March 2, 2020

Why would Democrats take advice from Bill Kristol?

I'm reading "The Simple Answer/Don't overthink your Super Tuesday vote" by Bill Kristol (Bulwark).

There's an illustration of a Joe Biden wearing a blue Make America Great Again hat and smiling boyishly.

Under the illustration is a quote from Ronald Reagan: "They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers."

From the Kristol text:
You are a normal American. You don’t like demagogues of the right or the left. You want competent, responsible governance somewhere in the vicinity of the broad center. You cherish American exceptionalism, and you know that means rejecting European-style demagoguery of the right and left that exploits people’s anxieties and seduces them with false promises. You dread a future featuring an authoritarian and illiberal party facing off against a socialist and illiberal party. And so you don’t want to face a choice–you don’t want the country to face a choice– between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in November.

What are you to do?...
Duh! You vote for Biden.

Hey, I have just the right tag for this: "over-complication."

ADDED: I had to publish this post to click on my "over-complication" tag, and the most recent post with this tag — from January 11th — says:
ADDED: I had to publish this post to click on my "over-complication" tag, which I probably could have used a few more times if I'd kept it in mind. It's the kind of tag I love, specific but abstract, so it collects things from scattered topics that resonate. Today's post is only the 6th time I've used it since I created it in 2009 to observe that I'd "crossed the over-complication line" with a post that had a strange set of tags ("abortion, Althouse + Meade, Beccah Beushausen, beer, blogging, dolls, fake, James Frey, Meade, Oprah, Orson Welles, prayer, writing"). It took me a year to use it again, with this great quote from Gertrude Stein: "She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting." Didn't use it again until 2011 — "A Very Simple Venn Diagram of Where the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Agree" — and then once in 2017 (a labyrinthine sentence about feminism) and once in 2019 (a New Yorker critic bothered by the complexity of the movie "Joker").
The topic of that January 11th post was, like this post today, the Biden vs. Sanders question. But things were different then. Nate Silver had written:
So while Biden’s in a reasonably strong and perhaps even slightly underrated position, it’s slightly more likely than not that Biden won’t be the nominee. Sen. Bernie Sanders has the next-best shot... Like all of our models, it’s empirically driven... Since the primaries themselves are fairly complex process, the model is fairly complex also.... Models with more complexity are easier to screw up and can be more sensitive to initial assumptions....

102 comments:

MadisonMan said...

So you vote for Biden to avoid Sanders, and you vote for Biden to avoid Trump.

What does Biden stand for?

tcrosse said...

What advice does Billy Crystal have to offer?

J. Farmer said...

Can’t speak for Democrats, but for conservatives doing the opposite of whatever Bill Kristol advises is usually a winner.

gilbar said...

What are you to do?... TRUMP 2020

Michael K said...

Steve Bannon on Maria Bartiromo, almost the only show on Fox I watch, said the Dims will be desperate to find a candidate, not Bernie. Hilalry is starting to put out feelers.

Kristol is representing his funders.

Bobber Fleck said...

Well, Biden is simple.

GatorNavy said...

Bill Kristol is the best weathervane that money can buy.

tim maguire said...

Bill Kristol: Desperately Seeking Relevance. If only Bill's view of reality reflected reality, than (boy howdy!) he'd have something to say that's worth listening to. But, as the Spartans said so many years ago in another context, "If".

Wince said...

Notice that Trump's critics, both left and right, are lacking in specifics and have been reduced to arguing aesthetics.

gilbar said...

J Farmer makes a Good Point...

Bill Kristol could be Very useful as a negative indicator.
Wondering what to do? Ask Bill Kirstol, and do the reverse!

IF ONLY, if only there was a moronic idiot around here, that could fill that role!

narciso said...

this is the best Omidyar could come up with, feh,

paminwi said...

Who really cares anymore what Bill Kristol has to say except his fellow Never Trumpers?
Democrats truly don’t care.
Republicans don’t care.
It’s amazing to me that there are people who waste their time reading what The Bulwark has to say.
Reading a good book is what you should do instead.
Once Trump is done serving his second term it will fade into the sunset.

Lawrence Person said...

What on earth would Bill "Ahoy" Kristol know about "normal America?" He was born the scion of a famous political father, edited a political magazine, and has spent pretty much the entirety of his life in the NY/DC bubble.

narciso said...

well voting down hillarycare was a good move, and when he initially supported the huntress, but it's been few and far between,

Marcus Bressler said...

