William Kristol (shown) and his band of NeverTrumpers at The Bulwark, an online site, are gleefully celebrating Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday victories over Bernie Sanders. Some of them would even vote for Biden (or China’s Xi Jinpeng) over Donald Trump. Undoubtedly, some of them would even vote for Bernie over Trump — except that it would be harder to explain their voting rationale and resume their undeserved positions as “conservative” thought leaders any time in the near future. Cheering for Biden, though, can be played by the neocons as both anti-Trump and anti-Bernie.
Writing in The Bulwark on March 2, on the eve of the Super Tuesday, Kristol advised Democrat voters: “So it’s Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden. Which means, if you’re inclined toward American constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and a free economic order — as well as a liberal world order anchored by the United States — it’s Joe Biden. And if you’re not, then it’s Bernie Sanders.”
Anyone who has followed Joe Biden’s political career (including especially his years as sidekick to Barack Obama) and his voting record knows full well that Kristol is squeezing desiccated mummy dust to wring a minuscule few drops of difference between Biden and Sanders. Bernie simply wears his socialism more openly. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. Nancy Pelosi, it’s a matter of militant in-your-face socialism vs. soft behind-your-back socialism.
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The Bulwark, which is serving as Kristol’s new flagship since the unlamented sinking of his Weekly Standard in 2018, has become a home base for the Beltway anti-Trump mob. On March 3, The Bulwark, featured an article by Shay Khatiri echoing the New York Times-CNN Fake News theme that Putin is backing both Trump and Sanders. The Khatiri piece, titled “Bernie and Trump, Putin’s Chaos Candidates,” carried the following subtitle: “From Russia with love: Putin’s election meddling and American self-doubt.”
Really! They’re back shamelessly flogging the failed “Russia-Trump collusion” bogeyman again, apparently under the assumption that Americans are so feebleminded and memory deficient that this tune will play again. At least with Bernie, there’s a history of his long love affair with Soviet Russia. As we reported last year, a video of Sanders and his wife on their honeymoon in the Soviet Union in 1988 puts a fine point on his lifelong affinity for communist regimes. But here’s the Bulwark screed, recycling as supposed fact the Democrat/Fake News claim that Putin helped Trump in 2016:
We learned last month that Russia is, again, meddling in our elections, this time helping Bernie Sanders’s campaign. Press reporting about this information — which Sanders, some of his Democratic primary opponents, and President Trump have all spoken about — comes from American intelligence briefings.
There are some obvious explanations for why Vladimir Putin’s Russia would want to help Sanders. First, the Russians might believe — and have good reason to believe — that helping Sanders helps Trump, whose election the Russians supported in 2016. Second, Trump and Sanders are the two candidates likeliest to have Russophile policies.
In a March 4 column in The Bulwark, “BidenMania Is Running Wild!” Jonathan Last reinforces the Big Media fiction that Minnesota’s far-left Senator Amy Klobachar and sodomite LGBTQ activist Pete Buttigieg are “moderates.” And he appears to be rooting for Team Biden to take not only the White House, but Congress as well. He writes:
Biden is obviously going to turn out black voters. But he’s also enormously strong with the college-educated suburban women who helped power the Democrats’ 2018 takeover of the House. And he shows significant strength with white voters without college degrees, too. That’s the trifecta Democrats need to beat Trump in November. But it’s also the foundation of a realistic path to expanding their House majority and taking over the Senate.
For the past four years, the splenetic NeverTrump neoconservatives of the Republican Party have vied with the Democrat “progressives” for the top honors in the Hate Trump contest. William Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, and other Beltway “conservatives” have comprised a clangorous chorus of spiteful anti-Trump blatherskites. They have worked to outdo the worst far-left bloviators of the Democratic Party. Which is why CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. are all always so happy to welcome them for “ideological balance” — as they bash and trash President Trump.
These are the folks the Fake News industrial complex love to host as the authentic conservative voices. They are presented as the sensible, moderate, “centrist” alternative to the “racist,” “fascist,” “nativist,” “xenophobic,” (etc.) Trump and his guns-and-Bible-clinging deplorables.
Mark Hemenway, in a recent column for RealClearPolitics (“Media’s NeverTrump Voices Drown Out Republican Perspective”) noted: “Outside of the Beltway, Republicans and conservatives steadfastly opposed to Trump are a small minority — more than 90% of Republicans approve of the president. Yet, judging by the column inches and TV appearances being doled out, NeverTrump Republicans might be the most overrepresented demographic in America.”
Deep State’s Pseudo Conservatives
NeverTrumper Max Boot (Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow, Washington Post columnist, CNN analyst) is one of the favorite voices of the establishment media. His 2018 book, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right, received heavy promotion from the CFR, where he is a senior fellow for national security studies. “Warning that the Trump presidency presages America’s decline, Max Boot … recounts his extraordinary journey from lifelong Republican to vehement Trump opponent,” the CFR’s website warbled. “As nativism, xenophobia, vile racism, and assaults on the rule of law threaten the very fabric of our nation, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents an urgent defense of American democracy.”
The CFR portrait of the smug, effete, elitist Boot as stalwart, heroic patriot continues: “While 90 percent of his fellow Republicans became political ‘toadies’ in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Boot stood his ground, enduring the vitriol of his erstwhile conservative colleagues, trolled on Twitter by a white supremacist who depicted his ‘execution’ in a gas chamber by a smiling, Nazi-clad Trump. And yet, Boot nevertheless remains a villain to some partisan circles for his enduring commitment to conservative fiscal and national security principles. It is from this isolated position, then, that Boot launches this bold declaration of dissent and its urgent plea for true, bipartisan cooperation.”
The usual CFR echo chamber heaped praise on the Boot book. New York magazine declared it “impressive and unflinching.” The Washington Post called it “One of the 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2018.” The New York Times designated it as an “Editors’ Choice” book.
In one of his latest columns, which has been cited and echoed by the Big Media Trump haters, Boot attempts to exploit the coronavirus outbreak against the president. “Diseases, far more than any human enemy, ruthlessly expose and exploit the weaknesses of their victims,” Boot warns. “Now, the coronavirus outbreak is laying bare the pathologies of the Trump Administration, which include compulsive lying, pandering to dictators, ideological aversion to ‘globalism,’ inveterate hostility toward experts and expertise, and — in a related development — sheer incompetence.”
Boot reveals here the real reasons why he and his CFR confreres and neocon comrades harbor such hatred for Trump and those who support him. It is Trump’s “ideological aversion to ‘globalism,’” which Boot and the CFR epitomize. And it is his “inveterate hostility toward experts and expertise,” which the CFR “experts” and their neocon minions correctly see as a threat to the Deep State’s monopoly of power over not only the federal government, but the Republican and Democratic Parties as well.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia
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