I Am Mr. Secret Fox News Conspiracy Guy! UPDATED

How deep in Rupert Murdoch's pocket am I?

I was leading the Fox News Conspiracy against Matthew Dowd before the Fox News Conspiracy against Matthew Dowd even existed.  That's how deep.

After all, I was one of the only people asking question of Future Resistance Hero Matthew Dowd waaay back when he was the Hillary Stompin',  K'rupt Duopoly Disruptin', King of the Beltway Both Siderists.  I was the asshole asking questions which Mr. Dowd responded to by calling me stupid, calling me readers stupid and blocking everyone in sight.

I was the first to track his top-to-bottom public persona rehab once he started surfacing on MSNBC as the Hero of the Resistance.

I was the first to report that Mr. Dowd had nuked his entire Twitter archive,   and that plus his public persona rehab meant that he was probably either angling for a permanent gig on MSNBC or a run for public office.

Clearly all of this adds up to me being a long-term, deep cover Fox News mole.

But now -- sad sigh -- it's all out in the open.

Here's what happened.  From Crooks & Liars, Why Did Matthew Dowd Delete All His Tweets?

Matthew Dowd does not want Texas primary voters to know how anti-Hillary he was in 2016. The "she's just as bad as Trump - corrupt duopoly" tweets don't age well.

Keilar:  You know that is going to raise eyebrows. It’s going to elicit scrutiny. In the age of when anyone deletes anything or isn’t forthcoming with, say, emails, we know where this goes. You know it is going to grab attention.

Here's how Mr. Dowd's fan club reacted:

First time watching @brikeilarcnn in a long time to see you. I won't be watching her again.
I used to adore her but now she reminds me a little like Meghan McCain...mean, rude, unwatchable & foxian.

— Sue Meyer (@SueMeyerKC) October 4, 2021

@CNNnewsroom Briana keeler as she so often does tried to attack our TX Lt Gov candidate @matthewjdowd with a #Foxnfools conspiracy and he flipped the script and ask her why she was peddling a #Foxnfools narrative 🙄 I jumped straight up in my bed bc I have been wanting to ask it

— Pam Carothers (@carothersp) October 4, 2021

I watched too and still don't understand why she kept harping on your twitter clean up. Or is she forgetting K-Files which is CNN and that she can find everything even if it is deleted. Poor journalism. Also, poor coverage as not a peep about women marches that I noticed.

— Amestms (@amestms) October 4, 2021

Here's how Mr. Dowd reacted:

Dowd:  So what I think is happening, Brianna, and I think it’s unfortunate, is Fox News does this, which is dream of some conspiracy theory, as they always do, which obviously has nothing to do with anything of what we’re talking about. And then people again to repeat it. Again, I cleaned up my inbox in May or June, just deleted all of old tweets. I think I have 5,000 sitting there. I just think we shouldn’t play into Fox News’ sort of conspiracy theories.

Remember kids, asking a candidate for higher office -- who has pretty much zero experience at anything other than punditting on teevee -- what was in the 145,000 erased Tweets he was firing off during the period he was punditting on teevee is all part of a Fox News conspiracy! 

Why are you doing Fox's bidding Brianna!

And when Mr. Dowd was pushed ever so slightly:

Keilar: Well I think it's an important question to ask.

Mr. Dowd got very pissy:

Dowd: Well you asked it, and I answered it.  You asked it, and I answered it three times.

And here is how it will be monetized.

My friends. We need your help. Since I announced for Lt Gov of TX and have been unrelenting in pointing out the cruelty and cravenness of the GOP incumbent Dan Patrick, Fox News, Breitbart, etc have been on the attack of me. Please contribute at https://t.co/sNWSK3QHfL

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 3, 2021

If this all sounds familiar -- a candidate with a hypocritical and potentially disqualifying past giving a mushy, bullshit non-answer to a reporter's question and then responding to subsequent questions with "I've already answered that" -- it should.  It's straight out of the playbook of Matthew Dowd's former employer, George W. Bush.  After flailing around trying to handle awkward questions about his cocaine use, his DUIs and evading the draft, Team Dubya settled on the simple tactic of insisting that he had already answered those questions and moving on with "Next question".

Bush says he's been drug-free 25 years; Pressed, he declines to offer more details

Under relentless media pressure, Texas Gov. George W. Bush said yesterday that he has been drug-free for the past 25 years, but he refused to provide any details of his self-described youthful "mistakes."

...

Bush's equivocations on questions about any past use of drugs -- especially cocaine -- may be undermining his insistence that he will not play the "Washington game" of responding to rumors. On Wednesday, he said he had not used recreational drugs in the past seven years. Yesterday, it was 25 years.

Such shifts are keeping the issue alive and giving reporters ample reason to keep questioning Bush.

"He has got to steel himself to this and just say, 'Next question,' "counseled Marlin Fitzwater, who was a press secretary to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush

And the bit about turning a reporter's legitimate question into a Vast Conspiracy By My Political Enemies?  Pure, uncut Team Dubya too.   From Paul Gigot in the WSJ in 1999:

George W. Bush should have seen this coming.

If you're going to run for president as the anti-Clinton, you should know that Democrats and their media friends will do whatever it takes to make you look Clintonian.

This is the key to understanding the flap over Mr. Bush's refusal to admit or deny any past cocaine use. This newspaper has spent weeks pursuing the coke-sniffing rumors without finding an ounce of evidence. But the questions won't go away because Democrats are desperate to define Republican deviancy down to Clinton levels. The ugliness is just getting started.

