What started as an infection has become a state of sepsis.
We cannot predict, here in late winter 2023, whether Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee next summer, but that still seems seems the most likely scenario as of now.
That right there is enough to substantiate the header of this post. To anyone not willfully choking down his or her most basic sense of decency and humanity, it's obvious that Donald Trump was far and away the worst president the United States has ever had, that he only ever entered politics to find a new arena for self-glorification, that he regards meanness as a virtue, and that he has no understanding of actual conservatism.
But he may not be the institutional Right's biggest problem now.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is now not only happy to give Marjorie Taylor-Greene committee assignments, he says of the Georgia representative "If you're going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie Taylor-Greene in your foxhole . . . I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her."
My state, Indiana, seems like a nice, clean-living, flyover kind of place, right? The kind of place where Republicans are not only sensible but occasionally icons of conservative leadership:
When former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (R) announced he was exploring a 2024 bid to succeed Sen. Mike Braun (R), who is running for governor, Republicans should have been elated. Daniels (a Post Opinions contributing columnist) was a whirlwind of reform in the governor’s mansion. He ended collective bargaining for state employees, privatized Indiana’s toll road, established one of the country’s largest school choice program for low-income students and created a conservative alternative to Medicaid that gave citizens more control over their health-care choices. He inherited a $700 million deficit but left the state with a $2 billion budget surplus — achieved while he implemented the biggest tax cut in Indiana history. Then, as president of Purdue University, he earned a reputation as the United States’ most innovative college president. Daniels rejected vaccine mandates and covid lockdowns, replaced full-time dining hall employees with student workers, scrapped the vast fleet of university-owned buses in favor of a private contractor and froze tuition for 10 years.
In other words, Daniels is exactly the kind of bold, thoughtful conservative reformer voters flocked to in 2022. And he was well positioned to win the GOP nomination. A December poll showed him leading Rep. Jim Banks — a Trump loyalist who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election — by 22 points.
But, smart guy that Daniels is, he saw what a sewer his party had become and gave a pass to a possible Senate run:
Then came the RINO hunters. The Club for Growth released an adexcoriating Daniels as a tax-and-spend “old-guard Republican clinging to the old ways of the bad old days.” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted “The establishment is trying to recruit weak RINO Mitch Daniels” to run for Senate, adding that “he would be Mitt Romney 2.0.”
Will county-wide party organizations around the state shun Banks? Hell, no, they'll invite him to their dinners, luncheons and various other events with enthusiasm. Candidates for more local offices will proudly pose for photos with him.
And because Indiana is reliably red, the US Senate will have yet another election denier in its ranks.
There are now two Republican presidential candidates, the most recent being Nikki Haley.
I was once impressed by Haley. She put in a solid stint as state representative and South Carolina governor (with laudable positions such as being pro-life and for school choice), but where she really came into her own was as the US representative to the UN. She fiercely defended Israel, pointed out that Russia was blocking the International Atomic Energy Agency from seeing that Iran was complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and brought attention to the plight of the Uyghurs in China.
But she, like McCarthy, made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago weeks after the January 2021 debacle (but not until after she'd given a February 2021 interview saying that the Very Stable Genius "went down a path he shouldn't have" and that Republicans "shouldn't have followed him"), establishing a pattern which she's now continuing as a presidential candidate. On Wednesday of this week, she told the Fox & Friends hosts that "President Trump is my friend, I'm not going to kick sideways in this race." She's also signed on to be a speaker at this year's CPAC, an event that has gone from being the premier gathering for principled, coherent conservatives to a complete sewer. (You know who's giving the Reagan address? Kari F---ing Lake.)
On the media front, it has come to light that the most ate-up MAGA hosts on Fox News are utter phonies, as evidenced by their among-themselves reactions to the VSG's election-fraud claims in the aftermath of his defeat:
On the night of Jan. 6, 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson referred to then-President Donald Trump as “a demonic force” in a text to his producer after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol that day.
It was one of many revelations in a filing by Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News for defamation and seeking $1.6 billion in damages.
At issue are claims Fox News hosts and guests made shortly after the 2020 presidential election. Some of them suggested or stated outright that Dominion’s machines were part of a scheme to steal the contest from Trump, who claimed the election was rigged.
Two days after the 2020 election with the result yet to be determined, Carlson fumed via text about Fox News calling Arizona for Joe Biden. Dominion’s filing notes the network was taking heavy criticism from conservatives at the time. According to a text in the filing (page 19), the Arizona call seemed to cause consternation among the network’s biggest stars:
Fox Hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity immediately understood the threat to them personally. Carlson wrote his producer Alex Pfeiffer on November 5: “We worked really hard to build what we have. Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” He added that he had spoken with Laura and [S]ean a minute ago and they are highly upset,” Carlson noted: “At this point we’re getting hurt no matter what.” Pfeiffer responded: It’s a hard needle to thread, but I really think many on our side are being reckless demagogues right now. Tucker replied: Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them.” And he added: What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
Two months later, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building to overturn the election while Congress was inside certifying the results.
