The always formidable Sebastian Gorka: [1]
It’s been a tough two years if you’re a post-Reagan era, Bush-flunky fake conservative
Yeah, I’ll bet it has.
You believed the rest of your life could consist of your collecting fat honoraria checks from both sides of the uniparty establishment. From AEI to Brookings, from CATO to the Council on Foreign Relations, you also milked a handful of gullible right-wing donors and bloviated your pedestrian “analysis” for the hosts of the cable shows you cared for the most—naturally, on CNN. This despite the fact that America really didn’t seem to care. At least not if we judge by the viewing statistics.
Seb makes interesting comments about CNN’s lack of viewers, and then goes on from there:
For decades they planted themselves at publications such as National Review and the Weekly Standard which lost their viability as market products but nevertheless chugged along, read by a smaller and smaller group of believers and fellow-travelers, funded as they were by the same handful of well-meaning but credulous sugar-daddies. You know their names: Bill Kristol, Stephen Hays, Jennifer Rubin, Tom Nichols, to name but a few. Then on November 8, 2016, America fired them all.
He goes on with an apt description of what happened to the left… saying they reinvested in crazy.
But then we come to the heart of why I’m posting this:
The Establishment GOP hasn’t changed. We just saw that on Thursday as GOP senators betrayed their president on the signature issue of his campaign: securing the southern U.S. border. Those who really are conservatives and support the will of the people as expressed in the MAGA agenda remain just a handful. You know their names, too: Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louis Gohmert (R-Texas), Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Lindsey Graham 2.0, and not many more.
And the NeverTrumpers? Did they leave to fight real fascists like their forefathers in the International Brigades of Spain? Hardly. The soft hands and weak backs of the professional OpEd scribbler would be of little help on a battlefield in Syria or Iraq. So they reinvested in a crazy of their own variety.
They moved from gullible conservative donors to taking money from hardcore left-wing billionaires. They rebranded themselves under a new masthead, and as The Bulwark—sounds manly right?—and decided the best thing is to outdo the Daily Beast and Buzzfeed in anti-Trump sentiment. No more pretending to be the heirs of Kirk and Chambers while enjoying tony parties in Adams Morgan with their MSNBC, NPR, and Obama Administration pals. No, they will rebuild America by giving in to their inner Arianna Huffington and unleashing their hidden Glenn Thrush.
Frankly, as evidenced by the actions of the traitor John McCain in the last months of his life, this is where their heart has always been. This was precisely the complaint of the rank-and-file.
I have been saying for almost a decade now, that the rank-and-file GOP, and I think if you include the independents, the majority of America, is far more conservative than anything that either party establishment has coughed up in several generations with the exception of Ronald Reagan who they were never very pleased about… And whom they fought tooth-and-nail… At least by the standards of the day.
He closes by mentioning The Bulwark, and their lame attack VDH that I mentioned the other day. I will urge you to go and read the whole thing.