You can't find any of them on the Left, obviously. It's been rather amusing to take in the tales of rancorous meetings between "establishment" Democrats and the new breed of radicals in Congress. I'm quite sure there have been tense moments and shouting matches. But it amounts to a present-day playing out of the old adage that radicals are merely liberals in a hurry. The young turks are merely making plain what the end game for the whole lot of them has always been.
And, if it's possible, the foolishness and rottenness permeating such societal sectors as education, journalism, arts and entertainment, the corporate world and even a lamentably large swath of institutional Christianity are even more egregious than what we see in the national and state capitols of our land.
So, how are things to the right of center?
Dismaying in the extreme, I must report.
I won't go over the basics about Donald Trump himself again here. He's a self-absorbed, shallow, blustery, inconsistent - indeed, ideologically rudderless - huckster who has, because he has proven he has a bit of instinct for listening to people who can help him really and truly look like a "winner," overseen implementation of a number of great policy moves. To restate the one point of agreement to be found on the fractured Right, on the policy level, his has, on balance, been a good presidency so far.
There are, of course, his shills. Cult followers. Throne-sniffers. The first wave of them, back circa 2015 and 2016, mainly consisted of those who communicated in all caps in comment threads, amply peppering their rhetorical fist-pumps with exclamation marks. As the campaign gave way to the election and the inauguration and the beginning of a Trump administration, one started to see a more "respectable" layer of enthusiasm for the man himself. The likes of Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson and Roger Kimball brought an erudition to the impetus that began to shake things up in circles where responsible consideration was essential for participation.
The emergence of The Center for American Greatness represents kind of a nexus of the yee-haw and the highbrow. Its journal publishes the aforementioned thinkers, but its resident opiners such as Karl Notturno and Chris Buskirk differ little in tone from the boneheaded cheerleading of a Sean Hannity.
This type of Trumpist also has a notable need to portray the entire swath of the Right that, to various degrees and in various ways, finds Trump objectionable as moribund, as teetering on the edge of oblivion. This crowd did much crowing over the demise of The Weekly Standard, for instance.
These people want the public to think there is no daylight between, say, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Erick Erickson, Susan Wright and Kimberly Ross on the one hand, and Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Max Boot and Bill Kristol on the other. Obviously an observer as astute as yourself - evidenced by your taking the time to stop by LITD - doesn't fall for it.
The second crowd mentioned in the previous paragraph harms its own cause - whatever that is; getting Trump impeached, I guess? - as well as the greater cause of responsibly adhering to immutable principles when it pulls moves like sending Molly Jong-Fast to cover CPAC for The Bulwark.
The balancing act for actual conservatives has become trickier than ever. Bad blood between us and Trumpists makes finding common cause a daunting task. We will continue to applaud good policy moves. What we will not do is sign on to bad ones (tariffs, paid family leave, summits with dictators of rogue states) nor go into fanboy mode over the Very Stable Genius. He is no standard-bearer for what we hold dear.
The Trumpists find us contempt-worthy, but we are the ones equipped to offer consistency-based refutation of the grim Leftist program. We are, in fact, indispensable to the MAGA crowd, providing the heft when their lack of a coherent worldview becomes obvious to our common enemy.
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