Some conventional wisdom since 2016 was that Bernie might easily win the nomination since Hillary stole it from him with her super delegates in 2016. The Dems changed the rules (to primary winners' favor) so why are they surprised. Panic City!

THEOLDMAN

Bernie's gonna piss all over Biden's SC firewall.

JAORE said...

Why would Democrats take advice from Bill Crystal?

Too narrow a question.

Why would ANYONE take advice from Bill Crystal?

At least he's not saying "Even Bernie"anymore. I can understand a Republican worrying about Trump in 2016. But the totality of BC's hatred of Trump is hard to take in 2020.

narciso said...

who was much sharper, like the still living norman podhoretz, meanwhile we have ground hog day in Israel again,

JAORE said...

Crap!

Krystal with a K.

Although Krystal therapy appeals to some.

Lucien said...

Time for a new slogan: “I’m for Senile”.

Howard said...

The problem with denial is when crunch time comes you need to get real fast. Vetting random advice from smarmy Lucidaries is a blackhole you never pull out of.

DanTheMan said...

>>Models with more complexity are easier to screw up and can be more sensitive to initial assumptions....


Unless they are global warming models. In which case they cannot be doubted.

Gell-Mann smiles.

Dave Begley said...

I regret ever reading Kristol or watching him on TV.

narciso said...

what are we on nate tin or nate pewter, well you can do stuff with tin,

Anonymous said...

Why would Democrats take advice from Bill Kristol?

Hey, who wouldn't benefit from heeding the psychotic confabulations of deranged neocons?

narciso said...

it's like ken Adelman, who flushed his reputation down, by a bout of huntress derangement,

Mr Wibble said...

You want competent, responsible governance somewhere in the vicinity of the broad center.

We haven't had that for decades. The whole reason that Kristol and his ilk are so hysterical about Trump is that he reveals just who stupid, incompetent, and corrupt the established political class actually are.

rhhardin said...

Male thinking abstracting away details and gonig for the essence at depth is simplifying. Sideways complexification is a female mental trait. It leads to voting democrat. Vote for whichever one seems to mean best. Seeming to mean best is the competition there.

narciso said...

he dismissed lee smith, who really dug into the Russia hoax, which kristol had a hand in enabling,

rhhardin said...

Wanting boring means not wanting to work mentally at depth. Vote for the tallest man not seeming to yell.

narciso said...

meanwhile rassmussen's polling is allowed to be mentioned on fox, a noise to signal problem,

rhhardin said...

Kristolnacht. Burn the math books.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“After Iowa, does anybody really follow the "results" of these elections, or are we really just waiting on the convention now, and seeing who drops and who is still in?”

Screw Iowa. We’ve reached a point where we don’t even know what the opera is until the fat lady starts singing. Everything else is bones and tea leaves. It’s fun, but exhausting.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Kristolnacht" - LOL, RH.

Kristol is opposite man. The left will do the opposite because why would they listen to that douche bag?

rhhardin said...

Models with more complexity are easier to screw up and can be more sensitive to initial assumptions

You can exactly fit N data points with a degree N-1 polynomial. Nothing is easier.

For prediction it's no good at all, producing hugely wilder errors the higher the number of points it's trained with.

Call it a model. Its problem isn't that it's sensitive to initial conditions but that it doesn't match the real dynamics of the situation.

curt said...

Is David Gergen still alive? Back in the days when one watched network news, he was the “wise man” always trotted out with the most trite and tedious take on the question of the day.

Leland said...

I didn't overthink my Super-Tuesday vote and I certainly didn't listen to demagogues like Bill Kristol to adjust my vote.

Birches said...

I'm surprised you were reading The Bulwark. I looked on RCP to see if they had linked to that article. I rarely see their links. I don't think RCP has ever given them one. I don't think insty has either. I just find their website interesting, like a Potemkin village in many ways.

bbkingfish said...

Kristol actually would prefer that the Dems nominate Mitt Romney.

exhelodrvr1 said...

GatorNavy,
"Bill Kristol is the best weathervane that money can buy."

But only if the wind is blowing from the left

hombre said...

