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The Sad Saga of Max Boot
I worked with Max Boot at Commentary Magazine for a few years, not in the office and not directly, but I would promote his work when it appeared on our blog. I would always joke (but not really joke) that there was never a war that Max Boot didn’t want to start. Boot’s work was the only material on the blog I consistently disagreed with and disliked, in large part because it was so trigger-happy.
It’s been strange watching Boot’s evolution into just another “woke” newspaper columnist; his shtick is so tired by now, what exactly does he offer?
The cadre of “woke” former “conservatives” is growing larger, and each has less and less intellectual honesty than the last.
.@MaxBoot: "With its long-standing opposition to immigration…National Review has found common ground with the far right. Like many conservative media outlets, it has flirted with the “great replacement” theory espoused by the El Paso gunman." https://t.co/tmnJnPv8Oz
— Evan McMullin (@EvanMcMullin) August 14, 2019
It’s so profoundly dishonest, it’s still somewhat surprising to see a newspaper as large and as storied as the Washington Post would run such a screed by a man who clearly didn’t read the entire column he’s responding to,
I grew up reading National Review in the 1980s, @MaxBoot writes. Its founder, William F. Buckley Jr., was a childhood hero.
"So it was a shock on Monday afternoon to see myself attacked in National Review as, essentially, a traitor to the white race." https://t.co/jq9tIDJXxO
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) August 14, 2019
And not only did the Post run Boot’s piece, but CNN’s Anderson Cooper even had him on his show to whine about it too,
.@MaxBoot responds to the National Review article attacking him, saying "it's incredibly shocking and offensive to me."
"Sadly, I think it's a reflection of how even mainstream conservative publications are being Trumpified and are going down the same road [of] Fox News." pic.twitter.com/ZRdWUbR9QW
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) August 14, 2019
National Review’s editor Rich Lowry responded,
One sentence from the piece: “We see that in the tone of hysteria that creeps into immigration conversations: not just traditional fears of crime and ghettos or clashes of language or culture, but screeds about ‘invasion’ or, worse, ‘white genocide.’”
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) August 14, 2019
My husband commented:
Btw the response from those at NR has been admirably restrained in the face of lunatic attacks.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 14, 2019
And on this, I’m going to have to disagree.
Proof that National Review hasn’t been “Trumpified” is evidenced by NR’s response to what amounts to Boot’s slander; if it had been truly “Trumpified” NR would be hitting back. Hard. And they should. Trump’s election for many on the Right was proof that the base is sick of being abused by those in the mainstream media and left (but I repeat myself). And we should be sick of it. Being polite in the face of being called white supremacists is how we got Trump, and on this front, maybe we needed him. It’s time to stop being polite.
The left calls the President a white supremacist until they’re blue in the face, and they are astounded that the accusations don’t resonate with a majority of Americans. If they had learned any lessons from Trump’s election, Boot wouldn’t be smearing National Review and John Hirschauer and Dan McLaughlin (the authors of the pieces Boot is criticizing).
Published in General
And to back up his claim, he’s referencing the support of, or outreach towards, Southern whites. My point is concurrent with yours, not beside the fact. Trump is merely a signifier and lightning rod, generally meant to represent the 90% of the Republicans who currently support him.
I don’t think you can be woke unless you actually say positive things about liberalism. Even crazy positive things. Boot trashes the GOP a lot. Oh well. He has some points there. He definitely has some points trashing Trump….although, like many, he can’t help but go over the top and then look foolish.
I doubt he can name a “2nd most racist Republican” to Trump….so his theories about how Republicans have been secret racists for 50 years…..just sound historically ignorant. You’d think he’d cite examples in his book, if he had a serious case to make.Trump’s voter base isn’t even the same as Reagan’s or W’s.
They will answer that same way the people answered when asked why they supported:
Which is to say they won’t answer anything because they won’t be asked; I can probably count on one hands the number of times someone asked their parents who they voted for a generation ago. What kind of family life is that?
* I could probably add more to the list, but the further you go back in history the less reliable the information on what people were actually like becomes.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/27/2017-was-the-year-i-learned-about-my-white-privilege/
Almost everyone who voted for Reagan, and is still alive, voted for Trump.
