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Pavlov’s RINO
Gerry Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney … Jeff Flake, John Kasich … Liz Cheney … the gOp has never lacked for someone willing to take the milquetoast, mushy middle lane that has too often led the party. A complete bunch of losers with ego and vanity that has no limit. Their desire to be well thought of, by all, ‘trumps’ every other emotion and purpose for them.
So Liz Cheney is merely the most recent of a long line of extremely vain losers. Get back in line girlfriend, you aren’t so special. And your memory is rotten. Do you not remember what your ‘good friends across the aisle’ did to your father?!
Republican, Inc. TM was infatuated with these lonesome losers for decades. Decorum, tut, tut and all. No matter that their opponents had dramatically shifted the battlefield over time. What once was “off-limits” in politics, now only applied to one party. A completely unfair fight, unless one determined to join the Fighter’s caucus. The first such fighter was President Ronald Wilson Reagan, the precursor to President Donald J. Trump.
President Reagan was the first interloper and brash upstart to the status quo on November 12, 1975, when he announced that he would challenge President Ford in the 1976 primary. It was not his turn, not his time yet. Hadn’t he and his supporters learned that back in 1968?! But something happened in the standard voting block of the gOp and in a significant part of the Democratic Party. These folks still believed in the goodness of America and not the lies and phony socialism of the Democrats and their dependent classes. President Reagan and this expanded voting block were fed up and tired of apologizing for the goodness of America. But Republican, Inc. TM was completely oblivious to this substantive change. President Reagan and his voting block were conservative fighters and more than willing to challenge the status quo of the establishment gOp that always promised things that they never delivered upon, because they always backed down to their stronger opponents, out of decorum or something.
Liz Cheney, give it up girlfriend. You are embarrassing yourself and your family’s political legacy. Here is what your Dad said about the first 1990’s brash upstart in the party in 2011 (but still failing to confront Romney’s weakness, due to decorum or something):
When Newt showed up he said, we can become the majority, we can take back the House of Representatives. We hadn’t had the House since the 1940s. And initially, none of us believed it. But he was persistent, he was tenacious. He kept it up, kept it up, and kept it up. Finally by ’94 he’s the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives with a Republican majority. So I wouldn’t underestimate him. link
It’s not Trumpism, per se, but in the 2020s, it is the Fighter’s Caucus, because of the democrat socialists, and whether it is a Reagan, Gingrich or Trump (fighters all, but with different styles), the gOp better get its head out of its arse and get on board to select a fighter to save the nation and its Constitution. Your voters, not Trump, are the ones who demand it.
Published in General
Mona is a disappointment. I’m glad you were thrilled. I think she’s lost her mind. As she became more unhinged in her hatred of President Trump, her columns became a mess of poorly-constructed thoughts mixed with slander and outright lies.
Her insistence that Trump supporters were all “White Nationalists” was enough for me to write her off as someone I never want to hear from again. Supposedly pro-life, she has happily supported the pro-infanticide Democrat Party.
She can go on that internet-free island with David French. I’m sure they’ll be able to comfort each other by reading each other’s “I hate Trump supporters!” columns.
She was a great disappointment to me, too. And I used to think of myself as a “Mona Charen conservative”! She revealed a dishonest side that was, for me, quite disillusioning.
Here’s just one episode I completely forgot about, from last year:
“In The Week for July 31, there’s a selection of extracts from periodicals about the purging of Bari Weiss from the NY Timesand Andrew Sullivan from New York magazine. Valuable points are made; but it concludes with:
“The Right no longer tolerates independent thought, either, said Mona Charen in TheBulwark.com. Search conservative publications for persistent Trump critics; they’ve either quit or been purged. …
“Given that the entire editorial staff of Commentary vies every month for the title of Most Hostile to Trump, while National Review Senior Editor Ramesh Ponnuru urged the President’s removal from office over the Ukraine kerfuffle, I had to wonder what the hell she meant.
“In any case, her remarks not only smeared the conservative movement, but also defended the cancel culture of the Left. So never say Never Trumpers are without influence.”