Kristol has gone full Democrat. Biden is an old crook and a pathological liar whose mental prowess, not great to begin with, fades as we write. Democrats don’t understand the difference between Trump's failings as a human being and Biden’s failings as a public official, nor do they understand the difference between Trump’s eccentricity and Biden’s stupidity - or senility.

Neither, apparently, does Kristol.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Bernie Castro.

Take a real look at what a family dictatorship and communism hath done to once great island nation.

Michael Moore Riefenstahl spits on you with his lies.
Everything you’ve seen about Cuba is a lie
E-mail to all your pals.

Ann Althouse said...

Remember when Bill Kristol made Sarah Palin happen?

Ken B said...

Don’t over complicate Bill Kristol. He gets paid by rich democrats now. It really is that simple.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Is David Gergen still alive? Back in the days when one watched network news, he was the “wise man” always trotted out with the most trite and tedious take on the question of the day.”

The good old days. When coming off as a slightly more adroit Gerald Ford was a Republican virtue.

I’m ashamed to say it took me years to understand it, but I now get why so many independents and LIV’s were instinctively repelled.

Howard said...

Blogger rhhardin said...

Male thinking abstracting away details and gonig for the essence at depth is simplifying. Sideways complexification is a female mental trait. It leads to voting democrat. Vote for whichever one seems to mean best. Seeming to mean best is the competition there.


Isn't this what Trump does to garner a majority of white women? What makes him clever is he knows you boot-strap fellas are gender confused and will binge-watch and swallow the continuing stories too.

Drago said...

JAORE: "Why would ANYONE take advice from Bill Kristol?

At least he's not saying "Even Bernie"anymore."

Kristol is only flacking for Biden because Biden is the ONLY chance the lafty/LLR-lefties have remaining for stopping Bernie short of a convention war.

And its not that much of a chance, though it is a non-zero probability.

We already have examples of far left billionaire Omidyar ordering Bill Kristol and the rest of the Sad Sack Loser Boys (Charlie "deadbeat dad" Sykes, Rick Wilson, etc) to put out The Conservative Case For Voting Socialist, which they happily did.

Once Bernie is the candidate the "Conserving Conservatism" FakeCon's will be right back to their old pro-Bernie schtick.

Gusty Winds said...

Bill Kristol has proven himself to be a big POS. Unjustified arrogance. Principled without principles.

rehajm said...

Hillary is starting to put out feelers.

If Bannon said that he's being coy. She and her minions are orchestrating this mess...Since we're equating to TV shows today Hillary! is Boston Rob on her fourth try at Survivor, trying to run in under the radar...

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Hillary is starting to put out feelers.

Cthulhu-like..

SGT Ted said...

The thing is, Trump isn't a political extremist, despite the ongoing efforts to paint him as such.

Trump is a New York Asshole, who governs as a moderate to conservative Republican.

Bill Kristol has reverted from neo-Consrvative Republican to Gentry Liberal Democrat.

Gusty Winds said...

Kristol can't accept that the GOP base ran as fast as they could from him and his ilk when Trump came along to finally deliver on some promises. Is there anything lonelier than the NEVERTRUMPERS that sold their souls for airtime in MSNBC.

It's amazing how many people get published, and NOBODY gives a shit what they think. Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Sykes, Krugman....puke.

rehajm said...

...and not to pile on but the Gergen comments are apt. There was a time when these guys were useful. Someone to talky talk on the talky talk shows. Now that everyone is doing their job on social media...not so important.

Hubert the Infant said...

Even ignoring his creeping senility and family corruption, Biden was VP in one of the worst administrations in U.S. history. Think Libya, Syria, Chinese and Russian appeasement, Iran, the bad economy, and racial strife (if Trump has really made it alright for racists to express their racism publicly, why are so many racists after eight years of Obama?). Why is Kristol and the other never-Trumpers giving him a pass for that?

Derek Kite said...

The Washington Dictionary of the English Language:

authoritarian: someone who fires bureaucrats; the justification for the firing is immaterial; someone who breaks the 11th commandment that came down from God, Thou Shalt Not Criticize a Bureaucrat.

jrem said...

Why are all the prominent Jewish editorialists/commentators against Bernie? Eg. David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, even Judge Judy.

rcocean said...

Conservatives are such gullible rubes, they'll probably welcome back Kristol into the fold in 2024. Look for him to pop up at CPAC in a few years, after issuing an insincere Mea Culpa.

Big Mike said...

I never much respected Kristol. He struck me as smarmy, and pretty much a liberal’s view of what a “proper” conservative ought to be. C.f., George F. Will, Jen Rubin, David Brooks, as well as Kristol.

rcocean said...

YOu'll notice that despite his behavior for the last 5 years, no conservative has read Kristol "out of the movement" - that's because they never do. The only way to get banished is to attack immigration or get LABELED by MSM as "racist". Coulter, Malkin, Steyn, Buchanan, and Palin are now persona non grata at CPAC.

They're complete phonies.

Gusty Winds said...

Kristol and other well informed swamp rats know damn well Biden is corrupt. They know all about the money laundering that went on. Gross.

They're having a temper tantrum because Trump hurt their feelings. Well...he also made them irrelevant.

Big Mike said...

@rcocean, your first sentence is flat wrong, thus your conclusion is equally wrong.

rcocean said...

BTW, I LOVED that link to the New Yorker piece because it just proves my point. Here's McCain and Lindsey Graham, who desperately wanted Joe Liebermann as the VP. I mean think about that, McCain lied and ran as a conservative during the primaries, and after he'd won wanted a liberal Democrat - Al Gore's running mate - as his VP! So, where was the blowback? There wasn't any. The Conservatives kept on supporting McCain. I"m not talking about 2008, where we had no choice, I mean in 2010 and 2016 when he ran for re-election. Here's the quote from the New Yorker:

By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.”

rcocean said...

The people financing "The Bulwark" and "The Dispatch" are liberal-moderates. National Reivew now gets most of its $$$ from the same type of donors, along with Google money. That's why they never attack the Big Social Media companies when conservatives are de-platfomred.

Bill Kristol has always been a fraud and an idiot. He was Quayle's Chief of Staff. I wonder what Dan Qualye would have accomplished if it hadn't had a Chief of Staff giving him bonehead advice on every issue.

rcocean said...

Biden is a 100% ADA liberal. He had one of the most liberal/left voting records in the US Senate. But now "Conservatives" Kritol, Matt Lewis, Jonah Goldberg, David French, etc. have said. or signaled that Biden would be a fine POTUS.

As they say, follow the money.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Interesting flash back, Ann. re: Palin. Palin was a true outsider, but for the wrong team. She had to be destroyed by the deep state and assholes in the hack press like Katie Couric. +SNL produced fun-lie "Russia from my house" actually happened in the minds of the collective hive.

wendybar said...

Why would ANYBODY take advice from Bill Krystal should be the question.

bagoh20 said...

What baffles me is why anybody pays someone like Kristol to write crap like that which regular people are writing all over the internet on an hourly basis. It's like he's selling bottles of air with his picture on them and people are actually paying for it. And it's from a guy who told us we would die from breathing regular air back in 2016.

Bob Boyd said...

Remember "The emperor has no clothes"?

Only with Kristol it's, The douche-bag has no nozzle.

bagoh20 said...

What kind of brand does this guy have that the first thing many of us say is "why does anyone listen to him"?

Chris said...

"Authoritarian and illiberal" Can someone point out some hard evidence that trump is somehow more authoritarian and illiberal compared to Obama, Bush, and Clinton?

Bob Boyd said...

He's basically a useless bag of vinegar water.

Roughcoat said...

Reagan was paraphrasing Clausewitz:

"In war everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is difficult.”

JPS said...

Funny thing about Kristol: His Weekly Standard was pushing "National Greatness Conservatism" a la Teddy Roosevelt as the next big theme to unite the right and win over independents. The idea was, ease up a bit on conservative doctrine, build a center-right consensus to, um, make America...you know...great. As we've been in the past and could surely be again. Just needed a catchy slogan.

If it weren't for aesthetic preferences and class-based revulsion, you might expect Kristol to be a big fan of Trump.

"Why would Democrats take advice from Bill Kristol?" Well, he's a very smart man. BA, MA and PhD from Harvard. Skepticism of credentials like that - asking, "And so?" - results from either the Death (per Tom Nichols) or the Suicide (per Glenn Reynolds) of Expertise.

jrem,

"Why are all the prominent Jewish editorialists/commentators against Bernie? Eg. David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, even Judge Judy."

