POWER PLAYER

It's fair to say that whatever clout Bill Kristol mysteriously had within the conservative movement is gone. I say "mysteriously" inasmuch as even by the standards of modern conservatism this guy is beyond inept; seriously, try to find something he has been right about. Anything. Try to find one of his protégés who has been anything other than a political Hindenburg.

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Remember when he touted Sarah Palin as the next star of the movement? Remember when he started rumors a few weeks ago about some absolute nobody named James Mattis running for president as an independent to save the GOP? Remember, well, basically everything he said during the George W. Bush years?

For years – decades, really – he has held his inherited position as a conservative icon despite having been wrong about everything, often to the bemusement and wonder of those of us outside the movement. It appears that his star might finally be fading, though, if the "big announcement" he teased last week is any indication.

Without further ado, let's hear the big news, Bill!

Kristol wanted a national contender, but Mitt Romney said no. He would have settled for an experienced presidential candidate, but Rick Perry said no. He turned his attention to sitting senators, but Ben Sasse said no.

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He looked at former senators, but Tom Coburn said no. He eventually moved past elected officials and sought out a military leader, but retired Gen. James Mattis said no.

And so, Kristol lowered his sights just a little more – and found a political blogger who appears to have said yes.

Oh. So, uh, despite already having missed the deadline for ballot access in a few key conservative states, the big anti-Trump savior is…D-list National Review blogger David French. Not even the right-wing anti-Trump media can take this seriously.

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How the perplexingly mighty have fallen, Billy. From kingmaking to begging loser ex-candidates and anonymous bloggers to run kamikaze campaigns to derail the nominee you assured everyone would never win.

30 thoughts on “POWER PLAYER”

  • Making this even more funny; David French's wife, Nancy French, has been writing the Facebook and blogs of both Sarah Palin and her daughter, serial-pregnant reality-star-wannabe, Bristol Palin. She also ghostwrote those books Sarah Palin is supposed to have written. Sarah Palin has hitched her wagon to Donald Trump; David French is running against Donald Trump.

  • Skepticalist says:

    I could stand another rerun of Kristol about to explode even though the lights were out and the party over in 2012. He was a mess while waiting for some kind of miracle after Obama easily won the day Sweet.

  • From Lawyers, Guns & Money:

    "I remember back in the late ’90s when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture to an economic philosophy class I was taking. It was a great lecture, made more so by the fact that the class was only about ten or twelve students and we got got ask all kinds of questions and got a lot of great, provocative answers. Anyhow, Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol back either during the first Bush administration. The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at The White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at UPenn and the Kennedy School of Government. With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. “I oppose it”, Irving replied. “It subverts meritocracy.”"

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2008/10/the-sub-prime-kristol-meltdown

  • fledermaus says:

    Yet ol' Billy will be invited back again and again on the "news" shows to share his insightful thoughts on the political issues of the day. I really think that the pundit class selects for people with the right status markers, high social intelligence and zero critical thinking abilities.

    In a sort of Dunning-Kruger dynamic, they do not have the ability to independently assess policies or their consequences, but they sure as hell know whose opinions matter.

  • I still think the best option for the GOP at this point would be to invent a sentient handgun named "Freedom McKillbrownandpoorpeoples."

    (Call me Bill!)

  • I really hate to admit this…but one time my dad, who is a lifelong democrat, pointed angrily to Bill Kristol up on the Fox News tv screen touting the upcoming Iraq war and said "that bastard is the Jew of all Jews".

    It was funny in an awkward "I can't believe you said that" way crossbred with "what the fuck does that even mean" way, with a little bit of "you are a democrat" kind of shock.

    So now I can't hear a mention about Kristol without this strange scene popping into my mind every single time.

  • "Remember when he touted Sarah Palin as the next star of the movement? Remember when he started rumors a few weeks ago about some absolute nobody named James Mattis running for president as an independent to save the GOP?"

    Remember when the press was touting him as "Dan Quayle's brain"?

