Sometimes It Can Be Hard To Tell Between Strongly Held Principles, Arrogance, and an Old Fashioned Grift

The decision by Bill Kristol’s latest venture, one that seems much more interested in vacuuming cash from leftwing activist Pierre Omidyar than building a readership, was to send their staff reporter, a leftwing, pro-infanticide nutter named Molly Jong-Fast, to cover CPAC. The coverage was much as you might expect. And so was the negative reaction.

Word on the street is @SykesCharlie + Co at Bulwark are in a panic after their #CPAC19 troll via their pro-abortion activist staffer backfired & united cons against them.

They are not conserving conservatism. They're just scuttling another pile of cash from suckers.

Ahoy.🛳🛳🛳

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) March 3, 2019

I think Kurt is spot on because there is a lot of attempted ass-covering going on. There was a front page essay there today about how great they were in ridiculing pro-lifers and how they are upholding the best traditions of conservatism while The Federalist SUCKS!! (Sorry, I’m not giving a link.)

The most interesting was this thread by Tom Nichols. Nichols is a self proclaimed expert who even wrote a book decrying how experts are ignored–apparently he hasn’t looked around and examined the utter clusterf*** created by experts.

3. I miss the confident conservatism that hires a liberal like @MollyJongFast – a known Communist and subversive who has pictures of Stalin all over her apartment – to write about us and give us shit. We used to be people that could dish it out *and* take it.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 2, 2019

Yep, because confident conservatism always hires leftwing nutters to attack allies. Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t go to CPAC and nothing I’ve ever heard about going to CPAC makes me want to go to CPAC, but if you are conservative you shouldn’t hire a leftwinger to attack pro-life people. This intrigued me:

Okay. If you care, here's my answer.
1. I am – have always been – part of a reluctant "it must stay legal" crowd in the GOP that is small but has never trusted the sincerity of a major part of the pro-life movement. So let's get that out of the way.
So what's conserved, you ask?

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 2, 2019

So, self-professed “muh principles” conservative Tom Nichols is pro-abort. Then this happened:

Abortion? I think his views on that have been pretty obvious in the current discussion, but you don’t have to take my word for it. And look at the way he talks to one of the best pro-life writers out there. Is this conserving conservatism? 2/ pic.twitter.com/JQUdsc0Mvk

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) March 4, 2019

Okay so he’s socially liberal, but at least he’s fiscally conservative, right? Super concerned about the debt & deficits & stuff like that, right?

LOL. Nope. 4/ pic.twitter.com/53oFgJ2X4y

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) March 4, 2019

How about recognizing Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel? If you’re a real conservative, you “couldn’t care less.” 6/ pic.twitter.com/hMqpQKhTY3

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) March 4, 2019

I’ll let y’all decide if that’s actually conservatism or not. But the bottom line is that Tom Nichols is Jennifer Rubin with more cats and a book on why he’s an expert. And he should probably be taken with that level of seriousness. /fin

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) March 4, 2019

That, I think, is the unified field theory for explaining how Molly Jong-Fast came to be at CPAC and trashed pro-life people and mocked a guy struggling with cancer. If you were actually conservatives you’d be looking to build bridges at the largest conservative gathering in the nation because there is a presidential election coming up and there will only be one person in that race who even faintly resembles a conservative. They will not be wearing the Democrat label. Beyond 2020, Trump or no Trump, there is still a future where conservative alliances, even if they don’t agree on Trump, will be needed. Simple enlightened self-interest says if you want people to read your group blog, you don’t insult the readers (in all fairness, that inclination has been noticed at other places than The Bulwark.) But, if you really don’t believe in anything other than you deserve a place at the trough when it is slopped, then you can be pro-abort, against fiscal responsibility, in favor of gun control, and oppose Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and claim to be a conservative. You can try to get the Democrat elected. You can doubt the sincerity of people who have spent decades working to banish abortion and lecture actual conservatives on what it takes to be a conservative.

There may be actual conservatives at The Bulwark, but they seem to have put their integrity and conservative beliefs in a lock box for no greater reason than to try to turn over the United States to the Democrats. They apparently believe that if they side with the left and defeat Trump in 2020 that we will all forget the betrayal of principles and instead focus on just how smart they are and beg them to come back and lead us. That is not going to happen.

Or it may be even simpler and principles may not be involved at all:

You gotta feel for @BillKristol. He left TWS to Hayes and it sunk in a year. Now @SykesCharlie has managed to deep 6 The Bulwark in a few weeks.

So he's rushing back in to reassure the suckers. I mean donors.

Ahoy. 🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳

@LarryOConnor @ChrisStigall https://t.co/7RwnX3a3g8

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) March 4, 2019