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The Goldberg Rationalizations
“It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”
This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest, edifying us with his crack understanding of history, wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.
He deftly (he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much.
There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven to be liars, leakers, framers, and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly, they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?)
Almost as noteworthy, Goldberg makes no mention of Trump’s accomplishments on behalf of his voting bloc as possible reasons for the strong support, nor is there any reference to likely alternatives which might be animating Trump’s support, all of whom are somewhere on the socialism spectrum.
He’s a wartime President. That’s it.
According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America” or who or what this Blue America is.
Taking issue with Jonah’s conclusion, I would say that Trump is the price the GOP paid for being weak, for being fraudulent, for being the party of perpetual war and globalism, and for misunderstanding and/or taking advantage of their base.
Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah, et al., have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.
Now, for some real genius, edification and a palate-cleanser, I offer this:
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Published in General
Indeed. It is a farce! The way the establishment* of the gOp gloms on to the Reagan legacy today.
They hated him for challenging their man Jerry Ford and making them look bad. They hated him for challenging their man Bush I. And when Bush I served the third term of Ronald Reagan, they couldn’t have distanced themselves from the conservative policies of President Reagan any faster. Thousand points of light … wretch. Sad. “Compassionate” conservatism. Barf.
*Mr. Green is the face of the gOpE … then and now … and his kind are alive and still conniving in the gOp today. These are the folks who want the gOp to be the party of Ford/BushI/BushII/Dole/McCain/Romney – go along to get along, with America-hating socialists! But the conservative voting base is Woke now. And that is ‘woke’ in a good way. We paid for this microphone, Mr. Green! The candidate after President Trump in 2024 must come from the ‘fighter caucus’ or you lose.
We lost 40 seats in the House after a wave of retirements. We gained 2 seats in the Senate when we should have gained 8 or 9.
How did they “walk the plank for Trump”?
Most of the retirees were GOPe Nevers, and the Dems ran pretty moderate candidates.
We shall see, but I think the GOP will retake the House and there will be a higher quality aggregate of Republicans. We are clearing out the bad blood.
But they didn’t “walk the plank”, that phraseology causing confusion. More like, they abandoned ship while in port,( keeping it nautical…)
Yeah, and I seem to recall that in the aftermath, the ones who actually won were the ones who didn’t try to distance themselves from the President. The ones who “walked the plank” then didn’t walk it for the President, but rather did it all by themselves.
Indeed. The poster boy for this is none other than Jeff Flake. Trump didn’t run him off. Flake’s own constituents did … Bigly (18% … Sad)!
By “walk the plank” I meant that all quish RINO Repubs felt so constrained by the Trumpkins that they refused to distance themselves from him when it might have saved them with the pesky moderate voters. So we lost with our Trumpkin banners high, I do agree with you on that, and maybe we’ll never have to put up with squishes like Will Hurd or Barbara Comstock again, it will be wall to wall Louie Gohmerts and Steve Kings -MAGA!!!!!!
That didn’t even happen.
There have been a few ideas thrown around for why so many of the GOP decided not to run for reelection. One was that they didn’t want to be in the minority; their egos wouldn’t permit it. Another was that the Democrats had investigated a lot of them, found some personal issues, and threatened to make them public unless the GOP members declined to run. Another was that they couldn’t stand the direction the party was taking under Trump. All of those reasons are to some extent believable. If the third was the cause, then good riddance.
This is two days old, but is worth posting here as a cautionary tale — Don’t snark-tweet at 4:30 in the morning, kids, if you don’t like people snark tweeting back at you in the same manner in the comment replies:
Here we are in full election mode, someone throws a giant bomb into the worlds economy, Jonah Goldberg goes full political snark.
This might be the most difficult decision we have to make for our country and for its future. Jonah wants to play his Small-ball games.The tweet is juvenile and hypocritical. Or is Jonah endorsing Tulsi Gabbard now?
More evidence these people are just fine with Democrats in charge.
