Tipsheet

George Conway: Let's Face It, This Elise Stefanik Character Is 'Trash'

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 18, 2019 10:20 AM

He's a man perhaps best known for trolling his wife and her boss on Twitter, to the endless delight of his new political allies, and now he's expanding his blast radius.  Reacting to Rep. Elise Stefanik's (R-NY) aggressive questioning of witnesses and other tactics during the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment proceedings last week, George Conway decided to not only urge people to donate to her 2020 opponent, but to add a little bit of color commentary about Stefanik herself, for good measure:


"Lying trash" is certainly what a true gentleman calls a lady with whom he disagrees, especially a much younger lady.  Remember, these people believe themselves to be Trump's moral superiors.  It turns out that when Trump goes low, they chase him lower.  Conway, seeking to justify his totally uncalled-for, ad hominem attack on the young Congresswoman, shared an image of Stefanik flipping the bird to a C-SPAN camera; proof, he claimed, of her alleged trashiness.  It was a fake.  Ok, boomer:


Conway eventually deleted the tweets featuring the photoshop, but doubled down with excuse-making:


He called a Congresswoman "trash," then further smeared her with a fake image, and rather than thinking better of the whole episode and apologizing, he decided to take zero responsibility and stick with the personal insults.  Pure class.  Right on cue, 'progressive' women like celebrity Chrissy Teigen and left-wing writer Joan Walsh (note: the original version of this post called Walsh a 'crank,' which is a far cry from 'trash,' but I've chosen to replace that word with something more neutral), rushed to endorse Conway's slur, demonstrating yet again that the solidarity of the 'girl-power-ladies-stick-together-more-women-in-office' crowd does not apply to conservatives:


What's interesting is that Stefanik is generally the type of Republican that liberals profess to want more of.  She voted against the GOP tax reform bill and voted in favor of the (flawed, if well-intentioned, in my view) Equality Act on LGBT rights (a front on which she's also working to promote a better, more balanced proposal, I'm told).  She doesn't vote the party line every time.  She criticizes the president when she believes he's stepped over the line, including this past Friday.  But because she's emerged as a fierce critic of Adam Schiff and an enthusiastic combatant in the impeachment battle, previous heterodoxies have been wiped away; she's now "trash," who must be destroyed.  The tribe has spoken, led by middle-aged men.

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I know Congresswoman Stefanik a little bit, so perhaps part of my defensiveness here is personal.  That being said, I actually don't fully agree with her approach in last week's hearings.  Her "regime of secrecy" line against Schiff has grown less and less potent by the day, as transcripts are released and public hearings are held.  And, yes, her viral umbrage over being cut off by Schiff early on during Friday's proceedings smelled of a political stunt.  Whether one agrees with them or not (and Republicans do not here), Schiff was enforcing the rules accurately.  Stefanik wasn't entitled to the floor at that time.  She's a very smart woman, so I suspect she knew exactly what she was doing.  

Especially revealing, however, was the meltdown from the press and the Left over the exchange, which I'm willing to concede was a stunt.  Because Republicans orchestrated it, in this case exploiting procedure to create an identity politics-flavored optics problem for Democrats (an older white male 'shutting down' a young woman), it was outrageous and deceitful.  But when Democrats pulled virtually the exact same ploy, it was greeted with 'yasss queen!' cheering by many of the same people:


Left-wing female legislators deliberately breaking procedural rules in order to cultivate the image of unfairly silenced truth-teller was evidence of GOP misogyny and the victims' bravery.  A conservative female legislator does the same thing, and it's evidence of GOP dishonesty and manipulation.  Sometimes I wonder why Democrats even need communications staffs, when the news media does all their work for them.  For what it's worth, Stefanik's liberal opponent has been gaining social media followers and new donor by the boatload over the last week, but Stefanik also knows an opportunity when she sees one:


I'll leave you with this: