Box-Turtle Ben Domenech and the Circle of Wingnut Life

Long ago, in a time now all-but lost to history known as "The Dubya Years", a plucky young Ben Domenech (now Mr. Meghan McCain) hitched up his True Conservative credentials, left behind the life of small Conservative beer --

[working] as contributing editor for National Review Online; two years as the chief speechwriter for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); and an editor at Regnery Publishing, where he worked on books by Michelle Malkin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Hugh Hewitt.

-- hopped a freight train to The Big City and landed himself an absolutely plum gig at The Washington Post...

..from which he was promptly fired for plagiarism three days later: one of a constellation of skeezy disqualifiers which Mr. Domenech carries with him to this very day.

Washington Post Blogger Quits After Plagiarism Accusations

By JULIE BOSMANMARCH 25, 2006

A 24-year-old blogger for The Washington Post, Ben Domenech, resigned yesterday after being confronted with evidence that he had plagiarized articles in other publications.

His resignation came after writing six blog items in the three days he worked for Red America, a blog that The Post created to offer a conservative viewpoint on its Web site.

Mr. Domenech -- who had worked in the Bush administration and was a founder of the conservative blog RedState.com -- came under heavy criticism from liberal bloggers, who called his political views extreme.

They first pointed to previous comments by Mr. Domenech, who recently called Coretta Scott King a "communist."

But by late Thursday, the bloggers had found instances of what appeared to be plagiarism, including an article by Mr. Domenech in The New York Press that contained passages resembling an article that ran on the front page of The Washington Post.

Evidence of one instance of plagiarism first surfaced on the liberal blog Daily Kos on Thursday. A comment posted on the blog said a passage from an article by Mr. Domenech was nearly identical to a chapter from P. J. O'Rourke's book, "Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People."

Other articles that contained passages that appeared to be copied were published in National Review Online, The New York Press and The Flat Hat, the student newspaper at the College of William and Mary, which Mr. Domenech attended.
...

Mr. Domenech works full time at Regnery Publishing, a publisher of conservative authors like Michelle Malkin and Tony Blankley. Ms. Malkin, whose latest book was edited by Mr. Domenech, posted a column on her blog yesterday that described the evidence of plagiarism as "damning" and called for Mr. Domenech to resign from The Post.

A spokeswoman for Regnery, Angela Phelps, said that while Mr. Domenech remained an employee, the company would look into the accusations.

Mr. Domenech said he received an e-mail message from Kathryn Lopez of National Review, putting him on notice that the magazine planned to review his previous work.

Glenn Reynolds, who writes the blog Instapundit, said the bloggers were "motivated by a desire to get" Mr. Domenech.

"They didn't like him because he was a conservative and he was given real estate at The Washington Post," he said. "Their goal was to find something they could use to get rid of him, and they succeeded."

Mr. Domenech addressed his detractors yesterday in a blog post on RedState.com, where he will remain a contributor. "To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America," he wrote.

That last line sounds positively Kavanaugh-esque, doesn't it?

But in the deeply inbred world of American punditocracy, the fact that Mr. Domenech is a hack and a plagiarist is so much less important than the fact that Mr. Domenech is in the Club.

That Mr. Domenech has friends.

And of course anyone who is in the Club and has friends, can never be allowed to miss a meal or a payday, no matter what.

So with the help of various, make-work wingnut-welfare jobs, a Very Important Award program invented by Andrew Breitbart to raise the profile and fill the pockets of his stable of Wingnuts On The Rise (and which died with Brietbart when he keeled over dead in 2012) and, of course, the huge leg back up into professional respectability Mr. Domenech got from the likes of his very good friend Chris Hayes --

I got your back, Bilbro Baggins!

-- and his very good friend Ezra Klein --

-- Mr. Domenech worked his way onto the Sunday morning network political talking-heads "A" List.

Yes, the terrible truth is that (as one America-hating Libtard blogger noted last year, Mr. Ben Domenech would most likely still be just another back-bench wingnut plagiarist and policy hack at America's most infamous climate change denial chop shop were it not for the fact that his very good friends in the Liberal media decided inexplicably to become his most reliable hype men.

So where has all this lead?

To this broadside from Mr. Domenech's very own wingnut slop house -- The Federalist -- trying to strong-arm the very same paper that sacked him for plagiarism 12 years ago into doing a couple of things.

First, longer referring to Jennifer Rubin a "Conservative" because, unlike Mr. Domenech, she has not pitched her ideological tent in Donald Trump's rectum (no link because fuck 'em):

Top Conservatives To WaPo: Stop ‘Dishonest’ Label Of Jennifer Rubin As ‘Conservative’

The Washington Post’s continued labeling of blogger Jennifer Rubin as a “conservative” in the years since she has repeatedly rejected conservative ideas and principles is an example of why the American people are unable to trust the media, more than three dozen top conservative leaders say...

(There follows the usual list of imbeciles and hobgoblins.)

And second, The Federalist would very much like the Post to hire a goddamn, gen-u-ine Box-turtle Ben Domenech-vetted, Trump-approved "True Conservative" right goddamn now:

The Post has thus far declined repeated calls to rectify its deficit of actual conservative writers or deal with its false labeling of Rubin.

Behold, a Tip Jar!