The post-Trump Republican Party is a mess. The Trump base, angry over a November election riddled with irregularities, and blamed for the recent nasty business that occurred at the U.S. Capitol, are being vilified by the elite media and censored by Big Tech. Thanks to that technology, cancel culture is in full swing on a scale even greater than that seen during the blacklist years of McCarthyism. The only “conservatives” escaping this are the leprous grifters of the Lincoln Project. Much has been written about these scabrous vampires, so I won’t mention their names, not even the guy recently exposed for sharing the concupiscent desires of the Emperor Tiberius frolicking with his horde of catamites on the Isle of Capri.
But what of the less malodorous Never Trumpers? You know them, the Neocon-jobs and Vichy Republican WASPs who most notably have supported foreign adventurism and domestic border insecurity. Those guys. The ones who rejected the idea of a Trump presidency from the start, and have ignored the Great Orange Hope’s results-oriented domestic and foreign policy achievements that have benefited the citizens of the United States as a whole.
Many of these policies, such as lower taxes and regulatory reform, were right out of the conservative playbook. Instead, our journalistic fifth columnists focused on Trump’s bombastic tweeting, his blunt off-the-cuff remarks — especially to the press — and his inability to suffer fools, generally. They wholeheartedly supported the lame Russian collusion hoax that cost American taxpayers roughly $40 million and the sham first impeachment proceedings in Congress based on a phone call. The latter occurring as the scented Sino-bouquet of COVID-19 began wafting over the country, with the Trump administration seeming to be the sole entity doing anything about it.
So I’ve been thinking about what the Never Trumpers might do with their lives and careers on the post-Trump American scene. What important policy and journalistic positions will they occupy in the future? Maybe their service to the Democratic Party might guarantee them jobs in the Biden administration or as full-time pundits on MSNBC, where every Never Trumper finds a vocation.
When the woke mob tires of George F. Will’s elegant worldly musings in Jeff Bezos’s Democracy-Dies-in-Darkness daily Democratic Party newsletter, maybe the boss will give him a managerial position in an Amazon shipping center, though I’m not sure that Mr. Will would feel comfortable among those legions of deplorable “scowling primitives” that he so detests. Or maybe something in the front office of the Washington Nationals if Mr. Bezos should purchase the team using the proceeds from his Pandemic 2020 windfall earned while over 100,000 small businesses died under the thumbs of Democratic governors and mayors. I think Mr. Will would enjoy a job like that in his twilight years. Maybe Jeff will take his pal and valued asset George out to the ol’ ballgame and buy him some peanuts and crackerjacks.
William Kristol certainly needs to be rescued from the Bulwark, a website that in short order has become dated and a bit rusty and rattling, sort of like a friend’s 1987 Chevy pickup truck. This transition should be a bit smoother than that messy nautical evacuation when Phil Anschutz torpedoed the S.S. Weekly Standard, and Captain Kristol got into a lifeboat with two trusted mates, Stephen Hayes and Jonathan Last, leaving the rest of the Neocon rats to drown.
Since Captain Kristol already has experience in such a post, I see him as a prime candidate to be Kamala Harris’s chief of staff, where among his important duties would be to discourage her from laughing every time she is asked a serious question. Maybe Harvey Mansfield has written a useful essay on this subject. Captain Kristol could have his trusted deputy Jonathan Last look into it.
The Biden administration should encourage the recently awokened New York Times to retain the services of David Brooks and Bret Stephens on their parrot perches at the much Grayer Lady, where they would continue to be fed treats for chattering the praises of the unifying and healing powers of the new president. Now, the Times may have to increase Mr. Brooks’s compensation because it’s a given that the White House will offer him a plum job in the Executive Laundry Room, where Mr. Brooks would exhibit his prowess in handling a steam iron as he puts those extra sharp creases in the presidential trousers. It’s rumored in Washington that former President Obama is pressuring the Biden team to offer Mr. Brooks this very important sartorial position. As for Mr. Stephens, he can stick around at the Times until there’s a social media campaign by staffers sympathetic to Al Qaeda or Hamas seeking revenge on him for his past editorship of the Jerusalem Post. He could follow the typical career track by starting up a podcast no one will listen to.