For the sake of argument, why should they be for him? Sanders is not a religious Jew, and none of those you mention is a socialist.* Tribal loyalty would be the only reason I can see, so I find it refreshing that it doesn't automatically apply.

(*: I'm assuming in Judge Judy's case. Didn't know she was Jewish, don't know her politics, don't care enough to look them up.)

Andrew said...

How anyone can vote for Biden, regardless of political persuasion, is beyond me. He is clearly not firing on all cylinders. How many "gaffes" will it take before people stop the facade that his mind is working correctly? He can't possibly have the stamina or mental capacity necessary to continue this primary campaign, much less the campaign against Trump.

I do enjoy his campaign videos. All the pseudo-enthusiasm, people screaming and banging on drums, followed by a brief clip of the geriatric candidate.

SGT Ted said...

The fact of the matter is, the GOP has ever been controlled by liberal to moderate Moneyed blue bloods, with Reagan as an outlier candidate that appealed to ordinary people.

Reagan mobilized the pro-life movement as a big part of the Conservative Coalition that has slowly petered out with electing Bush 43. its last gasp was the Tea Party Congress of 2010.

The rapid co-opting of the populist Conservative Tea Party Congress into a creature of the Big Donor Globalist GOP funders was evident in their continued "failure theater" of token opposition to Obama's policies. Paul Ryan is the poster child for this betrayal of the voters.

It is also what paved the way for the rise of Trump, as the other Establishment "Conservatives" were already highly compromised as phonies and exposed the Ruling Class for what they are.

Bill Kristol is a part of the moneyed moderate class that was only "Conservative" for the foreign policy of the GOP.

Static Ping said...

"Why would Democrats take advice from Bill Kristol?"

To answer the question, there is no reason to do so.

To elaborate somewhat, when someone changes sides as Bill has done, it is always dubious to trust the person. Traitors generally cannot be trusted. There are some exceptions:

1. If the person in question is highly principled and respected for that, there is the logic that the person is simply following those principles and can be trusted as far as they go.
2. If new facts have been revealed that significantly change the landscape, a re-orientation is not unexpected. This is related to #1, but not exclusively so.
3. If the person is vital to the success of the plan, you may not trust the person but have no choice in the matter.

Bill Kristol fits none of these definitions. He's just a grift.

Sam L. said...

I would call it DUMB. BIDEN DUMB.

narciso said...

indeed the way they touted klobuchar and warren, and dismissed the huntress, well it tells you a great deal, of course Schmidt and Wallace were the ones who sabotaged her with the jones memo,

Bay Area Guy said...

In general, Bill Kristol gives really, really, really bad political advice. It's best to do the opposite of what he advocates.

However, he really should run for Prez as an independent. He might get 1-2% of the vote, but the effort will keep him busy and out of our hair.

chuck said...

What are you to do? Easy answer, avoid Bill Kristol.

Yancey Ward said...

No one should listen to Kristol. That should be simple enough, right?

Drago said...

rcocean: "Conservatives are such gullible rubes, they'll probably welcome back Kristol into the fold in 2024. Look for him to pop up at CPAC in a few years, after issuing an insincere Mea Culpa."

Not a chance. Not even a remote chance.

However, who will be the younger, newer, version of the neocon/establishment/acceptable "thinker" who "must be listened to"?

There has to be a next wave of these grifters.

Drago said...

jrem: "Why are all the prominent Jewish editorialists/commentators against Bernie? Eg. David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bret Stephens, Bill Kristol, even Judge Judy."

Because they are all democrat establishment supporters and the democrat establishment has determined Bernie to be a threat to the electoral strategy of the democrats.

As soon as Bernie nails down the nomination these hacks will all fall into line with articles titled something along these lines: "The Surprising Moderate-ness of Bernie Sanders"

Achilles said...

Howard said...

Blogger rhhardin said...

Male thinking abstracting away details and gonig for the essence at depth is simplifying. Sideways complexification is a female mental trait. It leads to voting democrat. Vote for whichever one seems to mean best. Seeming to mean best is the competition there.

Isn't this what Trump does to garner a majority of white women? What makes him clever is he knows you boot-strap fellas are gender confused and will binge-watch and swallow the continuing stories too.


Trump supporters look at Trump and see someone who actually implements the policies we have been calling for for decades.

We see the results which are obviously positive for us.

