Success Has Many Fathers (and Apparently None of the Are Liberals): UPDATE Mr. Dionne Responds.

Mounted atop E.J. Dionne's Washington Post column entitled -- 

Two cheers for the Never Trump conservatives

-- you will find this photograph of America's most notorious and unrepentant Iraq War pimp and the wrongest human being in the pundit business, Bloody Bill Kristol.

And just like *that*, the reputation rehab of the very worst of the Bush Regime Dead-Enders nears its completion.

Mr. Dionne acknowledges, this may be a tough swallow for a few Liberal grumps who, y'know, insist on "remembering" the "past" -- 

Yes, many progressives have been uneasy with these unusual allies. They insist that Trump was not some alien imposition on conservatism but rather the product of long-standing trends in Republican politics. Trafficking in racial division and racism, nativism, extremism, conspiracy theories and voter suppression did not start with Trump.

-- but what we Liberal can't seem to get through our thick heads is how terribly, terribly hard it has been for Dionne's Never Trump friends to have spent their entire adult lives and billions of dollars incubating a powerful American fascist movement inside the dead husk of the Party of Lincoln --

...But the Never Trumpers deserve our respect precisely because so many of them stood against these tendencies and, in more cases than not, undertook a deeper critique of their own side.

This applies to many of my conservative Washington Post opinion colleagues, the folks over at the Bulwark, the online journal that owes its existence to the right-of-center rebellion against Trump, and many of those ad-makers at the Lincoln Project.

-- only to find themselves driven out of their own temple just because the hoi polloi fell in love with the guy who insisted on Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud. 

For those of us arrayed from the center to the left, the awfulness of Trump is so obvious that we can underestimate how hard it is to walk away from the people who were your comrades for so long. In journals progressives don’t pay much attention to, television networks we don’t watch and Twitter feeds we don’t follow, the Never Trumpers were denounced as renegades and traitors — and also saddled with far uglier, unprintable monikers.

Sad!  

Because Mr. Dionne apparently believes we America-hating, terrorist-loving, dirty-commie, Fifth columnist Libtards and feminazis could never understand what it's like to be denounced and slandered and otherwise "saddled with far uglier, unprintable monikers" by the mighty Conservative propaganda machine.

Could never understand what it's like to be made pariah's for holding the wrong opinions or feel the sting of being on the business-end of the Right's Pretty Hate Machine.

Sad!

It's true that they have been forced to sacrifice their annual invitations to Dennis Prager's BBQ and Shit-On-Liberals Hate-a-Thon and Mark Levin's stirring rendition of Birth of a Nation as a one-man puppet show, but other than that Never Trumper have hardly been made pariahs or been made to surrender any of their Beltway media privileges. 

In fact, quite the contrary.  Unlike us America-hating, terrorist-loving, dirty-commie, Fifth columnist Libtards and feminazis who had the poor taste to have been right about the Right all along, the mainstream media has gifted their Never Trumper friends with a cornucopia of profitable delights.  Unlimited access to huge audiences, endless op-ed column gigs and magazine bylines, cable news contributor contracts, and tens of millions in glowing free publicity for their books and podcasts and fundraisers so on and so forth.  All with virtually zero pushback against their strenuous efforts to whitewash the depraved history of their Republican Party that led inexorably to the rise of Donald Trump..

I also feel obliged to note that, in addition to his long career at The Washington Post, Mr. Dionne has built himself a solid career on NPR where he has spent more than a decade sitting across from Mr. David Brook every Friday and conspicuously not challenging Mr. Brooks in any meaningful way on any of Mr. Brooks' endless farrago of Both Siderist lies.  

But the mere valorizing of Never Trumpers is not enough Never Trumper Bruce Bartlett who wants to go further and directly credit Never Trumper's with winning the election for Joe Biden by leaning hard on the same exit polls -- 

I should add that the only conservatives Biden should reach out to are of the Never Trump variety. Judging by the exit polls, they were responsible for his election.

— Bruce "Snarking and Barking" Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) December 8, 2020

-- which Mr. Dionne's employer says people should definitely not take at face value:

Don’t trust the exit polls. This explains why.

Analysts using the National Exit Poll to understand how various groups voted might want to be cautious

These are the early drafts of the Official History of the Trump years being bolted into place by our "allies" right before our America-hating, terrorist-loving, dirty-commie, Fifth columnist eyes.

Enjoy the ride.

UPDATE:  Mr. Dionne responded.  Bully for him!  The substance of his response is silly and wrong

--

Thanks for your thoughts. No, I don’t think that’s what I was saying. You’re right that liberals & lefties take the sort of grief you describe. (I get some of it myself.) But we’re less likely to see the full range of attack the Never Trump conservatives took from their own side.

— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) December 8, 2020

-- but good on him for doing it.  It's much more than I can say about all the prominent Never Trumpers who will block any non-blue-check who dares to point out that the GOP existed prior to 2015.

No Half Measures