The Neocons Still Expect to be Greeted as Liberators

In the closing days, it's not about Kamala, it's all about Liz

If you want a measure of how insane this cycle has gotten, here’s Hugh Hewitt having absolutely enough of it and walking off the Washington Post’s program, after which he quit the paper entirely. Yes, everyone, even the mild-mannered Hugh Hewitt is unacceptable now for The Washington Post. And what made him unacceptable? He pointed out that this court ruling in Bucks County, Pennsylvania wasn’t based on some bizarre conspiracy, but on the law which wasn’t properly followed. The audacity!

Here’s my normal Friday hit with Hugh this AM, which is less entertaining but I hope enjoyable nonetheless:

This is what happens when Jeff Bezos says you can’t endorse Kamala Harris and need more balance on the opinion side — the lunatics rebel to the point that they do courageous things like resigning in protest to relocate their offices to join The Atlantic. Did you guess one of them was Robert Kagan? Congratulations! Stunning, and brave. And one more amusing indication that this cycle like so many others is still driven by consternation within the swamp about their loss of narrative control since 2016.

For an artistic rendering of the Bulwarkian version of this reality, it’s hard to imagine something more raw than this clip, featuring an aghast Tim Miller reacting to his smiling colleagues’ celebration that the neoconservatives are back thanks to taking over the Democratic Party. “Don’t say that” he pleads. But it’s been said. The left really does need a better class of Straussians.

Miller’s shocked face isn’t because of any ideological consistency mind you, it’s because no one with a brain who wants Kamala Harris to win thinks that the way to close out a campaign is to take a typical “chickenhawk” attack and turn it into a personal death threat, as Liz Cheney did today to the eyerolls of anyone with a normal understanding of how words work. Smart partisans understand that this play just isn’t how you want to close things out — rising once more to the bait and emphasizing how much Kamala Harris’s policies suddenly resemble those who advocated for the dumbest foreign policy mistakes of the past quarter century. But smart partisans are in short supply on this campaign, and the deal is already struck. You join yourself at the hip to Liz Cheney, she’s taking over everything — no matter the cost.

Freddy Gray has more on how things have changed.

The realignment is real. Hippie Democrats, who distrust corporate America, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and Washington have grown increasingly fond of Trump. Rich Republican neocons, who prioritise national security (at least their sense of it) over, say, free speech are part of Team Kamala. The problem for Democrats is that the former group is significantly more popular than the latter.

Donald Trump understands this dynamic better than most. That’s why, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Arizona yesterday, he laid into Liz Cheney. ‘She’s a radical war hawk,’ he said.

‘Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.’

This is classic anti-war rhetoric, something that taps deep into the American psyche and the memory of Vietnam. The moneyed elite wants you, the people, to fight and die for their interests, not America’s. ‘And when the band plays Hail to the Chief,’ as Creedence Clearwater Revival sang, ‘Ooh they point the cannon at you, Lord.’

Of course, the pro-Democratic media took the bait. Trump threatens to shoot Liz Cheney in the face! scream the headlines today.

‘This is how dictators destroy free nations,’ replied Liz Cheney herself. ‘They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.’

She must know, at some level, that Trump was not actually threatening her ‘with death’. He just knows that the more he can make Liz Cheney denounce him, the more he’ll appeal to the broad section of the electorate who distrust people like her. Which begs the question: if Kamala Harris wants to present herself as the ‘turn the page’ candidate, why has she aligned herself with the Cheney family?