It really doesn't cover any new territory for LITD readers. I've said here and on my podcasts multiple times that one of the most disturbing aspects of the Squirrel-Hair phenomenon is his right-of-center enablers.
Consider how willing they are to overlook the alarm bells going off in their faces:
Please recall this Huffington Post poll released in September. It demonstrated how Republican voters -- driven, it would seem, by Trump backers -- became astonishingly supportive of (a)maintaining the Iran nuclear deal, (b) government-run and -fundedhealthcare, and (c) race-based affirmative action when the pollster informed respondents that those positions were held by Donald Trump, as opposed to Barack Obama. These aren't hypotheticals, by the way. Follow those links, and you'll discover that longtime Democrat Donald Trump has embraced all three liberal stances during his current presidential run. Not back when he was donating generously to Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid over the years (yes, yes, "because he's a businessman!"), and not even more recently, when Trump was declaring his support for the wasteful "stimulus" package enacted by Obama, whom he declaredhad rescued the American economy; no, these are viewpoints articulated by the current iteration of Trump. The punchline is that his supporters don't care at all. Trump's Democrat-style campaign is driven by feelings and identity, not issues.The particular talk-show host I have focused on in these discussions here at LITD is Laura Ingraham, who cannot contain her giddiness when rattling off S-H's latest poll numbers or rally attendance figures, and who seems compelled to cram as many mentions of his name into a show segment as possible.
Benson's focus is Rush Limbaugh, and he does a thorough job of analyzing the lapse of this heretofore towering champion of real conservatism into a willingness to overlook the harm S-H inflicts on this nation:
A number of Trump's enablers in the conservative media firmament (some of whom loudly expressed contempt for him not long ago) are caught up in the same sort of feedback loop they routinely ridicule when it exists on the Left or within the GOP establishment. Here's how the coy game has worked: When Trump is right, they praise him. Fine. When Trump is factually wrong, while making an argument that may contain a "larger truth," they justify his inaccuracies. When Trump lies, they deflect and excuse. And when Trump does something indefensible, they side-step the substance, resorting to marveling at how masterful he is at "driving a narrative," playing the media, and aggravating all the 'right' people. Sure, he may be a sloppy, impulsive, non-conservative ignoramus on actual policy, but at least "he fights" in a manner that gratifies our audience's political id; plus, "without him, we wouldn't even be talking about [fill in the blank]!" There's never an explicit endorsement, mind you, just loads of adulation. And airtime. In response to Trump's ridiculous 'Muslim ban' proposal, which has been rejected by every other Republican presidential candidate, Rush Limbaugh had this to say:
"You Republicans, you can denounce Trump all day, all week, all month, and the Democrat party and the media are still gonna say you laid the table for it," Limbaugh said. "You can condemn Trump all you want, but it is not going to buy you any love or respect or admiration from the drive-by media and the Democrats. Now, folks, the conventional wisdom is that Trump is scum, that Trump is a reprobate, that Trump is obscene, that Trump is dangerous, Trump's insane, Trump's a lunatic, Trump's dangerous, Trump's got to go. Why join in with that phrase? Why join that crowd? We never fall in with conventional wisdom here."
As a long-time listener who has been entertained and informed by Rush's prodigious "talent on loan from God" for years, this protracted game of footsie with Trump is deeply demoralizing. They're both hyper-successful Alpha Males and occasional golf partners, so perhaps there's some personal solidarity and friendship in the mix, but Rush's calling card has always been the fierce defense of conservative principles. He excoriates "establishment" politicians for ideological deviations and heresies, shreds liberal strawmen, and exposes posers. Trump is a self-serving, unprincipled, unreliable political shape-shifter. He's a walking, bloviating strawman, habitually arming the Left with ammunition to claim vindication for their cartoonish characterizations of conservatives. And he's the ultimate conservative poser. He may be pushing the right buttons to suit a segment of the populace's mood, but he evinces exceedingly tenuous knowledge of issues, and displays little in the way of loyalty to any core convictions beyond, "what benefits Donald J. Trump at this exact moment?" The above quote from Rush's Tuesday monologue attributes conservative criticisms of Trump to some deep-seated desire to earn "respect and admiration" from the biased mainstream media -- the "drive-bys" as Rush calls them, a moniker that is often infuriatingly apt. This is a variation of the tired "Beltway cocktail party" refrain, wherein right-of-center figures deemed insufficiently devoted to the cause are presumed to be in the thrall of coastal elitists. That template isn't always inaccurate, it must be said, but it's been overused and abused as a means of impugning motives, rather than engaging arguments. A staple of the End of Discussion Left.I suppose one way to look at the phenomenon of rightie excuse-making for S-H is their desperation - shared quite clearly by a large swath of the American public - for someone to so dramatically shake up the political landscape that any veneration of the status quo is seen as an unacceptable position.
The thing is, we don't need Squirrel-Hair to do that. A certain Constitutional scholar from Texas fits the bill magnificently.
And the Freedom-Haters are as scared of him as they are of Squirrel-Hair.
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