Those of us who were around during the Golden Age of Conservative Incorporated are having a good laugh right now watching the newbies freaking out over the insipid bleating of the GOP eunuchs. The guys with the groin of a Ken doll are at it again, with their high-pitched whining about how we are morally obligated to lose. I’m not talking about the ones who have formally jumped ship to The Bulwark or The Dispatch or Modern Pool Boy. I’m talking about the ones who still pretend to be Republican. I’m talking about the ones who still pretend to be conservative. I’m talking about the ones who are mortified to the core of their being by the thought that we might not fail.
It’s all so tiresome, but we Tea Party O.G.s have been here before and faced worse from these guys. Back in the day, these guys weren’t the annoying outliers. They were the annoying inliers, the guys running the show, the guys at the height of power who had their soft, girlish hands around the throat of the Republican Party. It took Donald Trump to pry them off and assert dominance with the kind of toxic masculinity these guys found both terrifying and, secretly, intriguing. You have to understand that they like being beaten, figuratively and, probably, literally. Check their browser histories at your own peril.
Yes, once the GOP was run by professional masochists, the guys who felt we had some moral obligation to manage America’s decline sensibly and like gentlemen. It took years and the election of Donald Trump to finally throw off that mindset. Remember that in 2016, the candidate who was decreed by the poobahs to be our nominee was Jeb! Bush. Apparently, Mitt Romney in 2012 had been too masculine, aggressive, and butch. They were going to remedy Mitt’s raging testosterone with W’s tubby bro. But we didn’t cooperate. When Jeb! informed us that legal immigration was an act of love, he was shocked to find that our minds immediately flashed to "Deliverance" instead of "The Bridges of Madison County." It became clear that the party was out of step with the people, so the people stepped up and cleared out the party.
As they say, this is why you got Trump.
But there were just so many of them, senators and congressjerks, pundits and personalities, all demanding that we observe norms that didn’t exist and guardrails the Democrats had already driven a truck through. Why? We never really got an answer. Because it was the right thing to do, because that’s not who we are, because we’re better than that, because oh well I never!
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We learned the hard way that as soon as somebody starts talking about principles, there was a suppository coming our way.
But we fought through it. We got rid of these folks in the leadership. Oh, it took time, but if you wait by the banks of the river long enough, you’ll see the bodies of your enemies float by. Remember Bob Corker? There was a guy from Arizona whose name I forgot, but he started crying when some Kavanaugh protesters cornered him in an elevator. How about John Boehner? Mitt Romney’s long gone. And if Jeb! had to beg us to please clap before, note that today many of us would have no idea who he is.
But we’ve still got our sissies in the GOP. Any party that aspires to have 50 percent plus one of American voters is going to have people much less conservative than we are. Get used to it – that’s just how it’s going to be. And I’m not talking about people like Susan Collins, who never pretends to be anything she’s not – she’s the only Republican who could ever be a senator in Maine, so she’s fine with me. I’m talking about the people with no excuse. I’m talking about the people who campaign on red meat in their red states and get to Washington and roll over. I’m talking about the Bill Cassidy types. He voted to impeach Donald Trump. I’m talking about the Jimmy Lankford types. He worked with the Democrats to give them cover on an immigration bill that would’ve made immigration eternal and irreversible. I’m talking about the Thom Tillis types. He’s just a freaking idiot.
But, on the plus side, at least two of these dorks are going away this cycle. Trump endorsed Cassidy’s primary opponent, and Thom Tillis did not even bother to run. Both are going to do their best to screw over their own party for the rest of their terms, but then they’ll be gone. And in a cycle or two, so will Lankford, assuming the people of Oklahoma wake the hell up.
The iron discipline of Donald Trump has kept most of these wusses in line, but we’re seeing more sniping from the back benches. Some of them perceive that he’s getting weaker – that’s a bad perception. Others are so scared of November that they figure they have to distance themselves from him. Representative Mike Lawler of New York is always in danger for being a Republican, but he seems to think the way to survive is to not be Republican in anything but name. You’ve also got Indiana Republican legislators who couldn’t summon up the collective manhood to redistrict their state. They’re now watching Virginia do that from the comfort of their political cuck chair. The insufferable Mike Pence and Indiana’s horrible Senator Todd Young (the other senator, Jim Banks, is a superstar) are both livid at Trump, with Pence having nothing to lose and Young doing everything he can to undermine the president without drawing the president’s fire. He’s another one we’ve got to primary, along with all those state senators who stabbed their voters in the back.
Of course, amnesty has returned – again – that perpetual Chamber of Commerce sellout. There’s some backbencherette from Florida whose name escapes me because she’s never done anything else except fronted this ridiculous attempt to completely lose on an issue we’re winning. It’s hard to imagine now how big a thing amnesty was 15 years ago. They nearly got it through, but we stopped them. Marco Rubio foolishly went along with it, but he’s apparently learned his lesson. It’s taken him over a decade to get a second chance for us, but we’re always going to watch him. When you see them embrace amnesty, you can’t unsee it.
And then there are the outsiders. Recently, two National Review types, Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who sometimes makes sense, and Ed Whelan, who, well, is Ed Whelan and apparently works for some Con Inc. grift with a name like The Forum for Freedom, Liberty, Families, Eagles, and Forums, both publicly clutched pearls because Donald Trump is hiring DOJ lawyers who support Donald Trump. Oh, they phrased it a little differently. They phrased it as people who are loyal to Donald Trump, and for some reason, about 15 minutes ago, it became a violation of deeply held principles for an elected chief executive to hire people who support him and his agenda. This has never occurred to Democrats, which is not surprising because the mere concept is insane. Who else would Donald Trump hire but people who are loyal to him and what he was elected to do? Is there a long-standing norm I missed where we conservatives are somehow morally obligated to allow enemies of our policies into positions of power so that they can thwart the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box?
Of course not.
That right there is the quintessential Con Inc. mentality. It’s principles posturing, ridiculous moral preening with absolutely zero basis other than their feelings. The thing you must understand about these guys is that they believe we are required to lose. Whether they fear winning, or they’re just jealous because Donald Trump has actually won something – they get really upset if you ask these Conservative Inc. types what they’ve ever conserved – is immaterial. It’s all about the failure, the precious failure.
You’re not going to convince them because they don’t want to be convinced. They want to feel good about themselves for something, and it's not going to be their empty record of policy achievements. They are convinced they should be in power. They are convinced you are bad people because you won’t give them that power. But at the end of the day, who cares?
Spare a little mockery for them and nothing else. These are nobodies. They are nothing. They are little yapping doggies at the fringes of the passing caravan. They’re not leaders. They’re not even followers. They’re just sad. And there are a hell of a lot fewer of them than there used to be.
Read Kurt Schlichter’s JUST RELEASED new bestseller in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic conservative action novel series, "Panama Red," and follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter.
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