With less than 100 days to go before the November day of reckoning for Trump and his Republican enablers, conservatives and those who call themselves conservatives are trying to come up with a strategy for rebuilding conservatism now that Trump and the Republican establishment have destroyed it.
There are those like Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark who not only believe Trump needs to go, but also the “Republicans who protected and enabled [him].” I tend to agree with Sykes’ “burn it all down” approach because I believe that even after Trump is gone, Trumpism will remain within the party that has fully embraced his Nationalist agenda.
There are also those like Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast who agrees that Trump must get the boot in November, but that the Republican “cowards” who abandoned conservatism for Trumpism should be spared the consequences of their acquiescence because we’ll need them to keep President Biden in check. While I can certainly see where Lewis is coming from, the track record of Mitch McConnell and the rest of the anti-conservative Republican establishment during the Obama presidency provides no evidence supporting his position.
Many refuse to give Sykes and Lewis serious consideration because they are proudly #neverTrump and not members of a pro-Trump echo chambers. But the existence of pro-Trump echo chambers are exactly why we need their voices.
Perhaps the most notable pro-Trump echo chamber is the Glenn Beck/Mark Levin media empire known as Blaze Media — the home of BlazeTV. At the time of their merger, Glenn Beck, who had adopted the good Trump/bad Trump approach to the New York liberal, claimed that Blaze Media wouldn’t be another pro-Trump echo chamber where critics of the president are unwelcome. In fact, he said he hoped that it will embrace a diversity of voices.
“There’s no boss man here. Everybody does their own thing,” Beck stated. “Do you believe in the Constitution of the United States? Do you love America? Are you pro-America? Do you want to see it destroyed? No. Do you want to change the Constitution? No. You’re in!”
A little over a year ago, I wrote an article about how BlazeTV had become a pro-Trump echo chamber and the home of faux conservatives after Glenn Beck and BlazeTV talking heads like Steve Deace began propagandizing about how America was doomed if we allowed Trump to lose in November.
“If the Republicans don’t win this next election, I think we are officially at the end of the country as we know it. We may not survive even if we win, but we definitely don’t if the Republicans lose with Donald Trump.”
In that article, I also documented how the “Vote Trump or America dies” rallying cry essentially became official BlazeTV policy, and how it had been adopted by BlazeTV talking heads like Steve Deace, who was defending Trump as a “pro-life” president at the time.
In the latest example of its Trumpism, Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV has doubled down in its support of Trump by becoming an ally in his war against the First Amendment; attacking Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech as conservative values.
On his show yesterday, Steve Deace mentioned that he recently met with “the brass at The Blaze” to discuss the future of conservative media — as if they know what that is anymore — and they concluded that the Nationalist dream of taking down so-called Big Tech was now the number one reason to keep Trump in office. According to Steve Deace, we need to take down big tech, not to protect free speech, but to protect his job.
“I believe the number one issue in the country is Big Tech censorship. It is the issue that will determine the future because this is how information gets distributed in our culture.
“This is perhaps the most sweeping and dangerous monopoly in the history of market-based economies.
“We’re in the end game now. And no, it’s not as simple as go build your own Facebook.
“When I started this year, I was pleasantly surprised at the direction of the Trump administration. I even made some overtures very early in the year to people I know within the White House and the campaign [saying] ‘if you stay on this trajectory you’re on, you’ve earned my vote for re-election.”
“Since the virus has happened, frankly, the president has made a series of disastrous decisions. Some of the worst decisions in the history of the U.S. presidency.
“Donald Trump has not earned my vote these last few months. He has failed us during the worst crisis maybe we have faced in this country since Pearl Harbor . . . at the very least since 9/11. [But] this isn’t about him at all.
“On November 3, I’m going to go vote for Donald Trump. Unless some extraordinary accusation is proven true between now and then, I’m going to vote for Donald Trump.
“If you’re on the fence like I was, I would urge you to join me in jumping off of it. Because this is the truth I believe, if we let them have control of Big Tech, it’s game over.
In other words, it’s OK for Trump and the GOP to control Big Tech, but not Democrats — as if there’s a difference.
Using a healthy dose of Orwellian doublespeak, Trump and his fellow Nationalists within the Republican Party have made taking down social media a priority, allegedly in the name of protecting free speech. Unfortunately, it accomplishes the exact opposite.
For example, Trump’s recent “Preventing Online Censorship” (POC) executive order calls for an “update” to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and shreds the First Amendment in the process. Using the full weight of the federal government as muscle, his POC order declares that government regulation of our speech is “free speech” while calling resistance to government messaging (i.e. propaganda) “censorship” all to feed his egomaniacal dictatorial ambitions.
Back in February, conservative Nationalist darling Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) proposed a plan that would “overhaul” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by stripping the agency of its independence and relocating it to the Department of Justice. Specifically, he wants to create a single director within the DOJ who will go after the so-called “rampant abuses” of Big Tech:
“The FTC isn’t working. It wastes time in turf wars with the DOJ, nobody is accountable for decisions, and it lacks the ‘teeth’ to get after Big Tech’s rampant abuses. Congress needs to do something about it. I’m proposing to overhaul the FTC to make it more accountable and efficient while strengthening its enforcement authority. This is about bringing the FTC into the 21st century.”
Hawley’s overhaul is a big government power grab that gives the DOJ “all authority” to go after Big Tech, and it would “place the entirety of FTC authority under the control of a single director, giving that person the sole power to dictate the future of American business,” according to NetChoice vice president Carl Szabo. (emphasis mine)
So much for protecting free speech, right?
How you decide to vote in November should be based on what your conscience tells you, not the scaremongering of BlazeTV, Glenn Beck, or Steve Deace telling you to vote Republican to “save” conservatism. Such lies are the product of faux conservatives and their Faustian bargain to sell their conservative souls to Trump for a seat at his table.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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