I really don’t know what the future holds for Max Boot. He seems comfortably ensconced at the Washington Post as a columnist (where lately he has called for the deplatforming of conservative media) and in his foaming-at-the-mouth slot on MSNBC. I just think he’s wasting his talent. After all, a guy who looks as good in a fedora as a millennial trans-hipster in Brooklyn should have a job with mysterious and clandestine responsibilities, like a character in a John le Carré novel. Maybe Hunter Biden can use him in what used to be called by mariners “the China trade.” An alternative might be as our new president’s Torquemada, haling folks like Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, or executives from Fox, Newsmax, and OAN before the bar of an FCC inquisition. CNN and MSNBC would cover these proceedings live. Max could wear gaudy robes and have lit candles and human skulls on his desk, and, of course, sport his trademark fedora. Torture would be administered beforehand with miscreants forced to sit in a room for hours watching ad nauseam that video of Nancy Pelosi getting her hair done in San Francisco, an experience as horrifying as Orwell’s Winston Smith contemplating his face being feasted on by rats.
Like fellow quisling George Will, Mona Charen shares the view that electing an American president is a matter of aesthetics. I assume she voted for Joe Biden because his avuncular manner flatters her ladylike disposition. I think she would make a great personal assistant to Dr. Jill Biden. M.C. is now a captive of Captain Kristol’s sturdy Bulwark, but much of her anti-Trump hysteria previously appeared at National Review Online, where she inaugurated her smears of the Trump “cult,” and this fact certainly reflects the Vichy conservatives found there, such as David French, the editor and mailroom alumnus Richard Lowry, and Kevin Williamson, short-timer veteran of the woke waters of the stormy Atlantic. I tend to think that National Review’s legendary founder William F. Buckley Jr. would have supported the Trump tenure for nothing more than its exhibition of common sense, Mr. Buckley finding that trait inherent in the American character to be edifying. This view is not held by our current media oligarchy, even in certain quarters on the right.
Jonah Goldberg (late of NRO, now running something called the Dispatch with ex-Kristol henchman Stephen Hayes) should know better than to be allied with this bunch. After all, he wrote a noteworthy book on what seems to be their collective worldview today (Liberal Fascism, Doubleday, 2008). He’s recently been descrying something called “Zombie Trumpism.” He’s even pitched that concept to Netflix as an idea for a mini-series. If that fails, maybe the Bidens will hire him as the official White House dog walker. Anyone familiar with Goldberg’s work knows he’s very fond of dogs. He could work closely with Mona Charen planning canine-friendly White House events. He would also be responsible for keeping the Biden pooches out of all executive bathrooms, so the president doesn’t trip over them when he’s stepping out of the shower. And it’s possible that the president could elevate this position to Secret Service status. The author of the G-File could be a real G-Man with a badge and a pocketful of Milk Bone treats.
Speaking of dogs, that leaves the noxious David Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg’s lap puppy at the Atlantic. I believe the vile bilge Frum has been spewing towards Donald Trump these last four years is rooted in the fact that the ex-president failed to embroil us in another exciting war in the Middle East. Frum is a noted wordsmith, of course. He did invade George W. Bush’s malaproprian cerebral landscape with the concise phrase “the axis of evil,” and should take a bow for doing his part to execute the greatest American foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam War. But I don’t know what the future holds for Mr. Frum. Maybe he could go back to Canada if Prime Minister Trudeau needs a speechwriter to help explain to Canadians why killing the Keystone XL pipeline is good for the Canadian economy.
I used to read regularly the work of the aforementioned lot. No more. To accentuate the positive, that leaves more time for books. But the elite media will eventually tire of them as a play toy, and they’ll be cast out into the depths of journalistic perdition, where their punishment will be to be kept awake by the demonic howls of the Lincoln Project alumni for eternity.
Bill Croke is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