The filing includes a text from Carlson to his producer later that day (page 43) in which the Fox News host calls Trump “a demonic force”:
After January 6, trying to thread the needle between the truth and pressure from his viewers and sponsors became even more difficult. Late on January 6, Carlson texted with Pfeiffer that Trump is “a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us.” On January 26, Carlson invited his leading sponsor Mike Lindell on his show, where Lindell spouted these same conspiracies on air after previewing them for Carlson’s staff during a pre-interview.
On his show, Carlson has downplayed the Capitol riot and even referred to it as an “election justice protest.”
Elsewhere in the filing is a text where Carlson tells Sean Hannity that Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich should be “fired” over a fact check of Trump’s election lie.
“Please get her fired,” he said. “Seriously.”
This kind of two-facedness was seriously stressing out at least one Fox star's producer:
An exasperated producer for Laura Ingraham texted a Fox News executive shortly after the 2020 election to say the host was not heeding his warnings that claims of voter fraud were “bs.”
As votes were still being tabulated in the days after the election in November 2020, then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed the contest was being stolen from him. Several Fox News hosts followed suit and also platformed a slew of election deniers. In particular, Dominion Voting Systems came under heavy scrutiny from the network’s talent, who suggested the company’ machines were part of a conspiracy to steal the election from Trump.
Dominion is suing Fox News and seeking $1.6 billion in damages.
A filing by the company on Thursday includes texts from Tommy Firth (pages 29-30), a producer for The Ingraham Angle. Firth tells a Fox News executive that Ingraham insists on pushing “bs”:
By November 12, Dominion became a focal point of discussion within multiple shows at Fox. Spurred by the November 8 Bartiromo broadcast, the wild Dominion allegations entered the mainstream. That day, Ingraham’s producer Tommy Firth texted Ron Mitchell, one of the Fox executives responsible for overseeing Ingraham’s show. Firth bluntly captured the dilemma: “This dominion shit is going to give me a fucking aneurysm–as many times as I’ve told Laura it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump tweeting about it–[REDACTED] Mitchell responds, “This is the Bill Gates/microchip angle to voter fraud.” Firth replies [REDACTED]. Later in the day, Ron Checks in: “How’s it going [with] the kooks?”
Laura concluded that the s--- posters were her bread and butter.
What kinds of signs might there be out there that responsible conservatism is mounting a countervailing force to this rot?
The Principles First summit coming up in early March offers some encouragement. The lineup of speakers includes some truly admirable folks: Arthur Brooks, Tom Nichols, Adam Kinzinger, Denver Riggleman, Geoff Duncan, Sarah Isgur, Alyssa Farah Griffin. I'm a little wary of the fact that the list is rather top-heavy with Bulwark folks, though. There's still some principled conservatism to bet found there on occasion. I know the likes of Mona Charen and Charlie Sykes are seriously in search of a workable definition of conservatism for our time. But co-founder and editor-at-large Bill Kristol has completed a drift completely away from the right side of the spectrum:
You may recall him as the former gatekeeper of Republican orthodoxy and much of its intelligentsia; architect of neoconservative foreign policy; adviser to US presidents; pundit; smooth-talker; operator. Now hugely popular among MSNBC Democrats, alert to racism and sexism and homophobia, Kristol has, these last few years, performed a spectacular ideological self-reinvention that makes J.D. Vance look like a man of unflinching consistency. And he has never even attempted to explain why.
And Jonathan V. Last- he who thinks Mike Pence deserves some kind of hero status for merely fulfilling his constitutional duty on January 6, 2021 - is also on the roster.
Heath Mayo, the Principles First founder, kind of stepped out of his lane last year when he decided, on Twitter, to castigate congressional Republicans for giving the thumbs down to the Respect for Marriage Act. His grounds for doing so were that our society needs to foster stable marriage no matter what it looks like. So much for the definition of marriage to which all of humankind had adhered for thousands of years until five minutes ago.
So Principles First is going to run up against the rabid attacks of the far more numerous Neo-Trumpists for being squishy. And the latter will have a point, insofar as all the PF defense of election integrity, support for Ukraine, and fealty to bedrock American institutions does not hide the gaping hole in the PF vision for conservatism's future. Where's the understanding that tradition and transcendent order are key to the conservative enterprise?
So the thoroughly infected institutional Right is going to continue to prevail on that side of the spectrum.
The rot on the Right is one of the two pieces of political-level evidence that our civilization is past its peak and drained of all its nobility and humanity.
The other, of course, is the Left, which is equally poisonous.
Take your pick, post-Americans: identity politics militancy, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution, or completely unhinged nuts, cowards and sycophants.
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