They Don't Know What Time It Is

Jonah Goldberg illustrates the basic problem of the #NeverTrump crowd

When I woke up this morning, I had no intention of writing about Jonah Goldberg, whom I’ve been successfully ignoring for about a decade now. Goldberg’s decision to climb about the #NeverTrump bandwagon is apparently irrevocable, and even if he were to acknowledge his error tomorrow, he’s displayed such dreadful judgment since 2015 that his credibility has suffered irreparable damage. In for a dime, in for a dollar — Goldberg and his comrades have passed the point of no return, and are now indistinguishable from the rest of the Democratic Party propaganda apparatus.

Ignoring the #NeverTrump crowd is easy, especially now that Trump has miraculously survived his “Wilderness Years” and staged the most remarkable comeback in American political history. His decisive 2024 victory over Kamala Harris — winning the popular vote by a margin of more than 2 million votes, and flipping the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin back into the GOP column — was an emphatic rebuke not only of the Biden agenda, but of the entire Greek chorus of Trump’s media critics (“Trump Humiliates His Media Enemies, American Spectator, Dec. 15, 2024). Clearly, a majority of voters no longer give a damn what is said about Trump by the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, or any other establishment media platform, and whatever the size of Jonah Goldberg’s readership at the Dispatch, they are now essentially powerless to influence the electorate. It’s over. Go home..

So I get up this morning, pour myself a cup of coffee and log onto the Social Media Site Formerly Known as Twitter to see what’s going on in the world, and my friend Aaron Walker has decided to engage with Goldberg’s latest anti-Trump screed. My instant reaction was, “Damn you, Aaron. Why do you have to remind me that Jonah Goldberg still exists?” He doesn’t matter anymore, and however much sadistic pleasure you may obtain by taunting him, this only serves to disturb the peace of those of us who have been happily ignoring him since 2016. I don’t need this in my life.

Paying the Price of Political Nostalgia

Ace of Spades has frequently said of the #NeverTrump crowd that their basic problem is they don’t know what time it is. They’re stuck in a political time-warp, where it is perpetually 2005 — G.W. Bush just got reelected, “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, the housing market still surging, and the Global War on Terror is the Big Thing.

Whatever the merits of that 2005 brand of Conservative Inc. might have been in the post-9/11 context, it’s long past its sell-by date, and yet Goldberg & Co. still cherish that moldy crust like Catholic pilgrims venerating the alleged bones of a saint. To what shall we compare them? Lieutentant Hiroo Onoda comes to mind. Hiding out in the Philippine jungle for 29 years after the surrender was the honorable thing to do, and the #NeverTrump Republicans seem to think they are similarly honor-bound.

Who knows? Somehow the Jeb! campaign of 2016 might suddenly revive, like Lazarus emerging from the tomb, thus vindicating Jonah Goldberg and his friends in their stubborn refusal to admit that the world has moved on. They keep doubling down on that bet, chasing their losses, as if by the certainty of their belief, they can will this alternative reality into existence — “manifesting,” as the New Age gurus say.

When I was an art student in college, one of our instructors was a man named Gary Gee — an excellent artist, I must add, and I marvel in hindsight that he was “slumming” as a teacher at Jacksonville (Alabama) State University. Whenever any student would complain about the course requirements, Mr. Gee would answer by citing an ancient Persian proverb: “The dogs may bark, but the caravan keeps rolling.”

Goldberg & Co. have ignored the lesson of that aphorism, and continue barking long after the caravan has rolled past them, disappearing over the horizon.

Memories of CPAC Past

Gabriella Hoffman interviewed on Radio Row at CPAC

Wednesday afternoon, I strolled into the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. I’ve been covering CPAC since 2006, including 15 years consecutively before COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in 2021 led the organizers to move the conference to Orlando, Florida. Not long after I arrived, while the line for media credentials was hopelessly backed up by a technical glitch, I bumped into my friend Andrew Langer, director of the Center for Regulatory Freedom. We chatted briefly and he mentioned that Gabby Hoffman would be speaking on a Thursday panel.

