George Will has thrown down his pacifier and stomped off in a huff, breaking with the Republican Party and officially becoming un-enrolled. Of course, Will lives in Washington DC so being a Republican was pointless in the extreme. The GOP rarely fields local candidates in the District and they do not get to vote in national elections, except for President. The last Republican to hold office in DC was Mathew Emory in 1870. His office was abolished the following year. Being a Republican in Washington DC is an entirely symbolic act.
It is also in keeping with Will’s long-time role as a conservative on television. The bow-tie, the wig, the round spectacles and the elaborate speaking style were all in furtherance of his job as a domesticated conservative, who would not scare the horses. All of it was a pose, a gesture, carefully choreographed so he could set the right tone for conservatives at home, by endorsing the terms of the debate as set forth by the Left. He was the candy coating for the liberal nut inside every ABC chat show.
Like so many of the Official Right, Will earned his spot in the mainstream media by attacking his own side. In his case, he was a rabid Nixon hater. That made him useful to the Left and got him a job in the Washington Post Writer’s Group and eventually a TV gig. He was also no fan of Reagan, but once it became clear that Reagan was going to be successful, Will shifted gears and became a Reaganite. Unlike Charles Krapphammer, Will saw which way the wind was blowing before the ’84 election.
Of course, as is the case with everyone in the clown car that is #nevertrump, Will’s hatred of Trump is more about money than ideology. Will’s old lady is Mari Maseng, who has worked for Republican politicians like Bob Dole and Rick Perry. She was also an adviser to Scott Walker. When not on the payroll, her company provides consulting services to Republican candidates. She also works for a GOP political action committee. As we see throughout “conservative” media, Republican politics has been a lucrative racket for the Will family.
That said, I doubt anyone under fifty bothers to read George Will’s column or listens to his commentary, but he is worth studying. Will is the quintessential Yankee Conservative. I sometimes call it Buckley Conservatism, or if I am in a foul mood, the Wuss Right. Southern populists like Sam Francis called it Northern Conservatism. Yankee Conservative is probably more accurate as it is essentially a reaction to the Neo-Puritanism, we call liberalism today. It is not an accident that National Review is located in New York instead of Richmond.
Yankee Conservatives are not particularly interested in conserving anything. Their main issue is that the other team is in such a hurry that they often look undignified as they sprint off toward utopia. The Yankee Conservative places the greatest value on his dignity by putting up a choreographed resistance only to acquiesce to whatever it is the Progressives have in mind. It is why the Left has gone from triumph to triumph, despite popular support for the “conservative” candidates. They know the guys standing athwart history yelling “stop” do not really mean it.
It is why guys like Will are so fond of attacking their fellow conservatives. The point of their ideology is not to remain rooted in the present or hearken to the past. It is to be gently pulled behind the Left like a skier behind a boat. Anyone seen as a drag on this process is cut loose by any means necessary. That is why guys like Will are so fond of using the weapons of the Left against people like Trump. It cuts them loose and does so in a way that pleases their friends on the Left, letting them know they are the right sort, just a little reluctant.
It is a bit ironic that at the end of Will’s career, he finds himself back where he started. Nixon, for all his faults, which were many, was a Dirt People candidate. In 1968 you voted for Tricky Dick because he was willing to punch the hippies and their Ivy League commie enablers. Guys like George Will and the other members of Team Buckley hated Nixon for it. Just like we see with Trump, the Buckleyites claimed their principles prevented them from embracing Nixon, but it was never principles, it was class. Nixon was not their sort.
Now Will is back where he started, except this time there is really nowhere for him to go with it. The rise of alternative media makes having a perch on liberal media outlets pretty much useless. Now that he is at Fox, he has to compete with perky bimbos that say all the same things he says. Then you have alternative media voices that are nimbler with new media so they are able to bury the staggering geezers of Conservative Inc. Will makes a dramatic exit from the GOP and it is mocked on-line by the alt-right.
Like the rest of the Yankee Right, Will is fading into irrelevance.
