We are now six years into the Trump era.
Allahpundit has left Hot Air. Kevin Williamson has left National Review. Both have ended up at The Dispatch which was founded by Jonah Goldberg and David French and other luminaries from The Weekly Standard. The True Cons who were the dominant wing on the Right a decade ago have been vanquished. They have been driven into exile on the fringes of Republican politics.
Donald Trump isn’t the president anymore, but these people have hardly been restored to power. On the contrary, they have only been further diminished in power and influence over the past two years. You could say that things have gotten a lot worse for their faction since nearly all the haters and losers in Congress like Liz Cheney who voted to impeach Trump and serve on the 1/6 Committee have retired or lost their primaries. These people have also been losing races to MAGA candidates at the state and local level.
Allahpundit is raging about this state of affairs.
“Ask a Dispatch reader to name an honorable politician and most would say Liz Cheney. Cheney has devoted herself single-mindedly to holding Trump accountable for plotting against the constitutional order. She did so knowing it would cost her the support of her party and her constituents, ending her career. She now travels with a security detail, a predictable consequence of making herself a prominent enemy of the leader of a personality cult. In those facts lie the essential ingredients in honor—selflessness and self-discipline in service of virtue.
Yet, among GOP voters, Liz Cheney may be the least popular politician in the country. Why?
Some anti-Trump conservatives speculate that Trump’s sycophants in Congress despise Cheney out of jealousy. Their own vestigial sense of honor is irritated by her example, the theory goes: They resent her because they lack the character to behave as virtuously as she has. I think that gives them entirely too much credit. Not for a moment do I believe that Elise Stefanik, say, lies awake at night tortured by her conscience, wondering why she can’t be more like the woman she elbowed aside to join the House GOP leadership.
To the extent Stefanik gives Cheney any thought at all, I suspect she feels contempt for her perceived personal weakness. Imagine giving up a path to the speakership over something as frivolous as a crisis of conscience. The opportunists in the party don’t disdain Cheney because they envy her or even because she’s aligned with Democrats against Trump. They disdain her because she’s a sucker, too soft-headed about gassy intangibles like duty to do what’s needed to claim power.
They think she’s a chump. A Boy Scout. …”
Back in 2015, we coined the term cuckservative to describe people like David French. The critique resonated to such an extent that these people are now universally seen and dismissed in that light. French himself has been transformed into a symbol of everything that was wrong with the pre-Trump GOP.
“To the contrary. DeSantis and Youngkin have forged a sort of devil’s bargain with her: They lend her establishment legitimacy in the form of an official endorsement, and Lake lends them populist legitimacy by accepting it. Lake gets to point to their support to reassure swing voters in Arizona that she’s not as much of a crank as she’s cracked up to be. If she were, would mild-mannered Glenn Youngkin be campaigning for her? In turn, DeSantis and Youngkin get to reassure populist primary voters that their unwillingness to claim the 2020 election was rigged doesn’t mean they aren’t quietly pro-coup. If they weren’t, would fire-breathing Kari Lake be so eager for their endorsements?
The kooks and the normies are engaged in a sort of credibility swap, each leveraging their authority over their respective wing of the party to benefit the other. Which raises the question: If you’re one of the 58 percent who consider yourself more a supporter of the Republican Party than of Donald Trump, which Republican Party do you mean? The one in which Kari Lake is endorsed by Glenn Youngkin or the one in which Glenn Youngkin is endorsed by Kari Lake? How meaningful is that distinction? …”
This is an interesting development.
MAGA has become the new GOP establishment. A successful moderate Republican is now someone like Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin. The True Cons are furious that DeSantis and Youngkin are campaigning for Kari Lake in Arizona and trying to win instead of virtue signaling on MSNBC.
Year Seven of the Trump era begins in 2023. The True Cons will continue to fade into the night at the federal and state level with only burning embers of their formerly dominant presence lingering on at The Bulwark and The Dispatch. The third national election since 2016 is going to bring to power more Trumpists at all levels of government. A generation is also coming up which has known nothing but Trumpism on the Right. They don’t remember what it was like when people like Bill Kristol were in power in the George W. Bush era. They don’t remember the likes of Kevin Williamson and Allahpundit.
When Donald Trump first came to power in Year One and Year Two, he was like an island inside his own administration inside the wider federal government. Lindsey Graham was considered a key Trump ally in Congress. Five years later, the political landscape doesn’t look the same. The issues have changed. The politicians have changed. There are more people in the mold of Trump everywhere.
Note: Just as Reaganism played out over the course of about 35 years, the same appears to be true of Trumpism. It is clear now that we haven’t seen the full impact of Trumpism yet.
Buckleyite kicking the can down the road isn’t working and won’t work.
Most White Americans understand that now. The solution is a hard sell (the New Nation) but we are getting there.
Secession from the left 2025.
” She (Liz Cheney) now travels with a security detail”
Isn’t that nice. How about security details for WHITE women and elders having to take public transit and live in divershity ?
My, the precious snowflake might melt if someone hurt her feelz with naughty words.
