Friday, May 17, 2019

Conservatives are a fraud? We knew that


Max Boot, formerly of the Republican Party, comes down hard on the conservative movement. Here's the gist of what he had to say...
"The whole ideology has become a 'racket,' he argues in a new op-ed for the Washington Post, a development he dates to 1996 when Fox News was launched. The latest revelations about the NRA, from the vice president Wayne LaPierre’s profligate spending to the various self-dealing projects spearheaded by the organization’s top executives, only hammer the point home."
I like the part where he brings in the NRA and its head gun nut, Wayne LaPierre. It would have been even more interesting if Boot had expounded on the cowards in Congress who suck up to the NRA for regular handouts. The ex-conservative continues...
"Of course, the most obvious sign of the hollowness of conservatism is its figurehead, President Donald Trump. His supposed business success has been exposed as a sham, a sham on which he built a presidential campaign that had no other justification. His supposed religiosity is an obvious hoax. And his policies, supposedly designed to help the 'forgotten man,' have only helped the rich get richer. He has no problem letting countless supporters “fall victim to his trade wars,” as Boot puts it, for the sake of nationalist crusade."
There is no doubt in my mind that Mitch McConnell runs a close second as the lowlife of conservatives. And Boot feels...
"Trump couldn’t survive as the con artist that he is without the unshaken devotion of Fox News, which feeds his supporters a steady diet of propaganda necessary to keep presidential approval above a 36 percent floor." 
He adds that Fox is, of course, the "quintessential con." You have to love this kind of insight into the Oval Office lunatic, especially coming from an ex-conservative. Boot counts multiple irregularities at Fox with sexual harassment, right from the top, Sean Hannity's elitism compared to his $36 million annual salary, and Tucker Carlson's self-described "man of the people," in itself a con. All in all, the conservative movement and its cronies is a "total scam."

Finally, Boot concludes...
"How did this all happen? It’s a complicated story, but the simple version is this: American conservative leaders knew their policy preferences would never be popular on the merits, so they figured out that they needed to trick voters into supporting them. And they’ve been wildly successful."
Isn't it pathetic that the Grand Old Party, the GOP, has to rely on trickery in order to further its agenda?

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