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Conservative Swamp Creatures
Listening to a podcast by Jonah Goldberg it suddenly dawned on me why the guy is skeptical of Trump. As he said on the podcast, he has lived in Washington D.C. most of his life. He worked in think tanks there for years and all of his friends are government or political wonk types. He goes to all the big insider parties and functions. Most of the guests he has on the podcast are DC insiders, often second or third generation Swamp Creatures. He’s a Swamp Creature.
I have no doubt that he’s conservative and smart, but apparently he’s a Swamp Creature first and foremost. In fact, after a little research, I found that many of the other prominent conservative Trump skeptics are similar. They’ve been in and out of government in DC and/or work in this or that conservative think tank or publication. I expect that their first loyalty is to the place from which they draw their sustenance. Any threat to that is going to evoke a visceral reaction. And we all know what Trump promised to do and is doing with the Swamp.
First comes the emotional reaction, then there follows the rationale for it. With time this rationale becomes more elaborate, and what you’re left with at the end are conclusions that make no sense. So you have Bill Kristol saying that Trump has turned him into a Democrat. Editors of the Bulwark are advocating for a third-party candidate and David French is saying that Christians should not vote for Trump. This against the most firmly conservative, effective, and anti-abortion president ever.
Some of them say that Trump is an “existential” threat to the country, and he is in fact a threat to what they hold dear, but under Trump, the rest of the country is doing fine.
I’m not sure how fond of democracy any of these guys ever were, but increasingly they are open about being skeptical of it, and that’s apparently because democracy and the people have turned against the Swamp. And let us remind ourselves about why this has happened — the Swamp failed a large number of the American people. Washington insiders have contempt for ordinary Americans, and their policy preferences show it. Free trade and relatively open borders, among other things, boosted the economy and made Swamp Creatures and their friends rich and powerful. Ordinary Americans suffered from a loss of jobs and income, depression, dislocation, drug abuse, and suicide. The people have pushed back against Creature policies. This the conservative Swamp Creatures deride as populism and warn of mob rule, but instead of picking up pitchforks the people elected Donald Trump and most likely will do so again.
Published in Politics
Are we talking ancient history here? When were Republicans not a coaliton? The famed three legged stool arose during the Cold War or earlier. The Cold War started at the end of WW2 and ended in 1990(?) which would be 45 years of being a coalition. Since then I think that coalition was largely intact but fraying recently.
I would guess that almost everyone with a job has, at some point, thought that their company was mismanaged. To the extent that this is even a question with an objective answer, some of those people were correct and others not. How do we know which is which?
Vindman would probably say it was mismanaged because nobody was listening to him!
Of course. That is the top indicator that your management superiors are inferior.
I will forgo posting some of Jonah’s very unpleasant tweets but I will say that he is far from committed to civil debate. One in particular during the Senate trial featured a gif showing an obese man vomiting profusely, accompanied by the words, “The founding fathers listening to Dershowitz right now”. Trump has caused Goldberg to return to what I can only assume is his form: a snarky, juvenile man. Watch when Jonah engages with Mollie Hemingway, a conservative armed with facts, not emotions and you can see his barely contained antagonism. He also regularly belittles certain Federalist writers on Twitter because, of course, he is so much more important than anyone there. Jonah Goldberg is a small man who doesn’t like that he’s no longer the golden boy, if he ever was which I doubt. If both he and Mr. French (not Buffy’s and Jody’s butler) stayed off twitter, they could hide their pettiness but that’s just it – they can’t, they need the ego-boosting, the constant affirmations that they matter. Sad.
I’d take it a step further: parties in a two-party system are necessarily coalitions. Only multi-party parliamentary systems allow individual parties the luxury of the small tent, in which case coalitions are formed at the parliamentary level.
rg, this makes no sense to me.
Many of the NeverTrumpers argued that his policies would tank the economy. The opposite happened. Their fears were proven wrong.
Yet they — and you — refuse to change your mind.
I’ve seen you post many times, and I don’t recall ever seeing a meaningful argument from your for principled conservatism. I’ve seen hatred of Trump, and disdain for anyone who disagrees with you.
On the data, I looked at the recent Emerson poll, and Trump’s support was strongest among the college-educated. So your argument about losing college-educated voters doesn’t hold up well. Trump wasn’t actually on the ballot in 2018, and the Democrats were quite clever about running attractive moderates (many of them veterans) in swing districts. There was a tendency for moderate Republicans to run away from Trump, and they lost.
