OPINION

The RINOs Never Learn

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The squishes are almost childlike in their belief that if they only submit to the Establishment hard enough by offering gooey platitudes everything will work out fine for them, like a kid who keeps hoping that this time Santa’s really leaving a pony under the tree.

But some people on the right need to understand and accept that there’s no kraken, and others on the right need to understand and accept that there’s no pony.

The Jeb! Faction thinks it’s riding high now. Please clap as you see the media elevate them, and why not? They do the Establishment’s bidding. Liz Cheney gave what used to be her prestige over to Impeachment II: Electoral Boogaloo and got a lot of praise from the libs for that, followed by more hatred from the libs. That’s the thing about ostentatiously showing off your alleged principles whenever they require you to shaft your own side – the other side is never impressed by your moral purity. In fact, it’s laughing at you. It’s happy to benefit from your petty treason, but it still hates you and you’re still practically Hitler.

I know you want to give it the good old Ivy League college try, Fredocons, but you can never suck up to them enough.

But Ben Sasse is always down to give it a shot. The Lisa Simpson of conservatism is the guy who reminds Mrs. Worley on Friday afternoon that she forgot to assign the class any math homework. Maybe he can write the same book for the 12th time on his generic moral disappointment with us for not being up to constitutional snuff. In the meantime, when conservatives are actually being silenced by the government/tech axis, he’s writing in an enemy mag about how his own side is icky.

Well played, Nebraska. Here’s a fun test – name a non-nagging-related legislative achievement of this tiresome bore. Just one. I’ll wait. But hey, there’s no time for actual concrete results that make our lives better – Trump tweeted something mean!

And the aforementioned Liz Cheney – what was the GOP thinking. Besides needing to end this ridiculous dynasty thing, she was all in with the Bushes, and the Bushes were all in with everyone but you. Where was W in 2020? Sulking because Trump was mean to his tubby brother. Loyalty goes one way for all these people – away from us and toward the Establishment swells they see at the country club. Wyoming, dump her.

But they never learn. Their response to failure is to look for ways to fail harder. You can already see the wheels turning in the heads of the poobahs of Conservative, Inc., about how they will try to foist Nikki! Haley on an unwilling GOP. With her finger to the wind, Nikki! can always be counted on to try to thread that needle of never actually doing anything for normal Americans while not seeming to be never actually doing anything for normal Americans. What exactly qualifies her to be our nominee? She was an adequate UN ambassador, no Jeane Kirkpatrick to be sure, but not a total failure. And she was an undistinguished governor. But what’s she done? What’s the Nikki! Initiative that’s going to improve your life, or keep the Democrats from mauling you figuratively or literally? Well, she’s got a PAC now, and its name is just as maudlin as you would expect. It’s the “Stand for America” Political Action Committee, and its purpose is to “build on this momentum at a critical moment in our nation’s story.” What serious person babbles this kind of insipid dreck? And what, exactly, is this “momentum” her deadweight establishment pals have going right now?

What this PAC does for her is clear – ka-ching! – and what it does for you is equally clear. Nothing. She’s done nothing, and she’ll continue to do nothing, except pose and utter insipid goo about “our nation’s story” and the like. And her poses depend entirely on who she is standing in front of at that moment. She’s soft in front of the softs and hardish in front of the hards. And she’s always, always banal.

“Build on this momentum at a critical moment in our nation’s story?” Who even talks like that? It sounds like Bushmush, the kind of thing followed by a plea to “Please clap.” Learn from Trump and say what you mean. We’re sick of this pablum.

But pablum’s on the menu with Establishment darling Nikki!, since her sole attribute is a total commitment to conventionality and conventional wisdom. She will never defy the Establishment; she’s all in for the status quo, because she wants a bigger job in it. That’s great for the ruling caste – a Republican who is not a threat to the ongoing scam. It’s pretty rotten for those of us who they expect to vote for her, so don’t.

The latest hack is new Congressdisappointment Nancy Mace who seems to be Nikki!’s mini-me, spewing the same kind of Establishment-friendly cliches we used to see all through the Bush years. Get this from last weekend when she was welcomed on Meet the Press, but not on an empty stomach:

"I want to be a new voice for the Republican Party, someone who will help bring us back to our core values of promoting liberty and empowering people to pursue their own happiness. That's the GOP that can help bring our nation together. [Flag of the United States emoji]"

For me, the US flag emoji really pulls the whole thing together, though it really should have been a white flag.

What drivel. Remember how vacuous Bush-era babble about “promoting liberty and empowering people” substituted for actually fighting for the conservative change we needed? If the neighbor on your right just buried a son killed in Wherethehellistan, and the one on the left just saw his job shipped off to Szechuan, and your kid just came home with a school survey asking whether his/her gender identity is “binary, nonbinary, asexual, pansexual, omnisexual, Bulwark staffer, genderfreak, genderbroke, two-spirit, three-spirit, or all of the above,” maybe we need pols who stand up instead of lie down. In the 2000s, this kind of empty rhetoric may have launched a thousand Weekly Standard cruises – Ahoy! – but it will not launch the conservative counterattack we want and need in 2021.

As noted alt-rock mopers The Cure suggests, primary them all. We need warriors, not wimps.

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