George Will is a treasonous piece of Zionist Israel first piece of shit.
Mr. Will has little to lose if Clinton wins. His services as a pundit will still be in demand (perhaps more so) and still be as well rewarded. At his age and with his income and net worth, he does’t face the bitter reality of living virtually one’s entire lifespan under what will be essentially a Marxist regime if Clinton is elected and appoints two or three SCOTUS judges who will effectively nullify the current Constitution and replace or rule of law with and ever changing rule by men (and whatever special interest or fad pleases them from day to day).
“perky bimbos”
It’s never a good thing to find yourself in competition with someone who can do everything you can do, but with boobs. A man needs to find his own way to add value.
I despise Washington elitists like George Will. However, to say that I’m no fan of Donald Trump is a major understatement.
When you lump everyone into the #nevertrump or “Trump supporters” categories, you are being ridiculously simplistic. It’s not always about “class” (seems a bit Marxist). I’m a blue-collar, middle class, suburbanite grease-monkey. I won’t vote for Trump because I don’t believe a word that he says. Anyone who donates to Hillary, Reid, etc. and then runs as a Republican isn’t to be trusted.*
In addition, his scorched earth tactics against anyone who opposes him, criticizes him or threatens his power – including people who are on his own side – reek of Leftist tactics. Add in the sneering, snarky, rage-filled attacks by his supporters against anyone who questions their man-god, and it’s like a flashback to 2008 and the Cult of Obama. You can’t have a civil debate with the vast majority of them. Trying to debate these people is EXACTLY like debating Obama supporters. It amazes me that you don’t see this. “There are none so blind…”.
*Yes, I know the argument: “Donating money to Democrats in Democrat strongholds is just the way the business game is played”. So, do you want someone who will play the game for money and power, or do you want someone with integrity? You can’t have both.
It’s like this. If you voted for Romney, you have no reason to not vote for Trump. All the complaints the #nevertrumpers have with Trump were all there in spades with Romney.
Anybody who complains about Trump but voted for Romney needs a checkup from the neck up. Romney was a worthless piece of shit who couldn’t campaign his way out of a paper bag. Never mind that he invented ObamaCare, and adheres to “religion” that is objectively retarded. And he made his fortune destroying American companies and sending jobs overseas.
Ask these #NeverTrump clowns what they don’t like about Trump, and you get irrational nonsense back. He’s mean, he’s undignified, he’s boorish– crap like that. Really? That’s the best you can come up with?
Was channel surfing over the weekend and came across this Laura Ingraham interview. About 5 minutes in is where it’s interesting. If the GOP manages to retain Congress but gets Clinton elected – they immediately commit political suicide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWDpqhYzrdY
I was a big Rand Paul supporter – but at this point, Trump is the Republicans’ last chance to save themselves.
Northern Progressives and North Conservatives made for a practical ruing coalition before globalism and the vast see of credit money. Both sides could debate what was best for the country and appear to be different enough to be different. Globalism upended this tidy relationship because both sides represent the same side in the fight between globalism and nationalism. Politically, it means we have two parties representing one side and no party representing the other.
The rise of Trump suggests the GOP either collapses and a new party replaces it as the nationalist party or the GOP transforms into the new alternative. Right now, most of the voters for the party are south and southwest, while the party leaders are all north and northeast. That can’t last either.
They really are exposing themselves. In the past, the two parties used to be very good at wrestling with their positions to make sure they were always in opposition at least on most big issues. But now the Republican establishment can’t bring themselves to oppose the Democrats on immigration or globalism – even though their base already does.
Back in the 80’s I came to think of the GOP as the land of unwanted toys. The Democrats were well on their way to being a Progressive party. They were sloughing off the hawks, the cultural conservatives and the moderates. Instead of being a coalition with a dominant ideological group, they were going to be an ideological party that built coalitions based on expediency. Whoever was tossed out of the Democrat party would end up in the GOP.
