Alex Pareene captures a phenomenon I think we’re all sick of:
There’s a certain sort of elite liberal who loves Republican men almost as much as they detest anti-establishment progressives. Not “Republican men” like Mitch McConnell or Jeff Sessions, who are too narrowly concerned with implementing their ghoulish agenda to play the game. Rather, their affections attach to men like John Boehner, perpetually out on his lawnmower; or Ben Sasse, with his family canon of great books by men; or good old John McCain, so recently memorialized by every old liberal’s new favorite young person, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. (Praising John McCain is, of course, good politics—if you are chasing the support of the liberal establishment, that is.)
But while those men easily win over reporters who don’t consider themselves liberal, the path to a more partisan liberal’s heart requires one to become an apostate—or at least play one on television. That’s the lesson Joe Scarborough learned, more or less overnight, when he criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In the space of ten minutes, Scarborough went from being a steady font of right-wing outrage and hostility, to being fulsomely embraced as a breath of fresh air on cable news.
The most notable thing about Scarborough’s transformation is that he didn’t actually have to atone for his past life beyond, perhaps, a dollop of mild contrition. […]
Pareene’s topic is how Joe Walsh will get the same treatment as Scarborough by running against Trump, even though Walsh is pretty awful. The never-Trumpers in general get this treatment. One notable example is David Frum, who in a just world would be a marginal figure being roasted for the Iraq War. Instead, he’s enjoying a renaissance on MSNBC and CNN because he’s an apostate .
Don’t get me wrong – an enemy of my enemy is my friend, but Jesus Christ, not a close friend, and only as long as we have the same enemy. I’m certainly not going to roll over and submissively urinate in their presence.