Wow, how long had it been since the last time I saw Gabby? I’d met her in 2011 at the first CPAC she ever attended, when she was still a student at UC-San Diego, and instantly hit it off. Why? Because Gabby hates Communism. Her parents came to America from Lithuania during the Cold War, when the Baltic States were still under the boot of Soviet imperialism. Hatred of Communism is in her DNA, so to speak, and this is an attitude sadly lacking in most of her generational peers. Because the Soviet Union collapsed before they were old enough to have any political awareness, most Millennials don’t know enough about Communism to hate it. That’s the easiest explanation for why so many Millennials thought the Obama era was awesome, because they didn’t know enough about Communism to recognize the similarity, and don’t have that old-fashioned American “Better Dead Than Red” attitude.

Gabby is now director of the Center for Energy and Conservation with the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), in which role I presume she’s countering the “Green” agenda (which is Communism in environmentalist drag, of course) and debunking the absurd climate-change doomerism of Greta Thunberg, et al.

My point is that Gabby never got sucked into the whirling vortex of #NeverTrump, and her career has subsequently flourished, whereas once-influential personalities like Jonah Goldberg have consigned themselves to a Siberia of political irrelevance. And, despite their protestations of acting on “principle,” we know why they’ve followed this path to impotent obscurity. None of them believed that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Whether or not any other Republican — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, whoever — could have beaten Hillary, all the Super Genius Conservative Pundit types were certain that, if Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, he would lose to Hillary, and then the Super Geniuses would be pre-positioned to point the finger of blame and boast, “WE TOLD YOU SO!”

Well, they bet wrong, and they’ve been chasing their losses ever since. And while I am willing to listen to whatever explanations or apologies that members of the #NeverTrump crowd might wish to offer, first they must admit the truth. Their motives were entirely selfish — a vain concern for their own reputations as political Wise Men — and their overblown egos led them to folly. But I digress …

The Unlikely Bedfellows Caucus

Jack Posobiec gives an interview at CPAC

When I saw Jack Posobiec, I introduced myself and mentioned that my friend Cynthia Yockey had helped with research for his recent book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them). “Oh, I love Cynthia,” Posobiec said. “Is she here?” I told him that Cynthia hadn’t made it to CPAC this year, and he said, “Well, tell her she’s got to be here next year.” There was a crowd of well-wishers hovering around Posobiec, waiting for their chance to get a selfie with him, so I avoided taking more of his time, but oh, the stories I could tell! It was at CPAC 2009 that I first met Cynthia Yockey, who had been a diehard Hillary supporter, and was enraged by the way her candidate got tossed overboard in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign by “progressives” stampeding to support Obama.

Did I mention that Cynthia is a lesbian feminist who was personally acquainted with such formidable Second Wave radicals as Marilyn Frye? She showed up at CPAC in 2009 not knowing what kind of welcome she’d receive, but was instantly befriended by myself and other conservative bloggers because … TEAMWORK WINS.

Politics is a team sport, and in a two-party system, it should always be cause for celebration when Our Team recruits a valuable player who’s quit Their Team. For the past 15 years, Cynthia Yockey has done her part — she’s active in the Iowa Republican Party and helped Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks get reelected, among other things. If you want to know what’s wrong with transgender ideology, just ask Cynthia, but be prepared to hear an hour-long rant. Hell hath no fury like an ex-Democrat, trust me.

Well, I’m an ex-Democrat, too, although I quit the party of my youth 30 years ago, before anyone outside a few thousand Georgia newspaper readers knew who I was. How I ended up hate-listed by the SPLC (an honor I share with Jack Posobiec) is a long story, but ending up in the 21st-century Republican coalition led by a billionaire real-estate tycoon isn’t something I could have imagined back in the day.

Times change and, unlike Jonah Goldberg and his 2005 nostalgia trip, most folks in the GOP coalition are able to cope with the changes. We can deal with the idea of 4chan types and obscure Redditors shaping the discourse via memes, and we can deal with a South African space tycoon turning loose an army of autistic geeks to dig up waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. None of this was predicted, and perhaps not even imaginable, 10 or 15 years ago, but here we are. We deal with the reality we live in, because the alternative is to live in the kind of insulated cocoon of hive-mind world where Jonah Goldberg thinks people need to hear his Deep Thoughts about Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Unlike Jonah, we know what time it is.