Posted on 08/30/2021 12:09:43 PM PDT by BurgessKoch
There were rumors in the summer of 2018 that an audiotape was circulating that would send shockwaves through the think tanks of Washington and the conservative intellectual movement in particular. A top Google executive had been recorded telling his fellow employees that Google generously donated to conservative think tanks and magazines to dampen criticism of their anti-conservative bias. In essence, Google was buying off Conservatism Inc. and the GOP establishment to stay silent while Google monitored, harassed, and excluded Trump supporters. If true, the tape sounded like a smoking gun: incontrovertible evidence of the corruption and double-dealing of Conservatism Inc. that would permanently discredit it with Republican voters.
I was told that the tape had been offered as an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal. Months went by, and nothing happened. (There were rumors during that time that Big Tech lobbyists were trying very hard to get the Wall Street Journal to kill the story.) Then I began to get a series of messages from various anonymous sources that the organizations that were guilty of taking Google money to stay silent included: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Cato Institute, CPAC, the Weekly Standard and the National Review. (A weak article appeared on September 27th by John McKinnon in the Wall Street Journal but it hardly mentioned the tape or its implications.) This was, needless to say, a huge story: was it possible that the entire conservative intellectual movement was being bought off by Big Tech companies?
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(Excerpt) Read more at emeralddb3.substack.com ...
There was an audio “tape” in 2018?
NR is not a conservative site. The same way the Lincoln project is not a conservative think tank.
The same with Cato Institute and CPAC. I had my suspicions when CPAC started pushing the homosexual agenda.
The neo-cons at the Weekly Standard were NEVER conservative. Bill Kristol rag.
NR sold out LONG before 2018.
I can’t imagine the fireworks that would ensue if Google approached Mr. Robinson with such a proposition.
My nightly reading in the 90s-early 2000s was NR, American Spectator, and the The Limbaugh Letter. Shame.
Wow! Well done, Emerald! Brilliantly snarky in the tradition of Mark Steyn and Ann Coulter on one of her good days. No one smacks down effeminate soy-boy poseurs better than a sharp conservative woman!
After years of voting 'rat, I switched over to conservatism in 1994 in type to vote in that historic election. One of the first things I did was take out a subscription to NR. A few years later I also had a subscription to the Weekly Standard. How are the mighty fallen.
Jonah Goldberg -faux conservative in the Bill Kristol mode.
NR - downhill since WFB left.
I'd add in Heritage Foundation to the orgs mentioned by Robinson - they always fundraise off of their influence in the GOP, yet the GOP has not had a significant policy win since Welfare Reform in 1996 (which Obama pretty much obliterated). This seems like a good opportunity for real conservative think tanks and media/publications/websites to rise up, but I don't think enough conservatives have seen the light to make this happen.
Mistake #1. Maybe they should have tried Russia Times. :)
“NR is not a conservative site.”
It’s a globalist Big Tech site.
Obvious even then that we were in for a wild & wonderful ride.
When Buckley fired Sobran and Francis.
I never heard of the site linked so color me skeptical. Still I stopped reading NR soon after Jonah took the reins. I haven’t looked at any of the other websites named in quite some time. That said, the post is credible, but I won’t believe until I get corroboration from a source with which I am familiar.
How libertarian of them.
I hope they love the new voters that Biden is sending us. I'm sure they can be educated into supporting Mises's and Hayek's views on politics and the economy.
You see, dear reader, it's not that the editors of the magazine got caught taking dirty money to hurt their fellow conservatives, it's the crazy people who report this stuff! [WFB could have written this himself and is laughing histerically in heaven] This opening amounted to almost a blanket denial that the National Review had actually taken any Google money at all. Realizing at some point that this was, in fact, not true, Goldberg slipped into the second to last paragraph the following confession:
[Emerald quoting Goldberg]I learned that Google gave some money to the National Review Institute for the Buckley Prize dinner [and now the Lord himself will be angry because WFB is angry] only because I asked about it this week (something Robinson could have learned were she an actual reporter of some kind [whoa Johnah, duck when you hurl boomerangs], rather than a MAGA infomercial hostess).
This is important stuff for those of us who ignore NR because of the evidence before our eyes, but somehow cannot believe that they would so totally betray the legacy of the great man. Well, they did and they did it for a few pieces of rather tarnished silver.
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