A conservative laments the betrayal of the conservative media and establishment conservatives who have been exposed by President Trump in Human Events:
What had happened to my heroes?
I understand their objection to Trump’s style—three years ago, I myself was put off by it—but style is nothing when measured against substance. Here was a president advancing their agenda—our agenda—didn’t that mean something?
Establishment conservatives were tokens, allowing liberal elites to pretend they were objective when they were fully intent on transforming American society.
At first, I attributed their open mutiny to pride. Pride is human, and prideful men often make for sore losers.
But now, after ample time to recover from their humiliation, the persistent whining from establishment conservatives has exposed a very ugly truth about our former “leaders.” The George Wills and Tom Nichols of the world were always more interested in self-promotion than advancing conservatism.
Before President Trump’s explosive entrance onto the political scene, mainstream conservatism was somewhat tolerated by gatekeepers in the media, academia, and the arts. My heroes were nuisances to America’s increasingly liberal institutions, sure, but no real threat to the progressively progressive status quo. Establishment conservatives were tokens, allowing liberal elites to pretend they were objective when they were fully intent on transforming American society.
But Donald J. Trump was a different animal altogether, one who refused to kowtow to the cultural norms of American political theater. His frank and straightforward style was intolerable to liberal puppet masters who had spent decades corralling Republicans and forcing them to play nice.
Establishment Republicans have built entire careers out of playing nice. And it shows.
The threat of banishment from cocktail parties and university lectures—over Donald Trump of all people—has been enough to force much of the right’s pundit class to toss aside their ideals to preserve mainstream acceptance.
Three years later, it’s this cadre of tamed conservatives who are lending their efforts to the left’s never-ending coup against the President.
I am ever so pleased to have resolutely refused to ever describe myself, or allow others to describe me, as a conservative. I trust my reasons for having done so are now eminently clear to all and sundry.
And it’s good to see more and more former conservatives seeing the light about the intrinsically false nature of their pseudo-philosophy and its nonexistent principles.