Enjoying the view from Limbo
For the past several years I have been chronicling the fall of one “conservative media icon” after another, exposing their gradual submission to the Republican Party establishment, even as they tried (or pretended) to cater to their primary audience, namely the true believer hordes we used to flatteringly mistake for “grassroots conservatives.” The Trump era, however, has amplified the problem ten-fold, as Trump’s...
Let me state my conclusion bluntly, right up front, in order to reject one sickening effect of the Trump era immediately, namely the recasting of wormlike obfuscation as a courageous moral stand: Erick Erickson has decided that the principles which led him to coin the hashtag #NeverTrump no longer apply. Erickson, the founder of RedState, with which he is no longer affiliated, and...
For a year and a half, I’ve explained to anyone who would listen that all this “Trump vs. The Swamp” nonsense was propaganda to hoodwink a lot of naïve people into giving the GOP’s half of the Uniparty establishment exactly what it wanted — carte orange to roll Washington’s progressive agenda right over that minority of Americans who liked their country and wanted...
For those who still harbor illusions that America’s alleged “two-party system” is anything other than the fraudulent face of the United American Progressive Party (Uniparty for short), the health care reform proposal from Mitch McConnell’s Senate must seem a real head-scratcher. I mean, gee, didn’t they promise to repeal Obamacare? Didn’t they object to government-run medicine? Didn’t they warn against the slippery slope to single payer? And yet...
On the afternoon of March 7th here in Korea, late night on March 6th in the U.S., I sat down at my office computer and signed into my e-mail account with the vague idea of asking a few of my American friends for their immediate responses to the newly unveiled RepubliCare bill. As it happens, one of those friends, conservative writer Steve McCann,...
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say “I told you so,” but…. Alright, enough of the false modesty. Let’s start again. AHEM! What was that I was saying eight months ago about Donald Trump being the Republican Party establishment’s perfect front man in this year of strong challenges to its power from the grassroots conservative movement? A totally unprincipled cipher ready to be...
2016 US Election / America Descending
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 26, 2016 · Last modified October 27, 2016
The current state, or rather condition, of America’s Republican Party, its death agony as the party of Donald Trump and his idol-worshipping hordes, is not the result of chance, delusion, or any kind of hostile takeover. It is the inevitable result of a political movement that has long-since become unmoored from sound principles and habits of moderation and moral continence. Tell yourself for...
2016 US Election / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 17, 2016 · Last modified October 18, 2016
I get it. I really do. There are three words in the English language that could make you consider voting for Donald Trump, and those words are “President Hillary Clinton.” For years, the name Hillary Clinton has been a convenient repository for everything you despise about the Left: the hypocritical demands that everyone act for the good of the “village,” while she ruthlessly...
2016 US Election / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 2, 2016 · Last modified March 14, 2019
(Originally published in January 2016) On January 19, Donald Trump, the loudest Republican claimant to the anti-establishment label, filled out his recent attacks on Ted Cruz in a very telling way, as revealed on Mark Levin’s radio program that evening: We’ve been contacted by the establishment types. They all want to know, how do they get involved with the campaign? They’re giving up...
(Originally published in February 2012) In the spring of 2011, Donald Trump threatened to start a revolution within the Republican Party, appealing to the naïve among Tea Partiers by promising to take on President Obama as no one else could. All too many members of the conservative media, including even some highly reputable ones, took his nonsense seriously. Even after abandoning his prospective...
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