I think you misunderstand my position. Trump has done a lot of stuff I like, such as supplying Cocaine Mitch with a continuous feed of judges to smuggle into the system, a patriotic & unashamed foreign policy, continuous deregulation, and actually listening to blue collar voters. Also, he seems to be taking immigration seriously. If Walker or Cruz had done these things, they would be just as good, but it was Trump that did them.
I also like that a lot of democratic dreams keep getting blocked. I’ll take the sinful guy who is NOT interested in crushing my faith over the moral persecutor.
Unlike Jonah, I give Trump the benefit of the doubt, like Jonah did with GWB and other GOP candidates.
Thanks for this, Bethany.
I have no way to evaluate these claims of mismanagement. Many of the results seem quite extraordinary — Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, legions of other excellent judges, a strong economy, NAFTA renegotiated, a tough trade stance with China, the new National Security strategy, ISIS defeated, Al Baghdadi and Soleimani dead, the wall being built, a good tax reform bill. Even criminal justice reform, which looks like it might be a winner electorally, though I have my policy concerns about it.
All of this was accomplished despite an unbelievably hostile press, the baseless Mueller investigation, and a ridiculous impeachment.
I will say this. I didn’t expect President Trump to be a technocratic manager. He’s more like a mud-wrestling P.T. Barnum. He’s a fighter and a showman. He’s funny and gives great, entertaining speeches.
Most importantly, I think that he actually loves this country. I do not get that impression from the other side, and that includes many of the NeverTrumpers.
Who did? I need names of the NT’s that said big corporate tax cuts would tank the economy. I sure didn’t.
In 2012, Obama won college graduates by 2%. In 2016, college graduates favored Hillary by 10%, in a popular vote she won by less than Obama. Then in 2018, college graduates favored Democrats by 20%. And now you’re telling me theres a poll showing Trump is cleaning up with college graduates…..yet 80% of polls have him losing to any Democrat? That makes little sense.
You seem to have skipped over my question and I just don’t want you to miss this. Because so far I’ve never seen you advocate for a single conservative issue on this site. All I’ve ever seen you do is attack the President’s voter base and call them nasty names. So please . . . how are you a conservative? What issues animate you, personally?
rg, I’m going to address this one first, then come back to your question about polling among the college-educated.
First, you misrepresented what I said. I did not say that the NeverTrumpers objected to big corporate tax cuts. I said that they claimed that Trump’s policies would tank the economy.
Here is the transcript of Mitt Romney’s speech against Trump on March 3, 2016 (there’s a video at the link, too). Specifically on the economy, Romney said:
Romney was completely wrong. We have the strongest economy ever, with unemployment at record lows.
As another example, here is an article by David French on June 6, 2016, in which he stated: “In one breath he claims to support working men and women, and then with the next breath he threatens to destroy our economy through trade wars or by playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States.”
This is consistent with my recollection of the debate at the time — when I was on the anti-Trump side myself. It is a bit hard to find specific articles after 4 years.
rg, I haven’t analyzed all of the polls in detail.
The one that I looked at recently was an Emerson poll on President Trump’s job approval (here), for Feb. 16-18. I looked at this one because it was unusually good for the President, showing him +4% — 48% approval, 44% disapproval.
The President’s approval was strongest among college grads, 52.5% to 41.5%.
This particular poll also showed Trump winning head-to-head among college grads against all of the major Democratic candidates: 53.0%-47.0% vs. Biden; 51.5%-48.5% vs. Sanders; 55.3%-44.7% vs. Klobuchar; 55.5%-44.5% vs. Bloomberg; and 55.0%-45.0% vs Buttigieg.
I don’t put much reliance on head-to-head polls at this early point in the cycle, but this provides some significant evidence that the President’s support is pretty strong among college grads.
Yes, thats way over the top for Romney to say. A trade war with one country is hardly going to crush the US economy. Now, its definitley dropped GDP some, but unless you work directly in import/export driven industries, you’ll hardly be impacted. Its not comparable to cutting taxes for all businesses massively.
On the flip side, I’m sure Trump made many equally over the top claims about his trade war benefits. He called NAFTA the worst trade deal ever. He proceeded to tweak the “worst trade deal ever” and now its supposedly a job churning machine.
I was ambivalent about Trump trade ideas. I figured they’d amount to a big nothing either way, but it seemed harmless for Trump to mess with. Pretty much as its turned out.
