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.

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  1. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    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.

    Isn’t Max Bernier more of a Rand Paul type? I know that Dave Rubin likes him but I don’t know too much about the Canada stuff. 

    • #91
  2. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Jon Gabriel, Ed.:

    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.

    While all that may be true, you have terrible taste in music.

     

    • #92
  3. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Steven Seward (View Comment):
    And now that Lee abruptly starts singing the praises of Bush, you believe her, presumably because she lines up with your opinion on this one issue. But the whole thing is textbook political theater. Now pass the popcorn, please.

    I look forward to the 2023 pieces about how DeSantis is actually worse than Trump, because he’s better at packaging the poison. “Say what you will about The Donald, at least he was unfiltered and truthful about his insanity. DeSantis hides the hate in a slick package, and that spells a danger for our Democracy 10 times greater than what Trump’s blustering impotence could ever achieve.”

    “If only DeSantis weren’t so far out on the edge – I wish he was more of a moderate, like Trump was.”

    • #93
  4. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Steven Seward (View Comment):
    And now that Lee abruptly starts singing the praises of Bush, you believe her, presumably because she lines up with your opinion on this one issue. But the whole thing is textbook political theater. Now pass the popcorn, please.

    I look forward to the 2023 pieces about how DeSantis is actually worse than Trump, because he’s better at packaging the poison. “Say what you will about The Donald, at least he was unfiltered and truthful about his insanity. DeSantis hides the hate in a slick package, and that spells a danger for our Democracy 10 times greater than what Trump’s blustering impotence could ever achieve.”

    “If only DeSantis weren’t so far out on the edge – I wish he was more of a moderate, like Trump was.”

    The current Tom Woods podcast is very interesting. He was interviewing a strong libertarian that lives in Florida. Basically the subject was, in this era, what do you really do to increase freedom? It’s a lot more complicated now with the tech companies and the federal reserve. I totally agree with that. DeSantis is actually being a little heavy-handed to make the place more libertarian, if that makes sense.

    DeSantis only won by 33,000 votes. Can you imagine what a mess Florida would be if he had lost? The guy he be was a total communist in Brooks Brothers suits. And he could talk. This is further proof that the MAGA agenda is more sensible.

    The other thing he brought up was, he is totally panicked about HR1. If that passes, Gary really needs to get his game on to defend that.

    The interview was with a guy named Tho Bishop.

    • #94
  5. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    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.

    Isn’t Max Bernier more of a Rand Paul type? I know that Dave Rubin likes him but I don’t know too much about the Canada stuff.

    Except Rand Paul never got 48 percent of the vote in the primary for the Republican nomination.  Max got that in the Conservative Leadership.  So he couldnt play ball.  Got kicked out of the party, created his own, and promptly lost his seat in Quebec.

    Hes a loser.  I have met the man on multiple occasions.  I was there at the David Rubin event, held during the last election.  

    I later ran into the PPC riding president.  After the event, Max’s people abandoned Rubin at the event, and the riding president had to give him a ride to his hotel.

    Amateur hour from start to finish.

    Max would be leader of the Tories and likely our next Prime Minister, but he just didnt know how to shut up and bide his time.

     

    • #95
  6. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    RufusRJones (View Comment):
    DeSantis is actually being a little heavy-handed to make the place more libertarian, if that makes sense.

    Yeah, it makes sense. That’s how Napoleon Bonaparte made Europe more libertarian.  Except he tried not to do it by littles. 

    Somehow that process was a gap in my self-education in history, which I’m trying to fill in now.  Current book: From Citizens to Subjects: City, State, and the Enlightenment in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus by Curtis G. Murphy (2018).

    What, you ask? Libertarianism changes people from citizens to subjects? 

    Yes, I think that’s what the author is getting at. I’m not sure, though.  I’m sure some people would argue that it’s the other way around. 

    • #96
  7. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Everything Moves Towards Communism All Of The Time™

     

     

    • #97
  8. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Mr. Robbins, folks who like Donald Trump won’t move past him because folks like you who hate Donald Trump won’t move past him, either. 