A guy like Paul Ryan should be a Democrat. I’m old enough to remember when guys like Ted Cruz were Democrats. Trump would be a Democrat simply due to his populist instincts. In the Reagan years, there were a great many members of both parties who agreed with one another on most everything. That’s no longer the case. The Democrats are the globalist, imperial party while the Republicans are everyone else, trying to figure out what the hell happened.
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George Will is a prig.
Who is this George Will person, and what is this Republican Party of which you speak? Didn’t they all go away a few years ago, about the time the Oldsmobile production line disappeared?
Most maddening about the Will types is: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy sites for years have labeled Mrs. Clinton with the same terms and denigration as Trump uses, yet those who self-inaugurated themselves official definers of Conservative claim Trump does not have the proper hall pass to enter the library.
The WaPo has undertaken a clown car vendetta against Trump this election season so brazen and absurd that the Trump campaign was forced to yank their press credentials for campaign events. Georgy Porgy’s prissy little hissy fit is of a piece with this; a bit of DC theater staged to please his new master Jeff Bezos as it is to win him the kudos of the beta boys of beltway “conservatism.” (Yes, Ross and Jonah, I’m talking about you.)
Yankee Conservatives do want to conserve something. They want to conserve whatever it was the Progressives did twenty years ago.
Maybe it’s just time to hang up the toupee. It’s probably getting itchy by now, anyway. Reading his bio, I’m tempted to say he’s a failed academic, which no doubt explains a lot. At any rate, daddy paid for whole lot of education before Will settled into his role as a pundit.
I’m not seeing a lot of success in his old lady’s resume — at least not for her clients. I never get how these folks maintain the lifestyle without some big wins. Tom Wolfe wrote a short story about the academic grifter mentality… now I have to get of my butt and find the book… Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine. My encounters with the Ministry of Truth types has always been blessedly short, so I’ve always imagined Wolfe’s satire to be representative of reality. Some of you may know better.
Maybe the good news is that there don’t seem to be any George Will apprentices in the wings. That world is dying. I just wish it would get on with it. The death throes have being going on for too damn long.
Will was an arrogant p$ick and is the one that said “…we want them in the party but they have come in based on OUR term and not based on their term”. He was indignant about conservatives in general. I believe it was him that gave Trump supporters and conservatives not voting for the likes of Jeb Bush et al the label ‘vulgarians and conservatives are uneducated and dumb’.
I’ve seen these types time and again – snotty and ball-less little men trying to use condescension based on their own insecurity. Will is a very insecure snob!
Yes, Will gives the Beltway Elites cover as they get rich off of our money and run the country into the ground. For this they allow him to make a few dollars and go to their cocktail parties. I’m sure he thinks he’s a man of principle. I think he’s sold his soul.
The MSM has a long history of keeping a House Conservative on the payroll as a show of impartiality while surrounding him with a dozen Leftists. Will is a ridiculous sight, with the bow tie, etc., presented to be laughed at. I’m reminded of the McLaughlin Group’s guy (Bob somebody) whom, I’m convinced, was kept on because just looking at him made you hate him. Will appears as a prep school nerd but this guy looked like an evil toad. (Even though I tended to agree with what he said, even I would think, “I’m agreeing with this Morlock?”) I’m sure there are many others working now but, fortunately, I no longer pay any attention to the MSM in general.
Will can now be found in the Member’s Loungue having a restorative lime rickey.
Bye George Will, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
“It’s not about principles, it’s about class”. It’s what I’ve been saying to the #NeverTrumpers. It is the amazing thing in this election. You get to learn which conservative pundits despise the Dirt People as much as the Lefties.
Hey what do I know, I’m just a dirt person from WV, but I reckon Will’s political opinion is on level with that of a frosted strawberry PopTart. (Apologies to strawberry pop tarts lives matter)
Why all the derision against William Buckley Jr.? The guy was one sharp man, smart as a whip, with both the verbal and written word, and he could take on anyone and defend his positions well.