  • I recall reading somewhere, by someone who did the research instead of lazily half-citing it like me, that Bill Kristol is, for lack of a better word, the ultimate conservative scenester. He's been around so long that at some point he's given a job to basically everyone in the conservative movement. That would explain a lot.

  • Legacy hires like Kristol or Jonah Goldberg or Luke Russert are initially carried along by their parent's momentum, but eventually, like Road Runner going over the cliff, look down and realize there's nothing holding them up.

  • Kristol is just one of oh so many pundits who keep on getting things wrong and keep on getting asked for their opinions. The fix is in

  • Somehow I am reminded of Rudy Giuliani's meltdown during his Senate Campaign in 2000. At some point the Republicans realized that they needed an alternate candidate to run against Hilary Clinton, someone who was "not insane" and "from here". I think they ran Lazio, who lost.

    I suppose there is this fantasy that Trump will melt down, perhaps at the convention. Then all they'll have to do is find someone "not insane" and "from here", except now it's even harder for them to find someone who satisfies the former. Besides, they tried this once against Clinton and lost.

  • 'Remember when the press was touting him as "Dan Quayle's brain"?'

    No, and I was following the news regularly during the GHW Bush administration.

  • I was listening to the French piece on NPR yesterday morning while commuting. It exemplified everything wrong with NPR's political coverage. I had to laugh at how seriously it was treated.

  • "No, and I was following the news regularly during the GHW Bush administration."

    It's from the "even the liberal" New Republic. See here:
    https://newrepublic.com/article/63216/the-veeps-keeper

    Fun fact I learned from that profie: Kristol managed the first Senate campaign of Alan Keyes, which was just as big a flop as all of Keyes' other campaigns. The man sure can pick winners.

  • why god why, should such utter dolts exist at all, let alone be elevated to anything, and for decade after numbing decade … just prattling on and on forever with their fucking nonsense, no matter what … I swear a nuclear war could happen, nothing at all left anywhere in the radioactive mists … except – omg, sure enough, there's bill the fuck kristol, well-fed as usual and just nattering away

  • philadelphialawyer says:

    "I am reminded of Rudy Giuliani's meltdown during his Senate Campaign in 2000. At some point the Republicans realized that they needed an alternate candidate to run against Hilary Clinton, someone who was
    not insane and 'from here.'"

    Giuliani is not insane and most definitely is from New York. (Of course, he is also an authoritarian pig, but that is not another issue.) And the GOP did not step in after any "melt down" on his part during the Senate race. Rather, Lazio was chosen after tough guy Rudy pretended to have cancer because he knew that HRC would kick his butt, and dropped out. Days later, little pissy pants Rudy was running around, presiding as mayor over parades and what not, as if nothing had happened. And, after Nine Eleven, he tried to strongarm his way into an illegal third term. Because, presumably, our city, which had existed for three hundred years before he was born, could not do without him. And all thoughts of him having "cancer" were conveniently forgotten. As they also were during his (mostly grifty) run at the presidency.

    "…like Road Runner going over the cliff, look down and realize there's nothing holding them up.

    It was Wile E. Coyote who ran over the cliffs chasing Road Runner, not Road Runner himself!

  • @philadelphialawyer It's a shame that Giuliani is so crazy these days. He was a pretty great DA back in the day when he helped bust up the mob. 9/11 really made him go cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

  • philadelphialawyer says:

    Nate:

    I think Big Julie was always a Brownshirt. Nine Eleven was just his shot at the Main Chance.

    As an aside, he did pretty much zero to earn the "9-11 hero" BS status. He didn't run away, like Bush did, but, otherwise, Rudy, in the words of Woody Allen, just showed up. Indeed, he did nothing but show up, as, for months, he was on TV all day and night, reading the friggin' changes to the bus schedules and so on, at his endless, self promoting "news conferences."

  • In his defense, he did get his own name right in every byline. That's about it though but you said to name one thing he got right.

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