Dinesh Denial
Many Conservatives concede that the Conservative movement has gone bad. But they still insist that those of us who have been arguing this for decades were wrong for decades roughly until Trump came along. They find the case of famous conservative Dinesh D’Souza distinctly inconvenient.
Washington Post Op-ed columnist Max Boot wrote “@DineshDSouza is indicative of the downward trajectory of conservatism. He made his name with a well-regarded 1991 book denouncing political correctness and championing liberal education. Now he’s mocking school shooting survivors.”
Provoking this devastating twitter thread by Angus Johnson
Which includes “As editor of the Dartmouth Review, @MaxBoot, D’Souza published an attack on affirmative action written in fake black slang. It was titled “Dis Sho Ain’t No Jive, Bro.””
and notes that “D’Souza himself went from the Dartmouth Review to prominent jobs in the Heritage Foundation and the Reagan administration.”
New York Times columnist Bari Weiss took a more direct approach arguing that D’Souza is a new addition to the US Conservative movement “I know I should be over it, but the speed at which the organized conservative movement became the ideological home of Marion Le Pen, Seb Gorka, Nigel Farage, Dinesh D’Souza and their ilk remains shocking to me.”
I could just note the Johnson tweet above — he was a star of the movement back in the 80s, but I do like this extraordinarily brief 10 tweet thread by Jeet Heer which includes “I could go on and on” (and truer words were never tweeted).
They can admit that their movement has gone wrong, but they won’t yet admit that we told them so again and again and again.
I doubt they admit they have gone wrong. Oh, they’ll express dismay at where they are to the camera, and claim this is an aberration that will be corrected, but when the camera goes off they snicker at each other and move further on down the road.
It is the John Birch Society.
Many Conservatives concede that the Conservative movement has gone bad.
I contend it has always been bad
Welcome to AB. First comments always go to moderation to weed out spammers and advertising.
You mean go off the road like not controlling the Executive Branch? Or maybe the Legislative Branch? The Supreme Court? State legislatures?
If you define political success by electoral victory then I think you’re way off base.
No, I define going off the road by clearly lacking decency.
Their only care is electoral victory, what they give up for it is decency. Clearly shown by Donald Trump, et. al.
“Many” conservatives? No–mostly just Inside-The-Beltway never-Trumpers and neocon war criminals like Max Boot. Out in the “real America” most conservatives not only support him, but are absolutely adamant in that support. In fact, it can be argued that the same small cadre of anti-Trump conservatives are the same neoliberal, noeconservative “leaders” who, with their relentless push for war, empire and globalization, did so much along with the liberal hawks and Wall Street lovers like the Clintons to create the conditions that enabled Trump’s victory. Nothing they now say is worthy of anything but contempt.
Decency… I’ll bet that’s what Bernie is thinking about the DNC…lacking decency.