To hear TV personalities and pundits who’ve espoused conservative values and policies for years abandon them for an egomaniac incapable of the most basic discussion of policy makes you wonder if they ever meant it.
Is the desire for relevance so strong that principle can be cast aside? Or did they ever hold those principles in the first place?
Are they so beholden to ratings and money they’re willing to betray all they’ve presented themselves as for access?
Either they’ve been lying all along, they’re lying now, or they never had any idea what conservatism is about.
Trade wars, government intervention in the economy, ordering businesses around about how to operate, health care mandates, whining about rules, etc., etc., … Republicans have espoused all of them in the past. But that doesn’t make them conservative.
Truth can’t be situational. Principle is not dependent upon circumstance. Yet these “leaders” swept aside reality in Colorado, which held a caucus on May 1, and embraced the “voterless victory” lie. To do anything else would risk their access to Trump, who won’t return to interviewers who ask real questions and call him out on his non-answers.
Did they fall for a bumper sticker? Is it all that simple? Are they that open to suggestions written on hats? Do they follow people home to ask them about their grandchildren because they read it on the back of a minivan?
“Make America Great Again” reads well, as long as you don’t ask the only follow-up question that matters: How? Does citing poll numbers wipe the section of the brain containing the fact Social Security and Medicare have 100+ trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities and Donald Trump said straight out he doesn’t want to reform them at all?
These pundits and hosts have become unwatchable. They’ve betrayed all they’ve done to this point. So much so, you have to wonder if they were this awful all along. Did they pull the greatest hoax in history?
Like the “GOP establishment” they decry, they’ve been selling one thing but became something else when the chips were down. After years of demanding accountability from squishy Republicans in Congress, they’ve become John Boehner.
They plead neutrality, but they embarrassingly badger other candidates to justify playing by the rules because Daddy Trumpbucks whines about a “rigged system.” If the system is so corrupt, and he’s winning, what’s that say about him?
The throne-sniffing media “conservatives” know not to bother with difficult questions on complex issues. Substantive discussions with Trump are like throwing a newborn into the deep end of a pool. So they don’t happen, no matter how many times they interview him.
When not kissing Donald’s ring, these establishment media types can be heard sucking up to his children. It is embarrassing.
No, they couldn’t have switched on everything overnight. They must’ve been playing a role. Conservatism sells, especially on radio and in cable news. So you just have to say a few buzzwords, go “rah-rah” for this or that cause, feign outrage at all the right times, and boom – job security.
When that security is threatened by the most powerfully addictive drug America has seen since Heisenberg’s blue meth – a celebrity – a course adjustment becomes easier if your highest principle always has been yourself.
We’ve been duped by a marketing gimmick akin to “Batman vs. Superman,” which left us thirsty, holding cases of “New Coke.” These weathervanes of the right are the father who went out for a pack of smokes and never came back.
If Donald Trump doesn’t reach 1,237 delegates before Cleveland, count on these mic’d up megaphones to maintain their silence as Donald’s goon squads make good on their promise to threaten and harass delegates to get their way.
Be it by stalking them in their rooms or preventing them from even getting to the convention, this subject will remain a blow-off topic in their sessions with The Donald. They’ll mention it, and he’ll say those people have no connection with the campaign. Since Trump’s company is private, and he won’t release his tax returns despite not actually being under IRS audit (another no-go topic for interviews), we’ll never know if they’re getting money from him or how much.
We’ll be left to wonder why these people are so devoted to a man they’re willing to work tirelessly for him for free.
Then again, that’s what these “titans” of conservative media have been doing, so maybe it’s not so farfetched.
In the end it doesn’t much matter if they ever believed. It’s clear they don’t now, and now is all there is. Well, now and tomorrow. After November, the tomorrows for these soothsayers of victory will run as dry. Their audiences will wonder how “the man who was going beat Hillary” lost. To paraphrase the mythical Pauline Kael quote, they won’t know how Trump lost … everyone they listened to said he was the only one who could win.