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Useless Useful Idiots: Whither The Bulwark and The Dispatch After Trump?
Ever since Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign began to look like it was more than a promotional stunt for his reality show and began to take on the shape of a real run at the White House, there were voices on the Right condemning the whole idea of a Trump presidency. The Right’s most concerted effort took the form of National Review’s “Against Trump” issue, and most on the Right remain critical of the President’s failings even if they support him generally. (This is a marked difference from the last Democrat president, who received virtually no significant criticism from members of his party while in office.) But a sizable group of Republicans (excuse me, “former Republicans”) abandoned their party and became “Never Trumpers” – they were so exorcized by the idea of Donald Trump personally that they could no longer support their party. Some, like Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, completely altered their beliefs and values because they hated Trump so much.
And from this sprang a whole new cottage industry of Republican-hating Conservatives. A niche craft that once belonged only to David Brooks and David Frum suddenly burst open with a whole field of carpetbaggers toting elephant guns: Charles Sykes, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, George Will, Noah Rothman, Joe Scarborough, just to name a few. And with it has come two political websites to challenge the likes of NationalReview.com, CommentaryMagazine.com, and Ricochet.com: TheBulwark.com and TheDispatch.com.
The Bulwark clearly is staffed by people who have been marinating in the full-bore culture of the Coastal Left far too long. Even the graphics have that overprocessed, graphic design school sheen to them that looks like something off early 2000s Slate.com. As of this writing, there is a graphic of Trump with a crown that is clearly inspired by the works of 1980s neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat – an artist whose works were explicitly political in their examination of wealth, class, and colonialism. This is not something one would see in, say, The Weekly Standard, but it is something the Lefties who buy New York magazine would lap up. It instantly transmits the message, “Hey, we’re worldly Coastal Elites just like you. We go to the Whitney and the Guggenheim. We’re down with Bob Iger and Margaret Atwood and Oprah Winfrey. We’re one of you!” Honestly, it reeks of a desperation to be accepted by the cool kids.
That likely also explains why the columns go overboard in their criticism of Trump:
“The president of the United States, ladies and gentlemen, was in full Mad King mode, rambling, confused, disjointed, parading his grievances with barely a wave from afar at coherence.”
Of course, one could just go to the “trending” article, “100 Reasons Trump Is Unfit to Be President.” Written just on June 26, 2020, one would think this would have been the first article produced by the site. Finding any criticism of Democrats on TheBulwark.com is pretty much impossible: Currently, the home page of the site lionizes Alexander Vindman, an army officer who was insubordinate because his partisan beliefs ran counter to the Commander-in-Chief’s. But by in large, the majority of the articles just seem stale:
“Trump is not interested in the actual job of the presidency. He’s interested in the attention the presidency affords him.”
Really? This is a new insight? I seem to recall Never Trumpers harping on this in 2016. Why would anyone subscribe to The Bulwark if the contributors are so low on fresh material?
Just the article titles alone on The Bulwark are enough to make one’s eyes pop when one considers this site is supposed to cater to “Conservatives”:
Actually, Virtue Signaling Is Good
We could use less celebration of vice and more signaling of virtue.
Racial Injustice Remains the Great Weakness of American Democracy
If America is to lead the free world, first it must lead itself.
Crises and Competence (complete with a graphic of Ronald Reagan)
How the decades-long gutting of government—worsened by Trump’s failings—exacerbated the pandemic, the protests, and more.
America’s Underlying Injustice Won’t Just Disappear
We have all failed. Now we have to fix it.
Now is the Time to Stand with Dreamers
Evangelicals want Dreamers to be allowed to stay lawfully in the United States. The President should listen to them.
Florida’s Idiocracy
Come and witness the wisdom of The People.
(One usually has to tune into Last Week Tonight or The Daily Show to find the kind of snarling, sneering condescension and gleeful ridicule for non-elite types in which shamelessly Charles Sykes wallows in that last article.)
What’s most glaringly missing for the site? Any critique whatsoever for the behavior of any Democrat lawmaker. Andrew Cuomo’s killing thousands of people by ordering COVID patients into nursing homes? Not a peep. Gretchen Whitmer’s high-handed assaults on liberty in Michigan? Never heard of it. Anything Nancy Pelosi has done ever? Nancy who?
