Some Ancient History

Well ancient in Internet Years. Tucker Carlson wrote on the Trump phenomenon back on January 28th, 2016.

On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump. The Democrats assume he’s a bigot, pandering to the morons out there in the great dark space between Georgetown and Brentwood. The Republicans (those relatively few who live here) fully agree with that assessment, and they hate him even more. They sense Trump is a threat to them personally, to their legitimacy and their livelihoods.

Ah. Yes. Their livelihoods. Selling to the rubes and then not delivering. Reign in the budget. Defund Obamacare and a few other things. None of which they intend to deliver. Because if they did deliver they would have nothing left to sell. A point I have made before.

Tucker then makes the same point under the heading He Exists Because You Failed.

Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.

Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents “an existential threat to conservatism.”

There is of course much more. But I’d like to look at the National Review which published a critique of Carlson the very next day. Here is an example of their tremendously prescient prediction skills.

At present, Donald Trump has the theoretical support of a plurality — not a majority — of Republican primary voters. Indeed, at present, most Republicans prefer someone else. As of today, not a single vote has been cast. As of today, the nomination could go one of three or even four considerably different ways. If Trump ends up as the nominee, then it may well be fair to say that the Republican party has been proven to be “out of touch with its voters” and that, in 2016, “the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed.” But if he doesn’t? Well, then this prediction is going to look really quite odd. It is one thing to say “there is a sizable portion of GOP voters who are unhappy with the status quo”; that much is demonstrably true, and was noted well in National Review’s recent editorial. But it is quite another thing to presume that those voters are “the GOP” per se. Unfortunately, Carlson does precisely that.

They did give their game away didn’t they with – it is quite another thing to presume that those voters are “the GOP”. Funny thing boys, the voters seem to be taking back what they presumably didn’t own. The wailing and gnashing of teeth is a sight to behold. You had to convince voters that they owned the party to get their votes. And dagnabit they took you seriously.