Interesting. Out of the last 15 RCP polls taken heads up vs. Biden….only one has Trump winning…..and its the Emerson poll you chose for this analysis. I’ll try to check out the other 14 and see if they confirm that college graduates are suddenly flocking to Trump.
This entire post smacks of a bizarre sentiment akin to reverse racism. Your primary objection to Goldberg’s conservative bona fides is his address? How do you feel when people use language like “deplorables” or judge you according to your address as a “fly-over?” It’s a particularly hard pill for those of us who do not consider Washington insiders to be definitionally corrupt, especially when contrasted to the train of creatures — oh, I’m sorry — “the best people” that Trump has used and discarded. Scaramucci, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Stone, etc. etc. etc. Sorry, I’ll take an Eric Cantor any day of the week.
Jonah has his silliness, and it is not hidden. Sometimes it intrudes and eclipses his serious intellectual attempts. But living and moving in DC circles cannot be a disqualifying factor in and of itself.
My issue with Jonah has been the transformation from one of my go to Conservative pundits to someone I seldom listen to or read.
If you make your livelihood in the business of attracting listeners/readers to hear/read your thoughts and ideas, and more and more of them find your thoughts and ideas not worth listening to, then you better come up with an alternate career plan …. fast.
Irrelevance in the punditry business is a bitch.
Let me just take on this “college graduates” debate. The distinction is unremarkable. There are vast differences within the label. It’s essentially code-words for “smarter people”, but I contend there is insufficient evidence of this. But people who cite these statistics are generally low-level analysts more interested in rhetoric than facts. To the extent there is evidence, it plays across the spectrum of different fields huge variants in IQ’s and disciplines. And I have to say there are a significant number of college grads who are woefully uninformed, others who stopped learning and reading the day after they graduated, or who weren’t very bright and learned to parrot back what their professors wanted to hear. Not to mention those who partied and cheated. So unless you know which 60% of college grads don’t support Trump, it means nothing.
Racism, yes, that’s the ticket. Poor, pitiful cognizetti, forced to live and perform servile work as noble truth-tellers in downtrodden NYC and DC. And we have the nerve to criticize them! If they can’t stand the heat, how dare we say get out of the kitchen?
We need to recognize our privilege of not having to struggle with 6 and 7-figure salaries as pundits, press and various other hangers-on, dining around on the town, meeting important people and doing whatever other G-d-forsaken these unfortunates are called to do. Straight up racism, thanks for the bat-signal.
Amen. But racist.
Yeah. Every time this point comes up, I ask the same basis questions: Don’t conservatives always complain that most modern college degree’s are essentially worthless? If so, what is the point you think you are making when you bring this up? Don’t conservatives always complain about indoctrination on campus? If so, what did you think the long term result of that was going to be?
It’s certainly a good place to start.
It was meant to smack of the reverse of reverse-reverse racism
Well, I’m guessing that my question will remain unanswered. That in itself is an answer.
You seem to have missed the “reverse” part of what I said.
I don’t even know what this means. Explain, please, for us Trump voters who have to move our lips in order to read.
Flynn was one of the best this country has to offer, and has done more to let us sleep sound in our beds than a thousand Eric Cantors. Flynn was explicitly set up, tried and convicted under the most specious of circumstances. Wanna know why? Because he threatened the IC “time honored traditions” even more than Trump did. Know why he was the first guy set up and charged? Because he was the greatest threat within the Trump administration.
You brought up Flynn, @drusus. Please, elucidate how he is not “the best people.” I can’t wait. Really.
Have you been to DC lately? I have family who live in the District. It is a total swamp and has actually gotten worse since the TDS infection came to town.
But racism. I denounce myself.
I was making an analogy. Perhaps it was not apt. Perhaps it did not shed light. I guess it didn’t. I wasn’t calling anyone racist. I was simply trying to say that much like people who decry the racism of others, but engage in their own brand of “reverse racism” (which, yes, is really just plain racism), objecting to someone based on their zipcode is silly, especially if you hate it when people dismiss you because of yours.
Michael Flynn resigned after 24 days for misleading the Trump administration about his relationship with Russia. However you feel about his treatment by the FBI, that much is not in doubt. My further objections to him as scum come from the experience of a military family member who had dealings with him. Your mileage may vary.
Reverse racism is still racism. Hey, you’re the one that called it.
You are welcome at any point to respond to the substance of what I said instead of taking one word out of context and running with it. I’ll wait – but I won’t hold my breath.