Muted Applause
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Lots of cheering from the Establishment Republican crowd: hooray for gun rights, hooray for overturning Roe! After 50 years, we did it.
No, you didn’t. Those things didn’t happen because your foundation wrote White Papers that nobody read; or because you held round-table discussions on celebrity cruises; or because you made endless fundraising appeals to elect a majority in Congress. Those things happened because a Certain Somebody nominated three rock-solid conservatives to the Supreme Court and stood by them when they were attacked in confirmation hearings, a Certain Somebody whom you opposed every step of the way from the moment he rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy til the moment you confirmed an obviously stolen election just to get him out of the Oval Office.
I haven’t seen anybody from Powerline or National Review giving that Certain Somebody credit for the greatest conservative victories in the last half century. Who knows how 2022 would have turned out if we’d had a Conservative President in office instead of a President under Conservatorship? But hey, no mean tweets. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Joe Doakes
Enh. Going to meet you halfway on this one, Joe.
Anyone out there remember Ron Paul? Libertarian congressman from Texas? Built up a fairly powerful grassroots movement of young libertarian conservatives, many of whom say he was cheated out of the nomination in 2012? Who, had he been elected President, could have eggs enacted almost 0% of his very ambitious and generally absolutely satisfactory libertarian agenda, because he had a congressional libertarian caucus how about three representatives? I used to joke with libertarians that the only way Ron Paul was going to get his agenda enacted was if he had staged a libertarian coup d’état, Established an absolute libertarian dictatorship, and imposed liberty on the nation by force.
Without a fairly solid (if deeply imperfect) conservative base in Congress, Trump would’ve accomplished nothing.
And that majority came from somewhere.
UPDATE: On the other hand, David French needs to start finding a new career:
June 27th, 2022 at 6:11 am
Wisdom is not knowing things as much as it is knowing who to ask. Trump was wise enough to ask The Federalist Society who to appoint.
Give Trump credit for getting elected and following the lead of The Federalists, but give The Federalists credit for the long, long, long haul of nurturing, vetting and promoting conservative judges and justices.
June 27th, 2022 at 6:32 am
Yea, it’s funny that the bat crap crazy Dems are accusing Trump of letting the Federalist Society to find his “puppet” candidates and didn’t pick them himself. They also keep going back to Kavanaugh being a misogynist and rapist and Amy Coney Barrett not being qualified.
June 27th, 2022 at 6:44 am
Just a side note:
Yesterday, the chattering on NPR was temporarily interrupted by a “voice from the other side of the abortion issue.”
Yes, that is right, NPR gave time to someone (slightly) outside of their bubble.
That someone was from The Bulwark.
Of course.
June 27th, 2022 at 7:50 am
“ Without a fairly solid (if deeply imperfect) conservative base in Congress, Trump would’ve accomplished nothing.”
Right…I remember all those outraged conservatives standing in front of the SCOTUS, denouncing the reprobate’s bullshit treatment of Kavanaugh. Oh wait, that was Schumer applauding it, and threatening the SCOTUS.
That “fairly solid (if deeply imperfect) conservative base” is still in Congress. And the country is in a shambles; 2 million more 75IQ South American wards of the state will have crossed the border before the next election …but hey, y’all got that red flag law passed!
Whooo hoooo! 🏳️🌈😍🎉🪅
#MAGA
#VoteHard
June 27th, 2022 at 7:56 am
Blade;
Yup! I’m watching the GOP shoot themselves in the feet almost daily. The January 6 kangaroo court is going after a lot of them now for their “involvement”.
June 27th, 2022 at 8:33 am
Greg-
Too funny. That’s a great take on the Bulwark.
The French satire is spot on. I get his newsletter.
These days French is like “so what if you maga’s got Roe overturned? Where were you when I won the lawsuit allowing Renssalaer students to form a Christian students club off campus?”
June 27th, 2022 at 9:17 am
MP, I am waiting (breathlessly) for The Bulwark to bring us the wit and wisdom of Liz Cheney.
May I suggest a few topics for her?
“How my dad gave Iraq to Iran”
“Why I still hate Trump after all these years”
“How I learned to love Hillary”
“Why I moved from the sucky state to Wyoming to the wild frontier of Washington DC”
“I still hate Trump”
“Did I mention that I hate Trump”
“Why I can’t stop talking about Trump”
“Why The Bulwark fired me…..cause I couldn’t stopping talking about hating Trump, even though that’s all they talk about”
June 27th, 2022 at 9:50 am
Going to meet you halfway on this one, Joe
Of course you are. You still think that (supercilious, superficial) a55hole, Kevin Williamson, merits reading.