    Instead of a real Lincoln project, i.e., embracing “binding up the wounds” and exhibiting “charity for all and malice towards none,” you and Liz and your Bulwarkian fellow travelers have decided to turn this into a blood feud. Well, good luck with that. 

    Citing Democrats and vowing revenge is not a winning strategy. I understand your law school training is rife with arguing with appeals to authority. But when the larger question becomes the corruption of that authority, such appeals fall flat.

    Liz Cheney represents everything that’s bad about Republican politics in particular and American politics in general. She is the privileged daughter. Born into the system she clings to her father’s name like a hereditary title. Mrs. Perry had never truly lived among the people she claims to represent until she sought a seat in Congress. (And she settled for a House seat when her dreams of overthrowing incumbent Republican Senator Mike Enzi fell flat. She garnered so little support she withdrew before the humiliation of getting slaughtered in the primary.) She is, in reality, a Virginian, a Northern Virginian to be accurate, a member of that nomadic tribe who knows no loyalty to home state, just the loyalty to power. And if she’s ousted from the leadership, if she loses or withdraws from 2022, she will likely not return to Wyoming and live among the yahoos. 

     

    • #98
  9. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Of course the election was stolen and as will be the next one.  We’re not paying attention.  So the Colombians, Ecudorians and Chileans think their systems are being destroyed by the Venezuelans and we think our is being stolen by the narrow thugs and corporate idiots?  The Chinese know they only have a decade or so to pull it off and are moving fast.  I don’t know why it isn’t obvious.

    • #99
  10. Jim George Member
    Jim George
    @JimGeorge

    Headedwest (View Comment):

    Send him a copy of your January column. He will immediately adopt you.

    Straight down the smokestack!!! Bravo!!!👏 !!!

    • #100
  11. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    EJHill (View Comment):
    And if she’s ousted from the leadership, if she loses or withdraws from 2022, she will likely not return to Wyoming and live among the yahoos. 

    Perhaps she’ll return to her birthplace of Madison, Wisconsin where she can live with like-minded people.

    • #101
  12. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Basil Fawlty: Perhaps she’ll return to her birthplace of Madison, Wisconsin where she can live with like-minded people.

    This really is a pet peeve of mine. My wife and I are acquaintances with some pretty prominent GOP political types from the era of 1988-2008. (My sister-in-law and her husband have separate Wikipedia entries. We, on the other hand, toil in blessed anonymity.)

    I personally know too many people who served in elected office, hailing the “great people from the great State of _______” who, once done with elected politics, can’t get out their states fast enough to take up residence in Northern Virginia to become a rain maker or lobbyist.

    When Republican lawmakers talk small government I just laugh. Government is their livelihood, it’s their business and they want business to be good. Trump wasn’t a fiscal conservative by any measure, but he was honest about it. And when it came to deregulation he was a champ. The GOPe preferred to talk about small government but did so like a carny to get you into the tent and then treated the voters like they were the freak show. The great divide on the right is here, between the carnival barkers and the people they see as freaks. Well, they’re not freaks, they’re the ticket buying public and they ain’t buying that crap anymore.

    • #102
  13. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    EJHill (View Comment):
    When Republican lawmakers talk small government I just laugh. Government is their livelihood, it’s their business and they want business to be good. Trump wasn’t a fiscal conservative by any measure, but he was honest about it. And when it came to deregulation he was a champ. The GOPe preferred to talk about small government but did so like a carny to get you into the tent and then treated the voters like they were the freak show. The great divide on the right is here, between the carnival barkers and the people they see as freaks. Well, they’re not freaks, they’re the ticket buying public and they ain’t buying that crap anymore.

    This is correct. Spend the dollar to watch the long interview of David Stockman on the real vision website. 

     

     

     

    • #103
  14. DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone Member
    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    Alas, the ever changing values and rhetoric of the left. It’s a real bear to keep up with.

    Applies doubly to Nevers.