Over the decades -- and kids, it has been decades -- I have been repeatedly lectured about my hard-hearted refusal to look at goofs like Mr. Dowd and see a Man Redeemed.  Instead, your cynical ol' Unca Driftglass sees one shallow, calculating media hack after another trying to make radical mid-career changes because the ground has shifted beneath them.  And the reason they get away with it over and over again has nothing to do with the state of their soul.  They get away with it over and over again because their fellow travelers in the Beltway media help them by doing the thing the Beltway media does best: memory holing the past and creating a safe space for their friend's reputational rehab to proceed smoothly without getting tangled up with a lot of embarrassing questions.

See, as I have written before, I actually believe in redemption:

And before we continue, I need pause for a moment to make one thing abundantly clear: I actually believe in redemption and forgiveness and all the rest of that good stuff.  Not only does my faith required it of me, but it's also a very practical way to make it through life with a minimum of agita.
However before getting to the forgive and the forget, first must come confession.

Then repentance.

Then contrition.

Then atonement.

Then and only then can come absolution.

 But as I have also written before...

...I believe it is impossible to get there via what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace":

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Take the "Jesus" out of it, and the moral exercise is still valid.

First comes confession.  Then repentance.  Then atonement.  Then forgiveness.

Mr. Dowd is a guy who loves quoting scripture on social media and who wears his Catholicism very much on his sleeve, so I know damn well that he knows what actual redemption requires.  And knowing what I know about Mr. Dowd's history, when I see him squirming and shouting "Conspiracy" under some very light questioning about a very legitimate subject, I do not see a Man Redeemed.  

Instead I see a husk who has been a moral windsock his entire adult life, blowing this way and that depending on the prevailing political winds.  And that moral hollowness served him well right up until Trump won and, holy shit, why didn't anyone warn me that there could be consequence to the bullshit I've been slinging?!?!

I see is a man who is desperate to duck out on the tab he ran up during the happyfuntime he enjoyed as ABC News' resident Hillary Stompin',  K'rupt Duopoly Disruptin', King of the Beltway Both Siderists and who freaks out whenever anyone even lightly brushes up against his inconvenient past.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just just lying.

After all, what else could expect from a deep-cover Secret Fox News Conspiracy Guy!

UPDATED:  As I was out running secret missions for Fox News today I remembered that one of the earliest Tweets that Mr. "Any Interest In My Deleted Tweets Plays Into The Vast Fox News Conspiracy Against Me" carefully barbered this proclamation that Hillary Clinton trying to keep certain emails private was A) a potentially disqualifying event and, B) that getting hysterically indignant about it for months on end was a perfectly legitimate position to hold:

Either you care both about Trump being sexual predator & Clinton emails, or u care about neither. But don't talk about one without the other

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 1, 2016

Mr. Dowd dumped this bold proclamation into a pool of digital acid several months later once the political winds shifted and its existence became deeply embarrassing.  

And for you gourmands, here is a small sample of Mr. Dowd's now-deleted Tweets from the Before Time which are still available at my Secret Fox News Conspiracy Blog.  

I have worked in both parties. There is no improving them from within. Need to disrupt from without.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 7, 2016

so do I. We just have to disrupt the rigging going on. Need ubers in politics and governance.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 11, 2016

@RavMABAY i am optimistic. Trump can easily be an accelerator to disrupt our current corrupt political system. end the duopoly.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) December 10, 2015

Join me in putting country over party. For independent minded leadership And if you are sick of the party duopoly. https://t.co/v1sLCEhGTX

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 10, 2016

Our constitutional democratic republic is strong enough to withstand any President; it isn't strong enough to withstand continued duopoly.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) September 16, 2016

As we move towards the party conventions, the two broken major parties are about to each nominate unelectable candidates. Wow. Duopoly.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) July 13, 2016

math correct. the duopoly has no interest in uniting the United States. Independents! https://t.co/v1sLCEzhLv

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) September 10, 2016

I am a common sense conservative who thinks DC and the duopoly party control is sadly broken and can't be trusted.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) June 18, 2016

I have picked a side. America. And independence from a broken duopoly. Why don't you try not to be a sheep

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) November 2, 2016

i think about my family/my country all the time.I am not going to be forced by the duopoly to vote for someone i don't trust

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 24, 2016

@SheriffClarke the "binary choice" supposition is the last argument of a dying duopoly. https://t.co/yXqCIrNXjF

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 13, 2016

@GovGaryJohnson every time someone says it is a binary choice, I say that is duopoly defending status quo.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 9, 2016

stop. That is what duopoly says to preserve status quo.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 7, 2016

@MrWalterShapiro @DemFromCT @KevinMaddenDC trump isn't he problem - the problem is the corrupt duopoly of partisanship in America today.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) March 8, 2016

Final point:  Despite what you may be reading about Mr. Dowd's candidacy, at the moment he is, in fact, not running against incumbent Republican monster Dan Patrick for the office lieutenant governor of Texas.  The contest between the Democratic and Republican candidates for that office will take place during the general election on November 8, 2022.  Mr. Dowd is currently running against a life-long Democrat and former Senior Advisor to Joe Biden named Mike Collier in the Democratic primary election which will take place on March 1, 2022.

No Half Measures