Allahpundit? I haven’t hear anything out of him since 2004. I though he was dead. This gou was a big Bushbot.
He is posting under his real name now.
Soviet Union went down in 7th year of Gorbachev era. Gorbachev came to power in spring 1985 and USSR disappeared in December 1991.
First 4 years of Gorba era also nothing happened. We wanted to make Soviet Union great again and called this perestroika. Rebuilding. After 4 years of failure, deep pessimism settled in and then things started happening.
Clown World kabuki deep state factions feasting together after wrestling chair choreography and Trumpstein is in on it all.
I wasn’t sure if MAGAism would survive the Blormp regime but apparently it’s gaining strength like a hurricane in the Caribbean. I don’t like Zion Don and I think his presidency was a disaster. But to his credit he continues to seriously upset the whole rotten DC political-media-pundit establishment. I wonder what his relationship with Gov. Desantis is like these days?
Interesting speculation. What would happen if the a federal arrest warrant were issued for Trump at Mar-a-lago? Would DeSantis send in the FL National Guard to stop it? It would make great political theater even if he ended up handing Zion Don over to Garfinkel and the Goon-squad.
It seems like Trump functions better as a symbol of something, than he functioned as a leader.
I didn’t think Trump was that good as a President, for one thing, he either wouldn’t or couldn’t control his own administration. His people were the ones the justice department went after and put in prison, like Roger Stone and Manafort. Why didn’t he fire Mueller and Sessions immediately, he got impeached anyway, instead he let the whole thing drag out for a year and a half. I would imagine it took every damn dollar Stone and Manafort had, and Manafort was in solitary confinement for awhile, that’s the kind of thing that makes somebody commit suicide.
Not to mention what the people who showed up at the capital last year on January 6th have been through.
You said the quiet part out loud about Trump: he’s inept, incompetent, a buffoon — a petulant, blowhard narcissist — and really stupid; I’m talking Maxine Waters level dumb (just listen to him speak extemporaneously sometime) — a second Trump administration would just be another clown show.
Yet a whole bunch of baseball cap wearing cultists want him to run again. I say we need to look for someone else. Trump is too acerbic for a lot of people otherwise looking for some relief from this punishing economic and social nightmare the democratic party has brought down upon us. Still, they will poison the water for any republican running, they loved McCain until he got the nomination and even turned on him. They even created this whole TV show on HBO with Bill Paxton playing a Mormon Polygamist channeling Mitt Romney’s mannerisms when they thought he might get the nomination to run against Obama whom they had already picked out as evidenced by a Time Magazine cover story as the next president a few years prior.
But these MAGA Republicans are still not socialist republicans. MAGA, “Christian nationalist” and populist Republicans are really no less bourgeois and elite-serving than the regular, old Republicans are.
But these MAGA Republicans are still not socialist republicans. MAGA, “Christian nationalist” and populist Republicans are really no less bourgeois and elite-serving than the regular, old Republicans are.”
I beg to differ. Are they mostly inept? Yes. But the change has occurred. What is past is now our Present. What our future will be, can be glorious. Read this again, and think…
‘The third national election since 2016 is going to bring to power more Trumpists at all levels of government. A generation is also coming up which has known nothing but Trumpism on the Right. They don’t remember what it was like when people like Bill Kristol were in power in the George W. Bush era.”
What if Boobus Americans came to fully HATE the Deicide? What if Christian Civilization grows and matures into full White Self-Awareness? What if the SAXON awakes? What then, Weimerica?
Oh, frabjous day….. “Tomorrow belongs…. to U.S.”
“It seems like Trump functions better as a symbol of something, than he functioned as a leader.”
So true.
“people who showed up at the capital last year on January 6th have been through.”
Lame bastard, he should have issued a blanket pardon within 48 hours, but , oh no, he pardons a bunch of jwz. Now, they’re stabbing him in the back, repeatedly.
Goys never learn !
This post is a bit odd coming from someone whom I believe once (correctly) described ‘Trumpism’ as more or less a vapid personality cult — is that about right?
Not to mention your belief that Trump legitimately lost the 2020 election — so he couldn’t beat a senile old coot like Biden, but now ‘Trumpism’ is bigger and better than ever?
And before you say a lot has changed since 2020, a lot can change before 2024 too.
What exactly does ‘Trumpism’ mean, politically, without Trump? — after the vaudeville show that was MAGA 1.0, what does MAGA actually mean, and why should anyone take that slogan seriously?
I understand there is no such thing as being qualified to hold office (as I once heard Bill Maher say, Mary Bono is in Congress because her husband skied into a tree), and I try not to use the Lord’s name in vain, but my God, has the US really sunk so low that a clown like Trump could make a comeback, and people like Kari Lake, Dr Oz, et al are taken seriously as political leaders and alternatives to the (admittedly wretched) Democrats?
Is it that no one good wants to run and subject themselves to this game, or are the good people purposely being kept out?
Either way, it ends up the same.
I believe that Trump legitimately lost the election.
Not that the Democrats didn’t cheat with GOP establishment collusion.
It was really a combination of Trump’s personal flaws and GOP establishment treachery.