The fact that something dumb worked out in a fortunate way does not mean that the thinking that went into it wasn’t irresponsible
As to your Without a fairly solid (if deeply imperfect) conservative base in Congress, Trump would’ve accomplished nothing
Coming on the heels of a non sequitur about Ron Paul, this rhetorical sleight of hand belies the fact that all presidents have to work with Congress to get anything passed. I would mention, in case you forgot, that this oh-so conservative base of Washington Republicans
spent 2016 trying to bring Donald Trump down and then the next four years trying to trip up President Trump.
A Republican Congress refused to repeal and replace Obamacare, as they promised they would.
A Republican Congress refused to fund building the wall.
A Republican Congress refused to investigate Spygate.
And Paul Ryan and 40 other lifers in the House refused to seek re-election in 2018, knowing this would saddle the nation with Speaker Nancy.
June 27th, 2022 at 10:45 am
Regarding French’s take on Trump, I agree he made a huge mistake, and a huge part of that mistake is that while morals matter (Trump’s wives, affairs, bankruptcies, style, etc..), politics is really more of an engineering problem where one balances the negatives than a physics problem where there is one right answer.
Plus, when you look at the balance of morals, I’m at a loss to say how Trump was worse than the woman who enabled her husband’s infidelity (and likely rape) before going on to unveil state secrets before any nation with decent IT staff.
June 27th, 2022 at 10:46 am
The Swamp devours everything it touches. Without draining it, nothing substantive will take place, because court WILL BE packed and overturning of RvW will be overturned as well as it will be judged that 2nd only pertains to muskets. Better learn how to bend over and fast because it will not be long before you will have to kiss your ass goodbye. Everything is accelerating as we circle down the drain.
June 27th, 2022 at 11:03 am
bike.
Your points are valid.
Whenever people bring up all of Trump’s baggage, I remind them that he was a Democrat when all that happened and I haven’t seen one of the ones he donated money to, return it. It makes their heads explode.
June 27th, 2022 at 11:55 am
Whenever people bring up all of Trump’s baggage…
I hadn’t ever thought of that. Nice.
June 27th, 2022 at 3:37 pm
“ politics is really more of an engineering problem where one balances the negatives than a physics problem where there is one right answer.”
So, I’ve just been balancing the negatives all these years; Kirchoff was irrelevant… who knew? And what was with all that math???
Lol…
Stick to supporting butt sex and child trafficking in Ukraine, Delenda. It’s every bit as wrong, but with less cringe.
June 27th, 2022 at 5:41 pm
My take on Roe – if you’ve been in the movement actively promoting conservatism, you deserve to celebrate he decision as hard as the Berlin Wall coming down.
David French’s take on Roe – despite fighting for this decision all his life, the victory is hollow because some republicans didn’t want to take the Covid vaccine
(Seriously, that was his point)
June 27th, 2022 at 8:25 pm
Greg on June 27, 2022 at 9:17 am said:
MP, I am waiting (breathlessly) for The Bulwark to bring us the wit and wisdom of Liz Cheney.
I was in Wyoming today, Greg, motorcycling the loop from Spearfish to Devil’s Tower & back.
I have never seen so many MAGA people in my life.
June 28th, 2022 at 10:14 am
Keep on parroting Pravda, Swiftee. You’re saying a lot about yourself by doing so, none of it speakable in polite company.
June 28th, 2022 at 6:36 pm
Today I did Rushmore. Big crowds, and, as remnants of the Biden-Romney feud, there were signs everywhere saying if you went into any of the indoor shops, you had to wear a mask NO MATTER YOUR VAX STATUS!!
Lol, couldn’t be funnier since neither masks or vaxxes protect you from covid.
Everyone ignored the instructions, including the rangers.
Gotta give it to ol’ Slow Joe Biden — he’s a champ at expending political capital while accomplishing nothing but making people hate him even more. What an f’n moron.
June 28th, 2022 at 6:52 pm
Not Biden-Romney feud, Biden-Noem feud.
June 28th, 2022 at 9:42 pm
And of course French completely for the implausable (not to say bizarre) hearsay testimony of Jan 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
From French’s newsletter:
That was yesterday’s analysis. Today’s is different. Because of a courageous woman named Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows.
Earlier this afternoon she gave the most extraordinary congressional testimony I’ve ever seen. She testified that the president was so committed to walking to the Capitol with his own supporters that he allegedly tried to grab the wheel of his Secret Service vehicle. She painted the picture of a president utterly out of control, a man so committed to preserving his own power that he approved of the riot and believed that Mike Pence deserved to face mob justice.
Unmentioned by French is that the Cassidy women does not claim to have witnessed ANY of this. Trump has broken French.
God help anyone who hires French as his or her lawyer.