     

    • #104
  15. DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone Member
    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):
    Sheila Jackson Lee has long been known as one of the stupidest members of Congress.

    Way to hamstring your own argument.

    But, I will take what I can get.

    That doesn’t really speak well of you. See above re: ever-changing values.

    • #105
  16. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    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.

    Isn’t Max Bernier more of a Rand Paul type? I know that Dave Rubin likes him but I don’t know too much about the Canada stuff.

    Except Rand Paul never got 48 percent of the vote in the primary for the Republican nomination. Max got that in the Conservative Leadership. So he couldnt play ball. Got kicked out of the party, created his own, and promptly lost his seat in Quebec.

    Hes a loser. I have met the man on multiple occasions. I was there at the David Rubin event, held during the last election.

    I later ran into the PPC riding president. After the event, Max’s people abandoned Rubin at the event, and the riding president had to give him a ride to his hotel.

    Amateur hour from start to finish.

    Max would be leader of the Tories and likely our next Prime Minister, but he just didnt know how to shut up and bide his time.

    Is it just me or are politicians more and more fractious across the world? I barely follow UK or French politics but it seems like the lines between left and right are blurring. 

    • #106
  17. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    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.

    And why not?  Everyone else does!

    • #107
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Jon Gabriel, Ed.:

    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.

    While all that may be true, you have terrible taste in music.

     

    He reminds me of the aliens in the “Hidden” movie(s).  And the Belcerebons of Kakrafoon Kappa.

    • #108
  19. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Henry Castaigne: I barely follow UK or French politics but it seems like the lines between left and right are blurring. 

    Well, in the UK, the Tories have defeated Labour by becoming Labour. Why put up with Jeremy Corbyn when you can get the same thing out of Boris? Kier Starmer is flailing away as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition because they are basically marching lockstep with the Government.  And they can’t possibly differentiate themselves by moving farther left unless they simply advocate selling the country off to the Chinese.

    • #109
  20. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    Henry Castaigne (View Comment):

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    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.

    Isn’t Max Bernier more of a Rand Paul type? I know that Dave Rubin likes him but I don’t know too much about the Canada stuff.

    Except Rand Paul never got 48 percent of the vote in the primary for the Republican nomination. Max got that in the Conservative Leadership. So he couldnt play ball. Got kicked out of the party, created his own, and promptly lost his seat in Quebec.

    Hes a loser. I have met the man on multiple occasions. I was there at the David Rubin event, held during the last election.

    I later ran into the PPC riding president. After the event, Max’s people abandoned Rubin at the event, and the riding president had to give him a ride to his hotel.

    Amateur hour from start to finish.

    Max would be leader of the Tories and likely our next Prime Minister, but he just didnt know how to shut up and bide his time.

     

    That seems like a blessing actually, doesn’t it?  And same with Liz Cheney.  During the campaign, Biden mostly kept quiet and now we have a disaster as president.  Perhaps we should be grateful when bad people/politicians insist on outing themselves.

    • #110
  21. Jon Gabriel, Ed. Contributor
    Jon Gabriel, Ed.
    @jon

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):
    Also, just wondering – do you get a lot of grief about the diet book?

    Every month I get at least one email asking for their money back.

    • #111
  22. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    colleenb (View Comment):

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):

    The Bulwark is just The Lincoln Project with fewer pedophiles anyway.

    That we know of. I mean what I know about Charlie Sykes, et al, does not include their, em, proclivities.

    I sometimes wonder if Sykes sustained a severe head injury or just made the conscious decision to be a jerk.  (I still have my copies of A Nation of Victims and Profscam.)  He really went downhill in a hurry.

    • #112
  23. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    colleenb (View Comment):

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):

    The Bulwark is just The Lincoln Project with fewer pedophiles anyway.

    That we know of. I mean what I know about Charlie Sykes, et al, does not include their, em, proclivities.

    I sometimes wonder if Sykes sustained a severe head injury or just made the conscious decision to be a jerk. (I still have my copies of A Nation of Victims and Profscam.) He really went downhill in a hurry.

