that segment or saying they’re not real doesn’t do us any favors in the long run and makes it genuinely harder for the country to “come together” as it were. We have to face that. Few are. McMullin is. He should be listened to. He doesn’t have to be worshiped or thought right all the time but that bit of message is one we should listen to.
You and millions of other Trump voters are not racist but there are plenty of people who think you are and ignoring them is not working. This cycle just embedded that idea further. We need to work actively to beat that back. Continuing to flirt with “alt-right” is not the way forward on that front.
I think there is a middle ground between what Geraghty is saying and what the media is saying. It’s not a meaningless few but it’s also blatantly not true that we are a racist country. See my comment above.
I refuse to let some guy who could not gather more than 200 people in a national conference take me into some form of public denunciation ritual every time the left finds someone they do not like.
I do not expect the parade of distasteful racist bigot groups that comprise the left like BLM, Occupy, most academia, social justice warriors to denounce any of their fellow travelers.
If you do not like this guy fine. Go pick a fight, but to demand the rest of us even lift a finger to jump like monkeys for the left and their media, forget it.
I suggest people get over your desire to be admired by people who despise America and her citizens.
I would agree their movement has more members than showed up at that thing, although I am curious as to what constitutes a disturbing level of support.
Of course, getting back to the original post, I also don’t understand why Mr. McMullin should be praised for sucking up to a fraud who pretended to be black.
Paying attention to the Richard Spencers of the world gives them power.
Unless you are mocking them.
When I was a youngster, I had a tie like that — then my dad got a job.
Make SMOD Great Again! Oh, sorry Z. Probably doesn’t help much.
Percival I tend to agree. When I was young I had a tie like that too. Then my mom bought me one that actually went under the collar and around the neck, just like the grown-ups.
Richard Spencer’s ensemble looks like he knocked over a Goodwill collection point.
Very harsh. But called for.
Ha! Look forward to the first installment.
Expect that the so called alt-right is a tiny fraction of the conservative base/movement. On the other hand 100% of libs/Democrats/progressives (or whatever they are calling themselves these days) are ultra-left yet we hear nothing from the MSM (go figure) about their anti-America and looney tunes idealogy. I’ll begin to worry about the alt-right as soon as the MSM starts to report honestly on the lunacy of the ultra-left.
There is not the teeny weeniest whiff of racism about questioning Obama’s birth certificate. His own publisher’s biography of him, which it is very very unlikely he did not see, said he was born in Kenya. Even if you did not know that, there is nothing racist about raising the question about someone whose father was a foreign national and who spent his entire childhood in another country. There is so little evidence of racism (none) in the question that saying there is indicates irrational bias.
Not to mention the Left’s racism.
I voted for Evan McMullin, and unlike this writer, I don’t regret that vote. Like. At all.
However, I am also glad that Hillary Clinton lost, and I am completely willing to give Donald Trump a chance to exceed the expectations I had for him during the election. After some cabinet picks, I am sincerely hopeful. Truly. Really. Bigly.
After all, I also understand while I voted for someone per the dictates of my own conscience–Is that really “moral preening”?–another guy won. So… great! I hope that other guy proves to be awesome! In fact, I hope Trump does so well in office that I’ll want to vote for him in 2020! (Ask me then.)
With this in mind, I have actually found myself serving at times as a Trump apologist in the past few weeks to people who would like to kneecap him from the beginning, which I do not think is productive for the country. (California has a secession movement? Really???)
Therefore, I do agree with part of the sentiment behind this piece of satire in that I don’t think that it’s helpful now to engage in constant criticism of the president-elect before he even takes office. Evan McMullin should probably consider running for something in his home state if he wants to be a relevant voice as we move forward.
That’s not a mean thing to say. It’s fair.
@garyrobbins How in the world is this a “pro-Trump” post? This seems to me to be very specifically a soft rebuke to McMullin for what the poster considers distasteful post election behavior. (Tweeting favorably to Shaun King qualifies as such). That said it was done in both a civil, creative, and humorous manner in my opinion. We are civil and respectful around here but this isn’t a safe place for everyone’s feelings…..there is a difference.
I thought Doc’s comment was meant as “loves their country more than (they love) Trump”, not more than Trump loves the country.
I’m not sure why this thread has been criticized as being uncivil. This has been the a great example of the pro-Trump and NeverTrump factions coming together.
I only wish Evan McMullin would take a lesson from it. If he is truly the conservative he claims to be, and if he wants to lead a movement against Trump’s excesses, there is plenty of room to do that. Since the election, Trump has shown promising appointments in the direction of the free market, and given us plenty of concern that he likes New-Deal style economic nationalism.
McMullin can push Trump towards the former if he is really concerned about it. With a resume covering both foreign intelligence and domestic policy, he could help Trump and Ryan repeal Obamacare, reduce regulation, and take an aggressive stance towards ISIS and Iran.
Sadly, he is becoming a killjoy who can’t appreciate opportunity when it presents itself. Why such a dour attitude? It is unbecoming of a man in his early 40s who just won half a million votes on a shoestring, and whose ideas are shared by a large portion of elected Republicans.
Personally, I can’t help but blame the premature hair loss.
I honestly considered voting for Trump, McMullin, or Johnson. The only candidate I didn’t consider voting for was Clinton. I wrote-in SMOD because I could not reason my way into voting for anyone else.
My judgement of Trump has always been one of skepticism – he is not what most of his detractors or his supporters think he is. He is basically a narcissist with very good salesman instincts. He has no core ideology or policy preferences. Nothing in the transition period has changed my mind about that.
We’ll see how it goes. However, I still think there is a good chance that Trump gets bored by year 2 of his presidency and declines to run in 2020.
This post linked at HotAir, too. Congrats, Jan! Nice work.
They dig the beard.