Comparing the character of JFK, who indulged himself with groupies, with Donald Trump is like comparing a shoplifter to Charles Manson.
Maybe, but theres also huge numbers of Reagan voters that left the GOP because of Trump (young, college educated). W otoh had big appeal with Hispanics and Asians, and they are no longer GOP. So, there just isn’t much comparison between Trump and past Republicans. Trump himself hates most of them.
You really are obsessed with the National Review, aren’t you? That’s like what, 4 posts now repeating basically the same thing?
“Maybe, but theres also huge numbers of Reagan voters that left the GOP because of Trump (young, college educated).”
As a person who was once Never Trump, but saw the light a couple months before the election, I find you comment kinda a slur against those who voted for Trump because it became very obvious during the debates that Hilary was going to govern from the Hard Left to anyone paying attention.
So I think the vast number of Reagan voters who were not hateful of the “deplorables” , like Boot, and the usual suspects within the present NeverTrumper crowd within the GOP, voted for Trump.
Being Never Trump now is a virtue signal that you deem yourself socially above all those lowly “White Nationalist” deplorables. It is not so much a political statement but a fashion statement to ingratiate yourself with whom you think are the “in crowd”.
In your first paragraph you denounce slurs on the motives of Trump voters. In your third para you slam virtue signaling as the motive of those that oppose Trump’s character. Which is it? Does seeing the light mean you have to blind yourself to everything you saw before?
Most NeverTrump folks that I know do not begrudge those that accepted the “Flight 93” binary choice argument. What we object to is those that say we can’t be sincere in the reasons we state for opposing Trump, it has to be some fashion statement.
OK, I admit it. I identify as a white nationalist. I am White (born that way), and a Nationalist-I support and love my Country, which is the Greatest Nation on God’s Green Earth. Just when did “white nationalist” become a term of opprobrium? Maybe the term needs to be defined.
The young and college-indoctrinated are different in quality as well as in time from those who supported Reagan. GWB’s appeal among Hispanics and Asians (due in large part to wartime patriotism) didn’t really last past 2004, and Trump isn’t any worse in that regard than Romney.
@williamdean,
I’m a subscriber to National Review and find it comical that they are appalled by this accusation of white supremacy when it has been heaped on a lot of people who are not necessarily conservative but simply not-left.
Boot’s point was not on substance (because it’s not there), but to get the idea out there that National Review is a supporter of white supremacy.
I saw some of the back and forth on Twitter on Ace of Spades blog and the liberal blue check marks are already painting it as foregone conclusion that National Review has a problem with white supremacy.
My point, or as you say ‘obsession’ is how stunningly naive National Review was that they weren’t going to get lumped in with the other conservatives that are incorrectly labeled white supremacist.
The parsing of every word Boot has written shows how much National Review misses the point. This is an attempt to de-legitamize National Review not with any substance but with a broad charge.
Not to take the monicker away from Chris Cuomo this week — who really worked to earn it — by Max Boot’s basically the Fredo to Arianna Huffington’s Sonny Corleone, in that he’s desperately attempting to do what Huffington did nearly 20 years ago, in moving from being a conservative taking-head pundit to a liberal one, but up until now just hasn’t gotten the same sort of acceptance on the left that Arianna got back in 1999-2000.
It helped that Huffington had her husband’s money to lavish about, first by wooing trendy Hollywood liberals, then by getting Andrew Breitbart to start the Huffington Post for her. She was a schmoozer in a way Max Boot isn’t, and as he’s attempted to ingratiate himself with the left over the past two years, he keeps getting his past support for the Iraq War and other combat demands in the Middle East and elsewhere thrown in his face.
Boot can’t shake his Neocon label among those on the left who react to the word as people at Hogwarts do to Voldemort, so he really needs to ramp things up to try and show the cool progressive kids he’s one of them now. That’s what the attack on National Review is all about — it’s a way for Boot to go after a site that’s considered by the left to be one of the main Neocon outposts by tarring them as white supremacists, because he sees it as a way to show the left “See, I’m not with them — I’m one of you now.” (or in Fredo-speak, “I’m smart! Not like everybody says! Like, dumb! I’m smart!“)
Desperate and a pretty pathetic attempt to remain relevant, after his recent book sold about five copies. But it is widening the divide and forcing the softer #NeverTrumpers like NR’s David French to choose sides, since people like Boot and McMullen have shown they not only have abandoned their conservative positions, they’re OK on destroying anyone who hasn’t.
