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Bulwark: Jon Gabriel Is the ‘Worst of the Worst’
In a big change for The Bulwark, Editor-at-Large Charlie Sykes is complaining about conservatives. This time, he’s upset at conservatives criticizing Rep. Liz Cheney for criticizing conservatives because Cheney is more conservative than the conservatives she’s criticizing. It’s all a bit recursive and my brain’s a bit logy from the second Pfizer dose. But if I read correctly, Never Trump wants Cheney to remain in leadership because her voting record is more pro-Trump than Elise Stefanik’s. I think.
After slamming Dan McLaughlin, Eliana Johnson, Byron York, Henry Olsen, Mark Hemingway, and Kurt Schlichter, he finally made the big announcement:
But, this, from Jon Gabriel, may be the worst of the worst. (And it is not a parody.)
“On substance,” he writes, “I agree with Cheney. The election was not stolen and Trump’s Jan. 6 incitement merited impeachment. But all that is history. The GOP’s job today is to stop Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. In that fight — the only fight that matters six months after the election — Cheney is AWOL.”
He then critiques my admittedly brilliant analogy of why it’s better for the party to focus on future goals instead of past grievances.
Of course, we know the real reason Mr. Sykes is upset. It’s not my fault that I’m smarter, funnier, a better writer, more handsome — nay, sexier — than him, not to mention humbler. But I assure him that such a cross is uneasy to bear.
My first job out of high school was splitting the atom. When I entered the Navy, the Cold War was raging; when I left, we had won it. I then graduated summa cum laude, and not just at any university, but Playboy‘s “#1 Party School” Arizona State (i.e., the Stanford of the West).
My life continues to proceed from victory to victory. I host the best podcast ever. I edit the finest website in existence. Even a tossed-off article on a Wyoming congresswoman goes viral. Men fear me and women want to be with me.
But of all my successes, perhaps my favorite is being named “Worst of the Worst” by Charlie Sykes and The Bulwark Dot Com. Risking immodesty, I have added the title to my Twitter bio. Since he follows me, I hope it brightens his day.
Published in General
That may happen. I would never have dreamed that Trump whipped the party into shape to excuse The Trump Big Lie, or the 1/6 Capitol Riot. But then again, in 1998 I was flabbergasted when Democrats blithely excused Clinton lying under oath.
I am not fond of DeSantis, but have to believe that he is not as craven as Trump. Trump’s secret power is that he has literally no shame, and I don’t see that in Ron DeSantis. I do think that there will come a time when Trump can’t stand the positive press that DeSantis is getting.
Sheila Jackson Lee has long been known as one of the stupidest members of Congress. While she authored the piece, clearly she did not write it. In 2017 she said that the Constitution was 400 years old, which would place it at 1617, before the Pilgrims. See this great article by the Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-constitution-is-400-years-old-and-more-pearls-from-sheila-jackson-lee But, I will take what I can get.
Point:
Counter-point:
Counter-counter-point:
Look, folks. Remember how on ST: Voyager they had to band together to survive? They even reconciled with rebellious members of the, um, Mercury Marquis, like that guy with the face tattoo, Chipotle. We can do the same.
Right now, the least appreciated sibling in the conservative family is probably the FiCons, who are slowly beginning to realize that if corporate America really pisses off conservatives, they have no reliable friends left.
Perhaps you are thinking of “Chakotay”?
Merely a self-deprecating joke about age, time, and memory.
This is the actual issue.
If you move off of this, you are talking about the wrong thing.
I should have realized when you referred to the Mercury Marquis…
The way Gary cites people when he’s trying to persuade is poorly informed and not effective. JMO.
If you could make a long post of your criticisms of him, that would be great.
you have to wonder which was the bigger grift, the Weekly Standard or the Bulark?
The Bulwark gets its money from leftist donors. Pierre Omidyar. On Twitter, Bill Kristol totally sounds like a Democrat now. The other riders are like that, too. They are desperate for money or something. 75% of the stage is filled up with these guys at the principals first convention.
Principal as in money, it fits!
I want to be super clear, I don’t know where principles first got its seed money, but many around them gets it from Omidyar.
They got $90,000 initially from somebody, but I don’t know who it is. I think after that, they just get by on small membership fees.
The head of it is really tight with one of the Lincoln Project guys, which was very uncomfortable given what they are pitching. His old hedge fund firm gave a ton of money to LP.
You mean, like, he used coercion?
Next time you write a book – this should be a used as an endorsement quote for dust jacket. People should buy your books not just because of who is friends with the author – but also who his enemies are.
Also, just wondering – do you get a lot of grief about the diet book?
To quote a line from a popular song, “Have I ever told you you’re my hero?”
Sheila Jackson Lee does not wish good things for either America or the Republican Party. The advice of your opponents is seldom meant for your benefit.
I’m only talking in relative terms. Have to seen a picture of who I’m comparing him to?
I’ll believe Mitt has had a few chances to feel ‘temptation’, but our resident TDS [redacted]? I don’t think so…
She has mental problems or she is a really bad person. There are decades of documentation.
Gary, you don’t keep up on current events and news enough for the amount of arguments you start at this place.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5216023/Rep-United-flight-fight-history-bad-behavior.html
These people lie with such abandon. And people like Gary get all warm and fuzzy inside feeling kinship with people who otherwise wish to demolish his beloved country.
But I have to wonder, did she get a gushing ‘thank you’ call from Mitt and George?
Crimenutely. You must have a short memory, Gary. Here’s a link to Dennis Kucinich’s House Resolution, 1258, June 10, 2008, the basis of which was an express wish that George W. Bush should be impeached for some very nasty stuff, including, to quote directly “[violating] United States Code, title 18, part 1, chapter 118, section 2441, governing the offense of war crimes.” There is page after page of explicit detailing of his alleged crimes, and they make the thin, warmed-over, gruel that’s been thrown at Donald Trump over the years look like very tame stuff indeed.
One of the eleven co-sponsors of that resolution was Sheila Jackson Lee.
And here she is in 2012. You have to go to the very end of this clip to hear what she has to say about Romney:
I daresay if I spent another moment or two, I could find out what she really thinks about Liz Cheney, as well.
It’s almost always dangerous to cherry-pick quotes from a politician and then crow that they represent some sort of moral absolute. Just sayin.
That’s the Harvard of the west. Go Devils!!
It may be that the folks at The Bulwark think Liz Cheney is simply trying to conserve conservatism from conservatives not conserving conservatism conservatively .
That we know of. I mean what I know about Charlie Sykes, et al, does not include their, em, proclivities.
This is what I think. She knows she shouldn’t be in that position, given her views and the collective views of the GOP Congress.
Instead of just resigning, and being an ordinary congress person (she tried to primary a popular senator first, per Byron) the rest of her life, she has done this. This will get her a big fat contract at MSNBC, and alternatively, it’s a call option on possible, but unlikely event that the GOPe gets back control. She could run for president someday.
Liz Cheney reminds me most of all of Canadas Maxime Bernier. I remember talking to Erin O’toole (now leader of the opposition in Canada), back at the Halifax convention, where Bernier dropped his book. I asked him what happened.
“I kept telling Max just shut the hell up. If Andrew Scheer wins, your Minister of Finance, if he loses, your the next leader of the party. Just shut the hell up. But someone like Max can’t by his nature know when to shut up.”
Now Erin is leader of the Conservative party, and Mad Max Bernier doesnt even have a seat.
See others beat me to the punch (can I still use that idiom – hmm? 🤔). Always read to the end of the comments.
Is it safe to say we are witnessing the beginning of the “never-Jonner” movement?