To listen to the chatter of the Important People, you would think that a “decent and elevated conservatism”™ was about to return, has returned, or is just about to triumph in the person of—cue the drum roll—Mike Pence, former vice president and perpetual Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.
Yes, that’s right, because a baker’s dozen of less-than-fully gruntled employees of the Heritage Foundation decamped to Pence’s “Advancing American Freedom” sandbox, we are supposed to believe—at least, we are supposed to say—that a “Reorganization of the Conservative Movement” is underway.
What do you think? Does the mutiny at the Heritage Foundation signal a “significant shift within the American right?” Or is it just the familiar anti-Trump palaver we’ve been used to since the media’s “loud and troublesome insects of the hour” began each day by announcing (praying?) that “the walls are closing in” on Donald Trump?
I think it’s the latter. I think so, in part, because Mike “Mr. Morality” Pence is a political non-entity and in part because the colossus he faces is not the Heritage Foundation but his old boss, Donald Trump.
These days, any mention of the Heritage Foundation or its president, Kevin Roberts, acts like a ringing bell before the canines of Ivan Pavlov. Instead of salivating, susceptible souls start shouting “Tucker Carlson.” I have written about that melodrama a couple of times—here, for example, and here. I don’t really have more to add about that controversy beyond acknowledging that I like it better when conservatives train their fire on leftists rather than on one another. Perhaps the motto “no enemies on the right” is deficient as a matter of principle. As a matter of practical politics, however, there is a lot to be said for it.
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