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The Bulwark: Walking it Back, Just a Little?
Our mutual friend @garyrobbins has called my attention to a change at The Bulwark, one that I think is positive, so I thought I’d give a little bit of credit where a little bit of credit is due. The Bulwark has changed its mission statement. Previously, its “About Us” page described its mission as follows:
Our mission will be to say [that the president of the United States is a serial liar, a narcissist and a bully, a con man who mocks the disabled and women, a man with no fixed principles who has the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old] out loud and encourage others to do so as well.
They have revised their mission statement. The page now reads:
The Bulwark is a project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. DDTI is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to preserving America’s democratic norms, values, and institutions, and educating the public on conservative principles like rule of law, free trade, and expanding legal immigration.
I think that’s an improvement, though I don’t believe it represents an actual change in focus of the organization. My suspicion is that the previous mission statement was, correctly, considered unduly petty and Trump-obsessed. My perusal of the website does nothing to dispel the notion that the publication remains petty and Trump-obsessed, but I do appreciate the more adult theme expressed on their “About Us” page.
The Defending Democracy Together Institute (DDTI) seems particularly entranced by the prospect of Russian collusion by the 2016 Trump campaign. I don’t expect Mueller to report evidence of such collusion; if that’s the case, it will be interesting to see how the organization and its pit bull of a publication deal with that.
Incidentally, anyone who figures out how to monetize references to The Bulwark should jump on it. My prior two posts on the topic netted 93 likes and a whopping 658 comments between them.
Published in Politics
I’m beginning to think they were moles* for decades.
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_(espionage)
Another way to look at them is like a parasite on the host animal, ‘conservatism’.
I now fully believe the neo-cons were/are a strain of the center-left who had a more strident globalist agenda than the pro-union, formerly more nationalist Democratic Party, as well as being repulsed by the strong anti-war elements there. (I also now believe they don’t especially care about Israel).
After decades of Republican-instigated wars in the Middle East, while the culture war was being appeased, ignored or simply lost due to incompetence ( or deliberately) with nothing to show for it but more debt, loss of lives and limbs, and no care for the middle class, formerly reliable voters revolted. These people weren’t reflexively anti-war, but they became anti-perpetual-war-with-no-results while bearing most of the costs. Max Boot, Bill Kristol the Bush family, et al, spent all that political capital. They not only spent it all, they borrowed against it and are desperately in need of bankruptcy protection.
The establishment GOP also ignored the middle-class squeeze that occurred over 3 decades with combinations of job losses – and loss of future prospects, unfair taxes, fees and regulations, the effects of political correctness and scathing, relentless media attacks on conservative candidates and Republican voters in general.
Meanwhile, the Democrats drifted deeply into identity politics and alienated working-class union types who used to vote reliably for Democrats.
So these parasites finally abandoned their host, but I don’t see them finding another. They need a block of voters, and I don’t see where the might find a large enough one to live off of.
Their plan seems to be to sabotage Trump so they can say “I told you so” and “ We’re the smart ones and we’ll rebuild the Republican Party for 2024.”
The hard left turn the Democratic Party is taking only encourages them more. Their belief is that the center-left Republicans can achieve electoral victories against the hard left crazies.
This plan is foolish for two reasons:
We can’t afford more leftism in power at this point.
Mans there will now always be a candidate who will pick up where Trump left off. They will never get those legacy GOP voters back.
Had they remained quiet and gone along ( like Lindsay Graham for example) they might have had a chance.
Not conservative principles, but you know…
Continue to persist in the post WWII brain-washing that empire is conservative.
You probably took “lawlessness”way too literally then. People were far more concerned about a president that disregards Constitutional/ethical guardrails than one that robs banks. I don’t remember Obama breaking laws either.
People can be wrong and not be moles or parasites.
President Bush was very strong on social conservatism . Your memory might be hazy from the Bush years. My memory is that cultural issues actually overwhelmed fiscal issues, just like in the Trump years. But social media wasn’t a thing back then, which makes things seem very different. The average voter has always cared about culture more than anything,but you can’t run a government on just culture wars (although Trump is trying)
‘The only “Republican instigated wars” were in Iraq…an oil rich country run by a despot who is now dead. So we luckily only have one madman with nukes to worry about now. Trump’s best buddy.
Which Bush? I’m guessing you mean W. I may be going back farther than your view. The first was not at all concerned with social conservatism. Bush the Second talked a good game, but for whatever reason, failed to deliver much of anything. When he had the chance to appoint a Supreme Court Justice, he picked Harriet Meirs- not a strong signal to conservatives- but in retrospect, quite in keeping with his family entitlement and arrogance after they tried to run the Jebster for the trifecta. They twisted his arm to get Alito.
The despot ( not sure how you define that word) Sadaam is dead, true, at a tremendous cost to every American and even higher to certain Americans. If you think there’s only one despot left with nukes you are lying to yourself.
I never faulted our leaders for trying to negotiate with Sadaam, or made fun of Rumsfeld because of shaking his hand and smiling above. If you don’t understand that you will never get anywhere negotiating with a dictator by shaming him and moralizing, then it’s a good thing you aren’t on the diplomatic team.
How in the world have I tried to have President Reagan be thought of as a Quisling? I adore Reagan.