To put these aristocratic pukes like George Will in the same class is a complete mistake. They are complete intellectual frauds … charlatans and have made their lives by lies.
As for baseball, hey, Will can still be a baseball fan, bowtie or not. What’s not to like about the great game of baseball?
You over-estimate Buckley. NR’s best editors (Joe Sobran and Chilton Williamson jr.) left early on–voluntarily–as they discovered to their horror they were merely the right wing of the progressive movement. Is it unfair to judge a man by his legacy? Rich Lowry, George Will, and the circus of neocons at NR are Buckley’s legacy.
James, maybe I do over estimate. I only speak of what I have read of his writing. I have not followed NR or the others. My particular favorite was “God and Man at Yale.” Very good stuff considering he was a young pup and going against University and other “conservative” powers of the time. I like what HE wrote. I don’t know much of the others.
On second thought, I guess I do know more of the others through articles and commentary in the media. But not a follower of them. I did enjoy George Will’s book “Men at Work.”
“This summer he wrote an especially contemptible essay on Muslims, arguing crudely that terrorism is encouraged by the Koran itself. I knew where he got that stuff. It was right out of the Zionist agitprop manual. I was reading the same sort of thing in the New York Post, The New Republic, and suchlike rags. I wondered who’d clipped the Koran for him; I doubt he’s ever opened it in his life. Citing the injunction that wives obey their husbands, and apparently unaware that St. Paul says the same thing, Bill suggested that this explains the miserable plight of women in the Islamic world; adding humorously, “To all appearances, the only time men and women get together in Islamic society is when they copulate.'”
I am sure the hero (to you, without much company alongside, for reasons Sir) Joe Sobran is happy you accurately defend him along with the host here from Buckley’s legacy, no doubt one far surpassing my own: perhaps even all y’alls too.
When Joe wrote the above quoted passage it displayed a hatred of Buckley I have seen matched by Oliver Willis. Joe also donned his critic hat and declared Buckley’s writing contained neither nouns nor verbs. That was one of the “shots” Joe took against the great man. What can be properly labeled sub-pathetic without sounding snooty?
It is yet still all of no matter. When prepared to discard even good attributes existing, because of a personal type animosity Buckley decided to forego after the Gore Vidal issues queered the debate for some in 1968, one cannot sans shrug critique any method attempted governing entitled Buckley Conservatism worthy the effort concocted to combine the words.
http://reasonradionetwork.com/20101002/how-i-was-fired-by-bill-buckley-joe-sobran
If Generals prepare to fight the last war, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing to advance your argument by unwittingly idolizing your memorial to him, Bill Frank Buckley?
Buckley was not a Yankee. He was an Irish Catholic from New England. Not the same thing. I like the Irish as much as anyone (they’re half my paternal relatives as it is), but they yanked New England significantly to the left. There are not that many Puritain descendants populating the region today, and even fewer that aren’t, like me, the product of generations of intermarriage with the other European populations there. I assume that many Puritan descendants just up and left, like English Americans left Pennsylvania for Ohio and Indiana as the Germans flooded the area in the nineteenth century.
There’s a case to be made that the Civil War was partly caused by Northern Industrialists importing foreign ringers, mostly from Ireland and Germany, to tip the population and power balance further to the industrialized north and away from the south. The Northeast is really not very English at all, which you should know from having lived there.
George Will is probably one of ours, though. Sorry about that.
Buckley was not a WASP, being Catholic, but he embraced Yankeedom with the enthusiasm of a convert. He lived in CT, he went to Yale and he effected that Brahman accent to the point of absurdity. Buckley was the quintessential Yankee conservative.
As far as Puritan descendants, that’s not really how it works. The English who settled New England brought with them a very narrow set of cultural values and spiritual propositions. The culture they built over 200 years is still with us. The people who came in after the Civil War adapted to that culture and often embraced that culture. That culture has certainly evolved, but there are still many identifiable strains that are unique to the region that can be traced back to the founding. The most obvious example is the revulsion toward Public Protestantism. A guy like Ted Cruz is a huge turn off to New Englanders, even conservative ones, because he wears his religion on his sleeve.