    Trump broke a lot of people.  Or in some cases, maybe just brought out what had always been lurking perhaps just below the surface.

    • #113
  24. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    I have written in the past about alliances of convenience such as Stalin and the West, but how delusional does one have to be to believe that one is a conservative and an alliance with Shelia Jackson Lee is more preferable to such an alliance with Donald Trump as President?

    • #114
  25. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Steven Seward (View Comment):
    And now that Lee abruptly starts singing the praises of Bush, you believe her, presumably because she lines up with your opinion on this one issue. But the whole thing is textbook political theater. Now pass the popcorn, please.

    I look forward to the 2023 pieces about how DeSantis is actually worse than Trump, because he’s better at packaging the poison. “Say what you will about The Donald, at least he was unfiltered and truthful about his insanity. DeSantis hides the hate in a slick package, and that spells a danger for our Democracy 10 times greater than what Trump’s blustering impotence could ever achieve.”

    “If only DeSantis weren’t so far out on the edge – I wish he was more of a moderate, like Trump was.”

    I used to refer to Reagan as “The Hollywood Left” when describing how conservative I was . . .

    • #115
  26. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Mr. Robbins, folks who like Donald Trump won’t move past him because folks like you who hate Donald Trump won’t move past him, either.

    Instead of a real Lincoln project, i.e., embracing “binding up the wounds” and exhibiting “charity for all and malice towards none,” you and Liz and your Bulwarkian fellow travelers have decided to turn this into a blood feud. Well, good luck with that.

    Citing Democrats and vowing revenge is not a winning strategy. I understand your law school training is rife with arguing with appeals to authority. But when the larger question becomes the corruption of that authority, such appeals fall flat.

    Liz Cheney represents everything that’s bad about Republican politics in particular and American politics in general. She is the privileged daughter. Born into the system she clings to her father’s name like a hereditary title. Mrs. Perry had never truly lived among the people she claims to represent until she sought a seat in Congress. (And she settled for a House seat when her dreams of overthrowing incumbent Republican Senator Mike Enzi fell flat. She garnered so little support she withdrew before the humiliation of getting slaughtered in the primary.) She is, in reality, a Virginian, a Northern Virginian to be accurate, a member of that nomadic tribe who knows no loyalty to home state, just the loyalty to power. And if she’s ousted from the leadership, if she loses or withdraws from 2022, she will likely not return to Wyoming and live among the yahoos.

     

    This is a much-needed smackdown of Stupid Party thinking . . .

    • #116
  27. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    colleenb (View Comment):

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):

    The Bulwark is just The Lincoln Project with fewer pedophiles anyway.

    That we know of. I mean what I know about Charlie Sykes, et al, does not include their, em, proclivities.

    I sometimes wonder if Sykes sustained a severe head injury or just made the conscious decision to be a jerk. (I still have my copies of A Nation of Victims and Profscam.) He really went downhill in a hurry.

    Is it possible that Charlie Sykes didn’t change but you did?

    • #117
  28. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    kedavis (View Comment):

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    colleenb (View Comment):

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):

    The Bulwark is just The Lincoln Project with fewer pedophiles anyway.

    That we know of. I mean what I know about Charlie Sykes, et al, does not include their, em, proclivities.

    I sometimes wonder if Sykes sustained a severe head injury or just made the conscious decision to be a jerk. (I still have my copies of A Nation of Victims and Profscam.) He really went downhill in a hurry.

    Trump broke a lot of people. Or in some cases, maybe just brought out what had always been lurking perhaps just below the surface.

    I think my idea of who Trump “broke” (i.e. the Pod People from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is distinctly different from your notion.  

    • #118
  29. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Would someone else inform the above individual that I choose to not converse with him in any way?

    Thank you very much..

    • #119
  30. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    Would someone else inform the above individual that I choose to not converse with him in any way?

    Thank you very much..

    All you have to do is to not respond to him.  There are a number of my “special friends” who I do not respond to.

    • #120
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