Matt Lewis Calls For Table Manners at the Donner Party

Those of you visiting from Esquire while Charlie Pierce in on hammock patrol, feel free to pull up a stool and Marge'll bring you a cup of our famous coffee and a fresh slice of Stupid for Lunch,  It's not like Brother Charlie makes, but I figure if I Irish up the coffee enough...

I today's exciting episode, Daily Caller keyboardist and bilaterally-symmetrical-American, Matt Lewis,  suggests that the very best way to sugar the gas tank of the 100-foot-tall Donald Trump Killbot which is at the moment stomping the GOP to bits would be for respected party-elder and noted reasonable person, Rush Limbaugh, to step on up and take one for the team.

And no, I am not kidding:

Time for Rush Limbaugh to Smother Trump

The king of talk radio could take out Trump if he wanted to, so why won’t he sack up and do it?

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As I’ve written on numerous occasions, one of the major problems confronting the conservative movement today is that individual actors have perverse incentives to tarnish the collective brand.
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(Dear Matt.  Perversion is their brand.  Also stupidity and 37 flavors of bigotry.  But please continue.)

But with great power comes great responsibility. And Limbaugh is one of the few leaders in the conservative movement who has the megaphone and the juice to enforce discipline and good behavior, the way Bill Buckley did when he chose to write Ayn Rand, the Birchers, and a whole host of other unpleasant factions, out of the conservative movement.

(Dear Matt.  Buckley was a genteel bigot of the first order who baked his own vile habits right into your movement from the beginning.  Also those Randites, Birchers and "host of other unpleasant factions" which Buckley tossed out the front gate were let right back in through the kitchen door by the premeditated actions of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the entire Bush family among others.  But do please continue.)

Trump, who until quite recently was a pro-choice, Hillary Clinton-supporting believer in single-payer health insurance, is no conservative. And while many of the usual suspects—Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, et al.—are providing Trump aid and comfort, one wonders whether they’re using him to advance their own self interest. (Even Bill Kristol was playing this game until it finally became untenable.)

(Dear Matt.  "One wonders" no such thing.  These were Conservatism's first-tier parasites and perverts before Trump defined batshit sharply upward.  They are nothing but bottomless pits of nihilistic self-interest.  But please continue.)

[Eric] Erickson is exactly right. And while he certainly qualifies as a prominent conservative opinion leader, it’s a real shame that he’s one of the few in his space willing to tell grassroots conservatives the truth about their phony new hero.

Why would any real conservative want to defend this guy? Or, more to the point, why wouldn’t they show some courage and openly condemn him?

Matt, I have it on excellent authority that the only "real conservative" left in America is Andrew Sullivan.

Or maybe it's Jonah Goldberg.
Or David Brooks.
Or Ralph Reed.
Or Phyllis Schlafly.
Or Sean Hannity.
Or Imaginary Ronald Reagan.
Or maybe I'm thinking of Dick Cheney.

For awhile there, I remember lots of very loud people saying that that George W. Bush was the greatest fucking Conservative in history.  Of course, nowadays those very loud people are still very loud, but they call themselves "Independent Libertarian Conservative Constitutional Christians" and will swear on the lives of their mothers that they never even heard of George W. Bush.

Golly, Matt.  Maybe there are no "real conservatives" anywhere anymore.

Or maybe everyone is.

Once you get that all straightened out, drop me a note.

Meanwhile, if you're not familiar Cretors popcorn, I can highly recommend it.