Brett Stephens, writing in the NYTimes:
Fox was always about influence, as much as money, for Murdoch. But, executed well, it could have elevated conservatism in the direction of Burke, Hamilton and Lincoln, rather than debase it in the direction of Andrew Jackson, Joe McCarthy and Pat Buchanan. …
The shame of Rupert Murdoch is that he wasn’t the man to do it. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
The shame of conservatives is that not a single one of them is the man or woman to do it.
That Rupert Murdoch failed doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
That the GOP as a whole has no interest in denouncing insurrection and open invitation to sedition means it can’t be done.
When you have zero congressional Republicans moving to expel MTG for her “soft secession” plan, or any of the other Republicans for their various secession plans (:cough: Texit :cough:) it should be obvious to everyone that there is no conservative voice that is not an echo of Father Coughlin: all the rest have gone silent.
We are told that this is a mere case of laryngitis among the ethical and reasonable Republicans — told again and again by people like Bret Stephens.
But this is not that. Whatever the conservatives who consider themselves ethical and rational tell themselves to comfort each other in the night, they have traded their voices to Orange Ursula and are desperately afraid of even attempting to get them back.
There will be no conservative voice of reason, much less intelligence, until the left destroys the new movement for secession and/or fascism.
At that point, voices freed from their magical confinement, Stephens will swoop in and declare victory on behalf of conservative values and lament that trans people don’t pay more honour to the heroes who can hate us even while not quite taking to the streets to murder in the cause of installing a government who would shatter our souls, end our lives, and then blame us — using our deadnames over our dead bodies — for our own genocidal victimization.
Lamenting the imperfections of Murdoch does not make you the man of principle you wish the world to see. Hell, it doesn’t even cause us to see a fragment, a shadow of that man in you.
Go home, Stephens. Hide beside the lintel of your door, one hand on a shotgun, never certain until the conflict is over whom you would shoot if you emerged, but too terrified ever to place yourself in the position where you might have to make that choice. Demonstrate all the bravery and heroism of the white Citizens’ Councils of 1963’s Mississippi, before Newt Gingrich could destroy the party you seek to praise, but we seek to bury.
The problem is that the reasonable conservative position is already occupied… by the Democrats.
Republicans have succeeded to such a degree that they’ve made themselves irrelevant. They’ve pushed the Overton window so far out, that the only free political real estate to the right is outright fascism.
The
conservativesregressive reichwing decided to murder their consciences a long tme ago. They were just too inconvenient.Too based on facts.
Too intolerant of hypocrisy.
Plus that compassion the ancient Judean rabbi they claim to worship but actually ignore kept saying they need to follow – even towards those durn heretical Samaritans and Moabites – and modern equivalents thereof.
Conservatives are ignorant. Education is about the only fix and you can’t re-educate self-made morons who are convinced they’re geniuses. So unfortunately getting results from education improvements will take decades to see filter through the population.
I’m not sure how you’d turn things around before then. Is there anyone who’s charismatic but so enamored of the values conservatives pay lip service to that they don’t see how conservatives really act? And who could survive the verbal bloodbath when the rest of the conservative politicians dogpiled on them? Finding someone who could and would do that sounds like a unicorn hunt.
Ignorance and mental sloth abide in their wheelhouse. All they know how to do is punch down, while remaining in a constant state of reactionary outrage.
If only the end of the “Conservative movement” could be reached sooner rather than later! So much damage already done.
I’ve found that I’ve mellowed quite a bit toward our German conservatives – though I’m still not voting for them. But looking at the US “conservatives” these last years showed me how much worse things could be. We have a lot of intelligent, moderate conservatives, even after Merkel stepped down. Even the extreme right-wing stupid toxic asshole party (the AfD) seems to be less insane than the GOP these days. Maybe the actual fascist NPD (too small to be dangerous), though they seem to be more like the Proud Boys in suits than the GOP (I still remember that video clip where they storm out of the building where they had a party function, and that gaggle of men in suits starts to rip out stones from the street to throw at the line of protesters).
Burke was a hack. The fact he’s considered better than the current lot is indicative of conservatism’s flaws
Conservatism is based on the emotional need to uphold existing power structures, anything else is just noise trying to justify that
ethical and reasonable Republicans
I think the ethical and reasonable republicans are all enjoying canapes of jumbo shrimp over in the military intelligence mess hall.