MAGA has a challenge based on a paradox. It is at least as purist a movement as any flavor of either progressivism or conservatism, but, given its intrinsic incoherence, it must try to define what it wants to be pure about in terms of stomping into the dust anyone who deviates the first micro-inch from its jumbled set of orthodoxies. In short, it makes more clear what it's against than what it's for.
It also, by its nature, operates in the short term. It can't conceive of any kind of principles that would guide it through, say, the next century.
Nothing sparks its hatred like public recognition of anyone's actual conservative bona fides who ever obstructed anything about its "program."
As you know, Mitch McConnell has announced he will step down as the Senate GOP leader in November. Now, I have my share of real frustrations with McConnell. Shortly after having given a floor speech in which he placed the moral culpability for January 6 on Donald. Trump, he told an interviewer with a great deal of certainty in his tone that he'd vote for Trump if Trump were the GOP nominee.
But, sitting out here in the hinterland as I am, I'm sure I don't appreciate all the factors McConnell has to balance every day in his role. And the fact is, he steered a lot of legislation through his chamber that advanced conservative causes. And he was primarily responsible for getting three great Supreme Court nominees approved during the otherwise unfortunate administration of the Very Stable Genius.
Here's how the ate-up yay-hoos are framing McConnell's legacy:
McConnell was a cancer on the GOP and the most unpopular national political figure for many years. He hasn't died and there's no reason to sugarcoat his legacy.
Carl is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, which at one time was an exemplary think thank. It was founded by the west coast Straussian Harry V. Jaffa. But it has pretty much gone all in for MAGA-ism.
How about this charmer from a group of currently-serving federal lawmakers?
Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine).No need to wait till November… Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.
What's the main thing that leaps out at you in each of these tweets?
Is it not the utter lack of grace? The refusal, or perhaps incapacity, to consider any kind of context?
Matt Vespa, one of the most toxic columnists at that sewer of MAGA-ism, Townhall, has a piece today - sorry, not giving it any linky love - on the occasion of Liz Cheney on yesterday's Supreme Court decision that throws a wrench in Jack Smith's ability to move his cases against Trump forward. The whole piece is an attempt to portray her as an irrelevant laughingstock. At one point his poses the question of how does someone in deep-red Wyoming lose the state's House seat? He doesn't answer his own question, but the piece is pregnant with the clear implication: She saw Trump's behavior on January 6 as disqualifying him from further participation in America politics. Her voting record in Congress was as conservative as you can get. She was elected conference chair when she was only in her second term. Hell, she voted with Trump's preferences 93 percent of the time. She had a reputation for policy chops.
But she crossed the MAGA red line.
Let us also bear in mind that to Trump, his former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, is now "braindead."
The drool-besotted throne-sniffers have completely taken over the Republican Party, which is why I'm staying home in May and November.
I won't have any truck with a movement based on pure meanness.
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