I read Boot’s article and the article in NR. Boot just doesn’t like to be criticized. Too bad. Life is full of people who disagree with you. Deal with it. It’s like Boot’s doing a Chris Cuomo in print, lashing out. He’s calling people “punk-a## conservative b$&?hes.” I think what might have set him off was the phrase “self-loathing white person” or whatever was in the article. The phrase certainly isn’t a complement. It’s like someone called him Fredo or “stupid.”
Did you read Boot’s paragraph? Did you get to the end of Boot’s paragraph?
Max Boot says, basically, “Since 1964, liberals have insisted that the GOP is racist, racist, racist, racist — that it’s lousy with racists — racists under every rock and behind every tree — ruhhhh-acist!!! But I never believed them. But I should have believed them, because they were right and I was wrong.”
And that’s not an example of Boot “saying positive things about liberalism”??
Are you kidding me?! That’s Boot practically getting to third base with liberalism!
Boot is giving credence to a nutty, Left Wing shibboleth: That the Right is inherently and irredeemably racist, that the Grand Old Party flourished not in spite of its own racism, but because of it, that half the friggin’ country is either racist or racist-supporting — and yet you honestly and with a straight face are insisting he is something other than “woke”?
Please.
So many on that Niskenen Center list and the related just went berserk. The lack of cogent rhetoric has been wild. Ivy League / political operative / Ruling Class types. Speech writers for Presidents. Crazy. (AG hates Trump, for the record.)
Boot isn’t the only 180 on political philosophy, either. Nicole Wallace, Joe Scarborough, Steve Schmidt. I think a lot of that I just has to do with making a living / cashing in and not principles. S.E. Cupp and Joe Walsh aren’t navigating this era very well.
As some one who was a part of the Anti-Iraq War right, its not surprising to see Max Boot and the rest of the Neo-con Girondins return to there natural party.
Boot has not changed his tactics. This is the way he has always written. He just has changed his targets.
I remember David Frum reading out the anti-war right out of the conservative party in the pages of National Review and am now enjoying the schadenfreude.
You will excuse me if I am not terribly upset at National Reviews predicament. They chose to associate and publish the rabid dog and are now shocked that he bites the hand that fed him.
There is a sad saga here, but its not Max Boot’s.
GWB 2000 Hispanic vote 34%
DJT 2016 Hispanic vote 29%
Yuge I tell ya, yuge.
“Now, here’s the brutal truth for Democrats: If Hispanic Americans are in fact showing surging approval of Trump, he could be on his way to matching or exceeding the 40 percent won by George W. Bush in his 2004. If Trump does 12 percentage points better than his 2016 numbers with the growing Hispanic vote, it pretty much takes Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina off the table for Democrats”
My greatest thanks to Trump is how he unmasked all these posers who for decades I was reading, listening to, watching.
Man have the scales dropped from my eyes.
#52 has my handle in it by mistake for the record.
Same thing for exposing the Deep State and the media. The FBI and Justice are a menace to The Republic. It’s laughable that any of the GOP Trump haters expected any of the Russia stuff to be true.
People do change their minds. Some on the right are becoming less in love with free markets and hawkish foreign policy but are still basically conservatives or classical liberals. But there is something deeply unsettling when someone changes their mind on everything over night.
I’m skeptical that it’s anything but money for the MSNBC crew.
We have never had free markets and now it’s just getting too regressive. No one has a plan to slow down populism and socialism except Trump, maybe. We are bad at global intervention. We need to finish a war everyone and a while. ie. Iraq.
If trashing the GOP made you woke, then Trumpers would have passed 3rd base with liberalism long ago. Just because the Trumpers love trashing the “neocons” and “college indoctrinated” and ” the GOPe” and “establishment” and the “Deep State”, instead of the racists…..doesn’t make them all that much better than Boot. Its all the same really….people with few actual ideas attacking others motivations.
You can say that again.
I voted different from my parents for at least two election cycles (possibly more).
as an adult child I would have never dreamed of asking my parents such a ridiculous question.
Were my children ever to ask me (which I doubt) the CoC prevents me from writing what my answer would be