For a more detailed explanation read The Nine Nations of North America or, if you want something a little more condensed and relevant to today, try American Nations. I recommend the latter as it is a fun read and makes a fine beach book.
“The Yankee Conservative” Really?
Mindful that Mass, Vt., and Me., are NOT, say… northern NH!
I too am “undeclared”. I have never been “republican” (ok, except that ONE time in college)
In MY case, it’s because GOP, and self-described, so-called “conservatives” haven’t been far ENOUGH “to the right”
since Goldwater was “convention platformed”, (after doing the heavy lifting for GOP) out of the picture.
NH “Yankee Conservatives”? Switchblades, and silencers. Gosh, we MAY even have fire crackers next, just like Maine! Any MORE questions? (excluding “Free State Project porcupines”. See: Yale Senior Thesis/ Libertarian )
I have YET to meet a Mensan (ie) UVM, or Emory “communications” graduate.
Will put the cuck in cuckservative
George Will has been a good example of a cur eating the scraps from his master’s table. Those like him are all the same, cowardly half men. I could continue, but to what purpose?
Thing is, Will and the rest of them, they don’t understand we don’t need them. Seriously.
Will is useless for whichever group he claims to support. He always brings a vocabulary to a gunfight.
” He always brings a vocabulary to a gunfight.”
That’s about right for a guy who writes about baseball, while wearing a bow tie!
For this one, steaks and whisky are on me, whenever you want to collect. Will is actually from Illinois, about 30 miles from where my family farmed for 150 years,but as a fellow Midwesterner, I can say Will is the classic case of forgetting where you are from. See that a lot. It’s sad.
WASPs are one thing, but WASP wannabes are revolting. Some of the WASPs are fine people but the wannabes are always prissy, teacup liberals.
I’m from the area. Conservatives from the region are a different breed. They have more in common with Europe’s aristocracy than sort of the bread and butter conservative you’d find in either the mid-West or South. There’s something about the mindset that is far more intellectual than focused on results and therefore it turns in the Wussy, tamed right that makes civilized press boxes but ineffective cultural or political movements. I confess I’m not entirely comfortable with say the kind of conservatism you’d find in southern Baptist church, but I recognize as merely a cultural/personality difference. We seem to agree on lots of important issues. It’s obvious that other conservatives from the region simply never overcome either the discomfort/class issues or are really interested in results.
I’m young enough and only came to conservatism recently enough that I only heard of George Will through these Trump temper tantrums. I’m relatively unimpressed with Will and Buckleyites in general. It looks to me like the root of today’s ineffective, flacid right is was in fact purging all the people who put passion behind their thoughts, so the polo ponies stayed calm.
When I lived in New England, I would tell conservative friends that in most of the country, they would be considered liberals. They never believed me. The key issue is egalitarianism. Southern conservatives start from the understanding that nature does not dispense her gifts equally. There’s a natural hierarchy in every human society and any political system that does not accept it is doomed to failure.
Imagine what Buckley told his conservative friends, objectively as is your want, when he lived in New England.
Or just reference one or more of the 5600 syndicated columns or 50+ books.
Fiction has its utility, as Buckley’s Blackford Oak’s novels proved he believed catholically.
And regarding Will, he showed O’Reilly to be no more than the Left has accused him of for decades. And Rush too, with the whole “Baxter” persuasion employed. I hadn’t watched The Factor in years and years, because in fact I hate the idea of paying for cable. Paying for commercials, in 2011 or now? WTF? But I watched Will and O’Reilly and hated myself for concerning my time with the likes of them, even while concluding Will go the better of that exchange by not seeming deranged and drug-seeking.
Not to mention the evil bias save this one reference, but that is the main reason I hate satellite or cable TV people pay for unless they know and support the Hollywood pedophilia and attempted latent genocide against Buckleyism.
George Will missed the boat when he wasn’t made Baseball Commissioner.