In short, almost the entire output of TheBulwark.com can be summed up in one line from the 1996 film Waiting for Guffman:
The Dispatch is somewhat better – in the way that being shot in the arm is better than being shot in the face. At least there is an acknowledgement that the real final boss at the end of the game is, in fact, the Democrats and not just more Bad, Nasty Republicans as The Bulwark now crew seems to believe. The problem with The Dispatch mostly seems to lie in the idea that the rules of political discourse have remained roughly the same as they were in 1985, where all politicians understood there was a balance of power and respected the fundamental layout of the system of checks and balances laid out in the Constitution. Anyone paying a lick of attention over the last decade will know that one party long ago abandoned anything like partisan comity when they rammed through ObamaCare with budget reconciliation and abandoned the filibuster in the Senate. And that party was not the Republicans. And yet Conservatives should still play by gentlemanly rules and the most prim and proper of etiquette and morality according to the thinker who most represents The Dispatch’s ethos, David French. French is the sort of man who would insist on fighting a duel with a flintlock pistol according to the rules, even when he clearly sees his opponent is carrying an AK-47. As the Democrats make loud noises about court packing and move to create an unconstitutional fifty-first state simply to consolidate a permanent hold on the Senate, French and The Dispatch gang seem less and less like standard bearers for old guard Conservatism than a gang of fusty old Don Quixotes tilting at windmills.
If TheDispatch.com folks were a Waiting for Guffman line, they would be this:
It’s difficult not to look at these sites – especially The Bulwark – and not think of the old phrase “useful idiots”: As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, “useful idiot” is “a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and who is cynically used by the cause’s leaders.” If there was ever a group of people spouting the propaganda of a group (the Democrats) whose goals they cannot fully comprehend, it must be the Never Trumpers. After all, the best recompense people like George Will and Steve Hayes could hope to get from the Left is (metaphorically) getting shot last.
So what if Trump is disposed of in this election? What do these groups do next? When Trump is gone, what is the purpose of the Never Trump brand? Are they just going to become Never Republican? There’s a name for that: Democrats. And there are plenty of those around: ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, PBS, NPR, HBO, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Vox, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Deutsche Welle, The Economist, etc. When there’s no longer a need for a supposed “inside” voice to undermine the Right, why would the Left continue to give these Useful Idiots succor? And why would the Right want to have anything to do with speakers who will be seen as having happily played a role in their downfall from power? Pundits like William Kristol, Mona Charen, and Charles Sykes are more likely to be viewed as treasonous Clytemnestras than tragic Cassandras.
So with that said, then, what will the Useful Idiots who have been bolstering the Democrat cause against Trump do if Joe Biden becomes president and the Democrats take control? Who will be their audience? If Trump is gone, can they sustain more than just a small echo chamber of Inside-the-Beltway types congratulating themselves on how smart they were while everything goes to hell?
For the future of their investments and careers, I suspect there are actually quite a few people working at both sites secretly praying Trump pulls out a win this November…
Published in General
Oh, wait. We can all wait for the next Drudge headline:
Lincoln Project Founder Revealed To Be Russian Agent After Bilking Gullible of Millions
Gary is not a friend. He had signed up to support Biden.
Biden wants to destroy all Gary claims to love. Gary want that man in power. He wants the Dems to control it all.
Gary is the enemy of the GOP, he is the enemy of Regan’s legacy, and an enemy of America.
Gary wants the Republican Party to return to its roots of Lincoln, Coolidge, Ike, and Reagan and to reject Donald Trump personally due to his lack of character, integrity and capacity.
After viewing Trump’s rambling, stumbling and often incoherent press conference in the Rose Garden it should be clear that Trump is leading the party to a cataclysm.
After Trump is defeated, the members of Congress need to answer to the American people as to how they enabled Trump.
Well this is ending well.
”Burn the heretic!”
Like the last three cataclysms?
I think I’ve asked the question before but I don’t understand how it shows integrity to replace Trump who shows all these flaws with Biden who is equally if not more flawed in those areas.
Especially when at the same time we’re supposed to be helping out the Democratic Party by cleaning up their house for them.
