Friday, April 20, 2018

Vox Popoli: The nonexistent principles of Never Trump (And the failure of Conservatism.)


Kurt Schlichter tears into the pious frauds who, despite their proclamations of high principle, have proven to be every bit as unprincipled as we always figured they were:
Where are your principles in the face of the gross injustices of the last few days? A federal judge who was nearly appointed Bill Clinton’s attorney general and who officiated at Soros’s wedding ordered Hannity’s information disclosed, but that was cool with you. After all, Sean Hannity is so…oh well, I never!

Principles that depend on who is asserting them aren’t principles. They are poses.

If you actually adhered to them, your principles would have you shrieking, not cheering. A bunch of Hillary-donating feds should not be allowed to randomly pillage through privileged materials looking for a crime. No, the crime-fraud exception does not mean that the feds can just take all your stuff, read through it, and decide if some happens to fall into that narrow exception and leak the rest. But hey, why let some principles get in the way of a good laugh at the expense of one of those Trump people?

Gosh, it’s almost like your talk of principles was just…talk.

Schlichter is correct. There are no Never Trump principles. As a matter of fact, there are no conservative principles, because conservatism is not, and has never been, a coherent ideology. It is, ultimately, a reactive, defensive pose.

That's the strategic problem with conservatism. It literally can't win. It can't go on the offense, because it has no objectives. And Never Trump is conservatism with cancer.

UPDATE: They were always frauds from the start.
Former presidential candidate Evan McMullin owes his former campaign staff members tens of thousands of dollars and most believe he has no intention of ever paying them, a former campaign worker tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Right before McMullin’s failed bid for president in 2016 as the conservative alternative to President Donald Trump, the campaign was inundated with debt. The disastrous fiscal situation was a combination of frivolous spending by McMullin and his campaign manager Joel Searby, according to the former staffer.

McMullin received news weeks before Election Day 2016 about how dire the campaign’s finances were, and he had “no remorse” and said “I have qualms about this thing ending badly in debt,” the former staffer claimed. McMullin’s cavalier attitude towards the campaign’s spending struck many as a surprise, particularly because he billed himself as a fiscal conservative, he added.

It is simply delicious to think of all the harrumphing bow-ties shedding furious tears over the way they were stiffed by their fine, principled fiscally conservative candidate who was only running out of his deep sense of outraged honor.