You sit there and conjure up all the ways that Trump is really tricking us and conning the rubes.

That is complexification Howard.

Laslo's theory about you is correct.

Achilles said...

SGT Ted said...

The fact of the matter is, the GOP has ever been controlled by liberal to moderate Moneyed blue bloods, with Reagan as an outlier candidate that appealed to ordinary people.

The GOPe hated Reagan too.

Ken B said...

Chris: “Can someone point out some hard evidence that trump is somehow more authoritarian and illiberal compared to Obama, Bush, and Clinton?”

No. Those with the evidence have been put in camps, or shot.

robother said...

Bill Kristol is the go-to pundit for those who don't believe in over-thinking anything. Invading Iraq, Palin for VP, Jeb!, you name it, he's the impulse buyer of last resort.

Rusty said...


"Isn't this what Trump does to garner a majority of white women? What makes him clever is he knows you boot-strap fellas are gender confused and will binge-watch and swallow the continuing stories too."

How would you know?

Earnest Prole said...

Bill Kristol is not just a neoconservative pundit who hates Trump; he almost certainly played a key role in commissioning the research that resulted in the Steele Dossier and the Russia Collusion Hoax.

Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier

Matt Continetti, then editor of the Washington Free Beacon, is married to Kristol's daughter.

gadfly said...

Merriam Webster declares that neither noun OVER-COMPLICATION nor OVERCOMPLICATION appears in the dictionary. Wiktionary defines OVERCOMPLICATION as the process of overcomplicating with no mention of OVER-COMPLICATION.

Alastair Dryburgh writes in Forbes:

Have you ever said to someone, "you're making this too complicated"? If so, you have made a mistake. What you actually meant is "you haven't made this simple enough." The point is that complication is the natural state. We don't need any effort to make things complicated; they already are. We need to make an effort to make them simple. And, as the world becomes more complex and faster-moving, that effort becomes more and more important. The only solution to more complexity is more simplicity.

So I will assume that Ronaldus Magnus was right yet again!

Readering said...

Not me. Down to gabbard or warren.

Howard said...

Achilles, I stipulate that's the way you view Trump. Most people are making an emotional connection with the con man however and are enjoying their stories.

Rusty, I know because I read it on this blog everyday

Jim at said...

Would they take advice from Kristol? I hope so. He's been wrong about everything else for the last three years.

Rusty said...

Howard said...
"Achilles, I stipulate that's the way you view Trump. Most people are making an emotional connection with the con man however and are enjoying their stories."
Well. you write it anyway.

Gary said...

Like most college-educated Whites I don't like any of the old cranks, Trump, Bloomberg, Biden, Sanders or Kristol.

why should I listen to any of them?

Tomodog said...

Screw ups?!?! I thought we were talking about the future of the free World. Who is responsible if my friends get it wrong? Me? Whoooah! I'm not responsible for a democratic majority. I did not sign up for that. Who would? Federalism my friends. The second amendment was about relief from tyranny, not hunting bear or boar. It was about hunting tyrants! Know any?

Lazarus said...

Relations between Reagan and what was left of the GOP Establishment were complicated - hardly wholly positive, but not wholly negative either. Reagan could always pick up enough votes from moderate or conservative Democrat legislators to balance out the defections of Northeastern GOP moderates, so there was much less bitterness.

That old GOP Establishment is long gone. They've died or become Democrats. What's left is quite atomized - no center of power anymore. Just current and former governors of Massachusetts and Vermont and a few malcontents. Not much more than that.

Kristol sees himself as a kingmaker. He's long been willing to jump parties if thought he could make a difference. The original neocons straddled the two parties. They didn't move behind the GOP until Reagan came along, and some neocons were more than willing to shift back to the Democrats when Bill Clinton, or later, Hillary Clinton came along. When Kristol's father was alive he may have held young William back from making such a switch, but now that the old man is out of the picture, the younger Kristol has publicly jumped ship.

Bunkypotatohead said...

What has that guy ever done but ruin the family name?

Kirk Parker said...

rcocean,

For my part, I wonder what Quayle might have accomplished if he hadn't been the sort of person who would hire Kristol as chief of staff.

Kirk Parker said...

As far as who's going to be the "next young face of conservativism", I give you Ben Shapiro.

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Gunner said...

Biden promised him a war.