Or perhaps they realized that the better focus is to be in support of conservatism, and not just being reflexively Anti-Trump.
Would it be possible to extend to The Bulwark the possibility that they are acting in good faith? Perhaps they heard the objections raised here in Ricochet and reconsidered their mission statement.
First, Rumseld wasn’t president. Second, that picture with Saddam is from 1983, years before Kuwait and soon after the ayatollahs took over Iran. Sucking up to Saddam was good strategy then. We’ve already tried playing nice with Korea. Just like Saddam, it doesn’t work. Now we just look like morons on the world stage.
Harriet Miers is a fair criticism, although Trump would’ve probably nominated his sister (or someone personally helpful to him) without his advisers help. Bottom line is Alito and Roberts were solid picks that would’ve never gotten thru if Trump had the old 60 vote hurdle. Overall, Trump wallows in cultural issues, because he knows thats what people can easily understand. He plays to the lowest/most divisive levels of politics
Defending Democracy Together has been criticized for taking at least $600,000 in two grants from Democracy Fund Voice, a 501(c)(4) group created and funded by left-wing mega-donor Pierre Omidyar.
In addition to funding dissident ex-conservatives, Omidyar, 51, and his wife—who have pledged to give their more than $10 billion fortune to charity—operate an extensive networkof nonprofits and foundations around the world. Omidyar has directed millions of dollars to a variety of progressive causesand political candidates: he and wife “have have given more than $500,000 to federal candidates and groups—nearly all of them Democrats—since 1999,” including six-figure donations to the Democratic senate and congressional campaign committees.
The Omidyars have also been among the most prolific supporters of left-wing causes for years. According to a 2014 report by the Media Research Center, “Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Pierre Omidyar, Tom Steyer and George Soros’s son, Jonathan are major funders of the left. Together, they have contributed at least $2.7 billion since 2000 to groups pushing abortion, gun control, climate change alarmism and liberal candidates.” And lately, Omidyar seems to have become a big fan of Kristol’s, probably because of their mutual hatred of Donald Trump. Digging a little deeper it looks like they may have more in common since Kristol has recently found his “inner socialist” and he now opposes Republican candidates.
Just a note on linking offsite: You’re welcome to do it, @max‘s hesitation was doing it on a blog roll on the sidebar. We need links in posts in order to properly attribute, etc.
I haven’t gone through all of the comments yet, but I think the Defending Democracy Together Institute is just a bunch of Republicans that don’t get how dysfunctional all of this centralized government and foreign intervention has gotten. They want things to work like they used to because their egos, their incomes, or their lifestyles depend on it. That, and they want a certain level of propriety. They are just like Ben Sasse; they are wishing for stuff unrealistically.
Bulwark writers and fans, while covered in mud and pig manure: “We sure did teach that pig a lesson. “
Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.–The Great Gatsby
…and the deep state. I can’t understand Republicans that aren’t completely freaked about the DOJ and the FBI now.
It looks pretty clear to me from the themes of these two articles that “The Bulwark” exists primarily to conserve the institution of the Democratic Nation-State and its entrenched Central Planners, rather than to conserve liberty.
We are not living in The End of History. It is becoming increasingly clear that the democratic nation-state is fundamentally unstable. It will inevitably collapse under the twin forces of socio-political polarization and unsustainable government debt. The responsible adults are talking about what happens after the divorce. There is no reason to believe the U.S. Federal Government will last forever, nor is there any good reason to believe that it should.
I love this.
You do realize that 1991 was almost 30 years ago, do you not? Also, your statement is simply untrue.
Well done.
Well done.
The Clintons and Bushes are shocked that Trump would undermine political norms and traditions in such an egregious manner!
Define “conservatism”.
In recognizing a sort of Gell-Mann Amnesia-type phenomenon here, I have come to the conclusion that to continue to engage the quartet (or more) of local buffoons that continue to periodically lob that turd out onto our community table as if they are intellectually serious contributors on other topics is not only embarrassing to those involved but detrimental to the overall health of the community.
Providing education material is pointless…even direct challenges on the matter are pointless…they ignore facts and continue to stink up the neighborhood. This is getting old.
Kurt Schlicter’s book on race wars hardly sounds “responsible”. Read the Bullwark piece and then tell us who these “responsible adults” are that they unfairly trashed. We need some names. Was it Steve King?
One million, trillion “likes”.
Too much centralized power. Too much central bank intervention. The media is 99% pro-statist. The education system is a disaster.
It’s unmanageable.
*Is this something you know to be true, unnamed avatar calling someone who does write under his own name a “race war agitator”? Or is it simply something you want to think is true?
**Deserve to be savaged? Really?
I suggest it is you who are playing in a nasty pool.
I notice you didn’t argue my point about the nation-state being unstable. Instead we were treated to an ad hominem, just as in the Bulwark article.
This is all contemporary analysis of what’s happening right now. Try to poke holes in it, because I’m interested.
(I messed this up with edit instead of quote but I’m just going to leave it)
What sort of reaction are you looking for?
Have you started threads on the topic, and can you post links to those?
Most conservatives–even self-professed libertarians–exhibit a profoundly deep emotional attachment to the State. They are very deeply afraid that the State really does provide the blanket of security to their lives that it claims that it does.