He got waaayyy more push-back in the comments over his tweet than he was expecting, and got pretty testy about it (since some of the Israel-haters who in 2015-16 thought Trump was one of them have now gravitated over to Tulsi Gabbard, you can kind of see why Jonah might be miffed at being compared to Tusli. Even though his tweet is sort of making the same point as Tulsi). He’d probably benefit from taking a lesson from JPod and getting off Twitter, except for exceptional occassions.
It’s funny when the charge of hypocrisy gets bandied about, and the guy making the case has to take the other side to make it.
It’s absurd to think we are being directed by the Saudis to do anything. There is a ME peace deal in the works and the Saudis are integral to that. They are also important in the world economy. And they are allies. They are allies with us against Iran, who are engaged in terror attacks worldwide and have been at war with the US and Israel since 1979. Since it was they who were attacked, obviously they need to be heard on their preferences.
So Jonah grabs some low-hanging fruit and flings it, but it was rotten and got his shirt all icky.
But it shows the hatred. “Balls and strikes” Jonah is no umpire. He plays for the other team.
The immediacy of Twitter makes people post things without thinking of how they sound or their future consequences. Jonah’s Trump hatred was at near Max Boot levels here.
I just had an exchange with a friend who sent me a 442 page PDF on various psychiatrists diagnoses of Trump. I had already read some of the articles and skimmed a lot ( much of it was repetitive with lots of inaccuracies of Trumps statements/positions.)
I sent him back a thoughtful rebuttal, including all of the observations above as well as an attack on their ethics, and also the somewhat questionable ‘science’ of modern psychiatry and the rise of coddled credentialism in the academic world.
Later I sent him a very interesting video by a philosopher on empiricism and our modern dilemmas.
His return text to me was:
A professor ?
Implying hypocrisy on my part. Now, after what I said about credentialism and psychiatry, I’m a hypocrite for citing a professor.
This is rank stupidity. But this guy has a high IQ and so does Jonah. They are emotionally imbalanced and use lame defense mechanisms ( yeah I can diagnose too!)
Good piece at the link below, reminding us of how the Democrats and their media allies (and anti-Trumpers on the right) are working to sabotage our relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Why The Media Is At War With Saudi Arabia
The New York Times acting as Qatar’s propagandists fits right in.
Perfect illustration of Jonah’s ‘Never’ bonafides. Even though others argue that Jonah is different than the Bul**** himself, Bill Kristol (and other snarky NT tweeters), I don’t seem a dime’s worth of difference between Jonah and the bulwarkies.
By the way Jonah is most forgetful since, the real deferentiality to Saudis, was from the Bushes (which 0bama took to a vomit-inducing level).
Columbo,
The Saudis are in a difficult position as they will be accused of simply siding with the US and Israel while Iran (Zarif) continues to lie about them. Trump is wisely allowing them space to go to the UN if necessary to prove conclusively that the attack was from Iran, not the Houthis. This will put Iran behind the eight ball big time. No Islamic country in the Middle East actually trusts Iran. If they have directly attacked a neighbor then they look clearly exactly what they are. A dangerous psychotic aggressor nation. This will set the stage for a combined attack against Iran. The larger the force, the more relentless the attack, the less chance Iran will be able to do damage to anyone else. There are American, Saudi, Israeli, British, and probably Egyptian assets in the region.
Once you start shooting you don’t stop until there is nobody left to shoot back.
Regards,
Jim
Houthis are Iranian surrogates, much like Hamas and Hezbollah
Yehoshua,
Most certainly. On top of that, the Houthis are less than 1/4 of the population of Yemen. They are Jihadist Iranian backed genocidal killers just like ISIS. Only idiots in the Western media could imagine them to be some sort of aggrieved insurgency.
Still no need to worry about the Houthis because it is a complete fabrication. This attack was launched from southern Iran. Conclusive proof is coming and I want to see that b#st@rd Zarif squirm. They have been bald-faced lying on this. There will be hell to pay when everybody in creation knows it.
Regards,
Jim