Not to mention listening to Jared Kushner and Baby Girl and allowing the purge of any MAGA supporters from the White House in short order.
Trump really expedited the bum’s rush out of the White House by checking off every box on Israel’s wish list but embroiling this country into a war with Iran. He agreed with Kushner’s assessment that he already had the “trailer park” vote sewn up and needed to give amnesty to the “Dreamers” and pander to Blacks harder than the Democrats did. Felons being let loose from prison happened under Mr. Law and Order’s administration. Not even Obama was that stupid.
In any case, there was enough plausible deniability for anti-Trump sentiment to be so strong that enough people voted Biden in to get rid of Trump.
I believe that the Democrats double-crossed the establishment Republicans who believed that even as senile as Biden is, there would be a return to “normalcy” and they could share power as junior partners again. They didn’t anticipate that the Democrats would want to eat the whole enchilada and establish one-party rule and that it would entail implementing the Looney Left “green” agenda.
So much for “muh tax cuts” which is all they care about.
“Allahpundit” is so 2003.
In theory Trumpism means standing up for the 99.9% of insecure citizens against the o.o1% who control the wealth producing assets from which TPTB profit. In practice it means to enact nationalist/populist legislation that would result in increased economic and social security for the 99.9%. In reality Trumpism will reflect the strengths and weaknesses of both its exponents, to the extent they are honestly seeking that result, and its opponents. So the story of Donald John Trump and his impact on America remains unfinished.
I exited the Trump Train when he picked Pence as his VP. He was free to pick whoever he wanted. He picked Pence. That showed his true colors. A complete fraud.
This fat guy DeSantis has a voting record, from Congress. It is fairly gruesome. A total globalist, and at a time globalism is breaking down. The world system has again splt into two.
It will be better if democrats win. What we need is a convention of the States.
You were right. I also agree wrt to DeSantis. He plays the political game way better than Trump does, and knows how to toss scraps of red meat to angry voters (which will only be a sop at the end of the day). The recent episode in Martha’s Vineyard was nevertheless useful in one narrow way: It exposed normies to the truly hypocritical nature of the cloud people on Martha’s Vineyard. Hopefully some are repulsed by them. Way past time of course and probably too late for anything to happen to overthrow them. Secession is needed if we’re to survive as a people.
I think Trumpism would have died an ignominious death if Biden had ordered the DOJ to calculate any property damage, divide the costs among the rioters and reduce the charges to criminal mischief after thirty days.
These aren’t rich people. Losing a month’s income and having to pay even a portion of the damages would have presented such a hardship that those who supported him would suffer major Trump fatigue.
Biden made a big mistake not casting the protesters as just more of a long line of people who were victimized by Zion Don the Con. He could have completely derailed the Trump Train by issuing presidential pardons to them.
Can you imagine the Democrat talking points of he pardoned these people when the man who incited them threw them under the bus but found the time and the stones to pardon a bunch of rich kosher crooks?
Instead they chose to persecute these people and subject Trump and anyone who filed his paperwork to endless harassment by waging lawfare and the death by a million paper cuts through one punishing process after another.
I think Americans are under no illusions anymore about Trump, but they detest the Left and the Never Trump Neocon Republican establishment so much they will make a point of reelecting Trump and busy themselves with finding even more right wing MAGA extremists to hammer the libtards.
I read a lot of Allahpundit back in the 00s, when there were only a few right wing blogs. The Little Green Footballs, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, Instapundit days.
I don’t miss em. The fawning over Jonah Goldberg’s supposed great wit. The love of Dick Cheney. Muh Iraq War.
Wew.
Imagine still trying to ride that horse, 20 yrs later.
Ace of Spades is hardcore dissident right since 2020. He even criticizes Trump for ineffectualness and laziness, unlike Sundance, the Conservative Treehouse blog host. CTH is otherwise an excellent site for the details on how the Deep State permanent government operates, but Mr. Sundance is too smitten by Trump to acknowledge his faults and failures.
But Sundance also has a catchphrase that rings true about the motives of TPTB: There Are Trillions At Stake. That is, the small sums saved in business expenses by supply and demand manipulation of employees and their salaries, not to mention the helping of businesses that play ball with Leviathan and the harm visited on their commercial competitors by the same Leviathan, also compounds over the years.
That is the source of the grift by the controlled opposition UniParty and the abuse of power by the authoritative apparatus inside Leviathan. Life is nothing more complex than selfish materialism by all against all.
That Treehouse blog seems rather mundane, to put it mildly. ZZZzzzz
Like the guy just woke up yesterday, and figured out that money is behind a lot of things. Maybe he even figured out that most of those small businesses are controlled by the government, as well as the big ones.
Some of these blogs are a real waste of time. I don’t know how anyone can read that stuff. It’s like some old guffaw rambling on and on about nothing. No one should be spending hours every day, reading someone’s opinions.
Well, there’s still Lindsey Graham who I am now convinced is subject to blackmail. What else explains his anti-abortion bill when everyone knows the Democrats are desperate to shift the conversation back to abortion. I don’t normally like conspiracy type speculation but that really smells off somehow?