She wrote four straight columns here that couldn’t be less cogent and really weird. She was gone shortly after that. I was addicted to her podcast, prior.
They can’t accept the ground truth. They can’t accept how things have changed.
Some people find it difficult or impossible to admit they were wrong.
So they double down on their wrongness; but then, that makes it even more difficult for them to admit they were twice wrong. And so they keep doubling down, taking more and more outlandish positions. (For example, that what Trump says is more important than what Trump does; as argued by an article in the Weekly Standard, a few months before it was euthanized.)
Eventually they go from opposing Trump because he’s not a conservative, to opposing Trump because he is a conservative. If Trump is for a policy they backed their entire previous lives, well, that policy must be wrong!
Indeed. I often marveled at how badly-structured her columns were. They jumped from thought to thought without any apparent connection, but always pausing between thoughts to signal how much she loathed President Trump. There wasn’t a single issue she didn’t somehow blame on President Trump, no matter how distantly connected (or plainly disconnected) it was from Trump administration policy.
Orange Man Bad! Very very very very BAD!
She continues to repeat the Charlottesville lie, the “Insurrection!” lie, and the RussiaCollusion lie. She has learned nothing.
She is therefore a perfect fit for her new home at The Bulwank.
I don’t know why they’d bother, they’ll never be held accountable for it.
Translate that into English and maybe I’ll contribute.
We should coin a new term for former friends of Ricochet (or members/admins) who became so unhinged in their hatred of Trump that they cast aside every conservative principle they purported to have and now dwaddle in their loathing.
Deplorables seems fitting if it wasn’t now a badge of honor.
Didn’t know he was National Review editor now. I used to get into Twitter arguments with him over education policy, and then quit paying attention to him.
Duhplorables?
I was thinking just deplored. The rest of us might be deplorABLE, but they have actually achieved fully deplored status.
Yes I can. She’s mushy. But created a different brand than say Romney, only because of her Dad.
Featured at the principles first convention:
They write this stuff to get more money from the left.
Yep. “Vaccine Passports” are one of their principles.
The principles of fascists. Absolutely unAmerican.
I can tell you that these PF people think like this constantly. They are always excusing almost anything about government or central planning, as if they are extra thoughtful while being conservative or something.
Here is another one. They all talk like this.
Well, they just say Principles First. They don’t say American Principles First.
You have to actually explain it to these people. Unreal.
I wouldn’t even try to guess what the French Davidians might think is wrong with that.
I guess I couldn’t spot the thing that has David French so worked up. Does he deny corporate censorship?
David French is mad because more and more people are tuning out his nonsense.
But I distinctly remember when Alex Jones was banned from YouTube, et al, and the conservative commentariat said that was perfectly okay, because he was a nutcase. And many of us said, “this is where it starts. This is not about Alex Jones. This is about censorship. Take a stand against it!” and we were called conspiracy theorists and Alex Jones cultists.
And the pogroms continued.
French thinks that conservatives aren’t being systematically silenced.
He also thinks he’s a conservative.
Someone should silence him and see how he whines.
Liz Cheney has a moral obligation to admit to the Steal and her part in it, before, during, and after. Her treatment of American voters as fools and halfwits has destroyed her standing in her district, in Wyoming, and across America. There is a Reckoning, Liz. Repent before it is too late.
But if he’s silenced, how will we hear him…OK, that works for me.
They edit any damn thing they feel like. I mean it’s just unbelievable that he doesn’t know that. He’s not the only one that talks like that.
No, he’s not. But his sneering condescension is a hallmark.
Wyoming is her district.
All of these same people supported Gerry Ford and GHW Bush over the brash upstart Reagan. He had to take the microphone from them that he paid for! Idiots all.
Wow. They had one representative to focus on and…wow.
This is a local PF. He talks like this every day. Can you decipher this?
I think this is a complaint about Trump populists wanting more government intervention. My opinion on that is we have gone so far the wrong way it’s actually a legitimate subject. The problem is these guys just constantly talk in terms of cut and paste Civics and cut and paste conservatism.