Friday, March 29, AD 2024 11:02am

The Latest Never Trumper Savior

 

I can understand and respect honest Never-Trumpers, I really can, especially since I was once in their ranks.  In many ways I still have problems with Trump, but I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of promises he has kept, especially in regard to the pro-life cause, and dismayed by the off the wall behavior of most of his Leftist critics.  What I do not understand about many Never -Trumpers however, is their embrace of charlatans like Evan McMullin, remember him?, James Comey, Robert Mueller, etc, in their frantic effort to find someone, anyone, to save them from the Orange Man.  Now we have former one term Congressman Joe Walsh as the latest Never Trumper would be savior.

I am very familiar with the career of Mr.  Walsh.  In the 1990s he was a pro-abort RINO who ran two unsuccessful races for office in Illinois.

In the Republican wave year of 2010 he ran as a born again conservative, eking out a Congressional win in Illinois against a Democrat incumbent by 291 votes.  His term in Congress was notable for his very public spat with his ex-wife in which she accused him of being a deadbeat dad in regard to child support, claiming he owed her $117, 473.

Since losing his seat in Congress, an event helped by Democrat gerrymandering in Illinois, Walsh has had a radio show in which he specialized in regular intemperate statements including his promise of taking up a “musket” if Donald Trump was defeated in 2016.

Now, he has reinvented himself as a Never-Trumper and apologized over and over again for statements he made in the past few years.

The kindest characterization of Joe is that of political gadfly; the unkindest characterization would be that he is a grifting nut.  However he is looked upon, he could be viewed as a credible figure only by people who are either deeply unserious or deeply dishonest.

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Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 5:34am

Some of you may recall back in 1980, a rock star also named Joe Walsh, ran for president.

He was so wasted he couldn’t string two coherent sentences together. But at least he could play a mean guitar solo. That’s probably more than what could be said about this Joe Walsh.

Art Deco
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 5:59am

The NeverTrump residue consists of people who collect salaries from liberal media outlets (and need the money, which George Will doesn’t), people who collect salaries financed by liberal patrons (the entire Bulwark brigade), and people who are too pig-headed to admit they were wrong about certain things and pretend ‘muh principles’ are what motivates them. If principles were what they cared about, they’d write about issues and only in the course of discussing them, refer to the President. It’s a tic of NeverTrumpers (e.g. the pseudonymous Michigan lawyer who has been stalking Ann Althouse for years) that they drag the President into discussions where he is almost wholly extraneous. Or they retail the most inane and mendacious liberal talking points as if they were demonstrably true statements (David French). Or they repeat themselves over-and-over (Jonah Goldberg). This is Kristol’s latest weird gambit, having the last time tried to serve up David French (who has the soul of an elementary school hall monitor) and then the Mormon no one ever heard of with a rather puzzling personal history (who ran on a ticket with a minor campaign hack named ‘Mindy’). No one whose opinion he cares about seems to be able to persuade Wm. Kriston that he’s making a clown out of himself.

Art Deco
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 6:01am

Dale Price as a youth had a trick to annoy this friend of his wife’s (who wasn’t yet his wife). When their circle was out pub-crawling, he’d load quarters in a juke box and have it play ‘Ordinary Average Guy’ over and over.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 6:19am

“Deeply unserious or deeply dishonest?”

Time to embrace the liberating power of “and.”

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 6:58am

Wait, how do we know Trump blocked him? I thought there was an entire court decision that Trump couldn’t block people on twitter because his tweets were a kind of public space.
https://nypost.com/2019/07/09/us-court-rules-trump-cant-block-critics-on-twitter/

What’s going on here?

people who collect salaries financed by liberal patrons (the entire Bulwark brigade)

That would seem to explain a lot about the Bulwark from what little I’ve experienced of it, it seems quite cafeteria-conservative. Do you have more details?

ken
ken
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 8:16am

Never understood why AM 560 employed Walsh. He’s a bombastic idiot. We all may have misgivings about Trump’s shortcomings, but an idiot like Walsh makes Trump look dignified.

Art Deco
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 10:30am

Do you have more details?

If I understand correctly, Kristol hustled patronage from Pierre Omidyar. That doesn’t explain their pattern of advocacy, but it does constrain any new directions in which they might wish to go.

Note also that a number of The Bulwark‘s contributors used to write for Slate.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Thursday, August 29, AD 2019 5:38pm

c matt
c matt
Friday, August 30, AD 2019 11:18am

Joe Walsh the musician would have a better chance than Joe Walsh the clown.

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