A Unified Theory of Never Trumpism

As MSNOW, and the former staff of The Weekly Standard (The Bulwark) and Barack Obama's former joke writers (the Pod Save lads) continue to amalgamate into a single, Centrist/Center-Right media keiretsu, their third-rate/too-late epiphanies keep coming fast and furious.

This one in particular kept me chuckling all the way through the three-and-a-half hours Blue Gal and I spent at a local cinema watching half an hour of coming attractions (90% horror flicks) and three hours of Christopher Nolan's substantially revised version of The Odyssey.  I had no fear that my soft chuckles might disturb our fellow cinema patrons  because HOLY FUCK IT WAS LOUD.  And not ordinary, Nolan-loud.  I have no objection to ordinary, Nolan-loud.  This was loud -- like a jet engine and a fire alarm simultaneously going off six inches from your ear loud. "Trying to drive Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican Embassy in Panama City and force him to surrender." loud.  "My God, why didn't I bring a pot of wax to seal my ears?" loud.   

Repeatedly.  For minutes on end.

Anyhoo, I kept right on chortling because this time their third-rate/too-late epiphany came in the form of a sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the problem with the Republican Party stems from the fact that it's full of Republicans and a brief lament that no one else has thought to entertain this possibility.

Sad!

Jon Lovett (Pod Save lads): There's the quote going around uh it's something to the effect of more Americans are fascist than we realize.  And one day we're going to find out. And so I I want to I want to this is actually where I wanted to go next because um I think this is an old Hemingway.... But the gist of it I think does apply. A point you've made repeatedly which I think there's very little equity to in politics is... uh... you can blame Trump, you can blame misinformation, you can blame  Republicans, but and this is a a paraphrase of something you've written.  77 million Americans who voted for Trump are some combination of unserious, decadent, or weak. Now it it's a lot cheaper in politics to blame the powers that be. That's true on the left, that's true on the right. There's not a lot of discussion about the culpability of the actual voters and their agency in this. So, can you just as somebody that has been an observer uh of conservatism from the inside for a long time, uh what have you learned about um the voters themselves through this period?

Jonathan V. Last (Bulwark):  Well, so I mean I can tell you my impressions. I can't tell you that they are like facts that I've learned. Um, what I have seen suggests to me though that you to avoid ... to avoid...uh, coming to the conclusion that voters wanted what they chose, you got to start creating a whole bunch of  Rube Goldberg contraptions. And the minute you push on any of these constructs even a little bit, they start wobbling and so you have to build another one, right? 

And h/t to Alert Listener Walt for pointing this out.

My Unified Theory of Never Trumpism?  

That they will always be on the verge of catching up with where Liberals were 20 years ago.  

They always present their epiphanies as if they just discovered an elusive, and previously unknown element lurking between Fluorine and Nitrogen on the periodic table.

Their new element?

It's called 'oxygen' fellas." 

Congratulations.  You 'discovered' oxygen.  

I Am The Liberal Media