It’s a shame Kanye West didn’t follow through on his presidential bid, that might have generated some interesting conversation.
How about six cataclysms?
The American voters are going to punish the GOP’s fealty to Trump, and unwillingness to man up. But, as day follows night, a new group of Republicans will step forth, not married to Trumpism, but hearkening back the GOP of Reagan, Ike, Coolidge and Lincoln. If we break sharply from Trump, we can win the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential elections. But, if we keep connected to Trump, it will be a very long time for Americans to ever trust us again.
DRINK!
Let me revisit an earlier comment.
Here’s the thing. I never felt like either of those guys was necessarily on my side; I figured it was going to be the same way with Trump, but he did seem to me to be bringing new ideas to the table. A choice, not an echo, I believe they say. Or, as Charles Krauthammer once observed about Fox News, he found a market that was being underserved: half the country.
I guess maybe it’s just that I’ve always been a Deplorable even though I didn’t know it, and it’s too late for me to change in that regard. I guess maybe we Deplorables just don’t know any better and we need the Gary Robbinses of the world to show us a better way. Maybe we’re a dying breed, and it’s not like we had all that much influence to start with. So, you know, maybe we can’t win without whoever. Good luck going back to spitting on us and expecting to win elections that way.
I was wondering when that was gonna show up. Also, drink!
This is a very big deal. This is very representative of how these guys think, and why they don’t get it. Maximum cognitive dissonance.
I find this very interesting in light of current events. (I just watched a long interview of him were he told a bunch of retirees he 100% expects Trump to not leave office when he loses)
Gary doesn’t think this, or anything related to it, happened. Well, it did. Leftist deep state, grifters, they got to them.
This.
There’s always somebody who says that. I’ve only ever had Obama to say it about on my side and I never believed he would because his goal was always to be an ex-President.
To be fair, I don’t know if they were necessarily leftist.
LOL True.
Perfect. Anybody that doesn’t understand this is really stupid.
This is why it’s very important to listen to Victor Davis Hanson. Try to pick a part what he’s saying. It’s not easy to do.
I get that this isn’t most people’s bag, but it’s also really important to understand what Steve Bannon, his economics guy Curtis Ellis and people like David Bratt say about the economy. I say this over and over but it’s true: every single western government has done every single thing wrong in the face of automation and globalized trade. David Stockman is also good on this. We had better options 25 years ago, now not so much.
The other thing is watch the long interview of David Stockman on the real vision website and you tell me about the republican party. They did it to themselves.
Tell that to Gary’s side. Those guys want revenge. I find it very amusing when Heath Mayo talks like that. Half of his followers do, as well.
Nobody has since 1988 at least. That’s what you have to deal with, comprehensively.
I can’t understand your enthusiasm for McCain.
There is no way in hell McCain netted out for the right.
I really wish you would watch that David Stockman interview.
Sorry, but everything I said is true. Now you may think my the way to get to your restoration is this fools errand. Fine. But what you stand for is Democrats winning. That makes you my enemy, as much as the thugs in the street the Democrats support.
And since you support the Lincon Project, I seriously doubt you honestly want a Republican party. You cannot even denounce these clear grifters.
Moderator Note:
If you cannot refute Gary's ideas without using insults, perhaps you should ignore them.This is both insulting and delusional (non clinically).
First off, use of the term “fealty” implies something unAmerican. How dare you, you [redacted] man.
Second, the idea that the GOP is roraing back with your ilk in charge is nuts. If Trump,loses it will be the plague that did it.
If you like this discussion, here are some great things to listen to.
David Azerrad start at 57:30
Professor Azerrad joins The Chris Buskirk Show to discuss what happened to American conservatism. Once ascendant and full of ideas, it lost it’s sense of purpose. So what do people who identify with the Right actually want out of government? Does it overlap with what independents and some liberals want? What does a successful society look like and how do we get there?
Ricochet: the place for civil center-right conversation. /sarc off
I honestly don’t care about this as long as all of the discussions are straightforward, which doesn’t happen in this topic.
If you have a point to make, why not depart from the soundbite format and make it.
Funny, that was always my goal for Obama too.
Outside of shoving a lot of progressive stuff down our throats, it just means that he made a lot of overly safe choices etc. etc.