Uses the word “Obtuse” twice, within two paragraphs, compares the Trump phenomenon to the Klan and Anti-Semitism.
Jerk off and ahistorical...(I invented that word..not really”
coruscating
The author of the OP argues that political historians as well as historians tend to be liberal. That is code for the common liberal allegation that conservatives shun academic studies. In truth, academia shuns conservatives and hires liberals.
He further argues that such historians are prone to “politesse” and says, “It’s no surprise that we are attracted to polite subjects like “colorblind conservatism” or William F. Buckley.”
If one can overlook the OP’s astounding assertion that liberal historians fail to understand conservatives because the historians are prone to formality and polite inquiry, one can easily run into numerous false and self-serving assertions in the article which demonstrate increasing rations of intellectual dishonesty.
Trump proved him wrong, but Perlstein still didn’t learn his lesson, because his article demonstrates he still doesn’t understand the American right. And he never will.
” My first book, “Before the Storm,” was about the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater, the uncompromising National Review favorite whose refusal to exploit the violent backlash against civil rights, and whose bracingly idealistic devotion to the Constitution as he understood it — he called for Social Security to be made “voluntary” — led to his crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election.”
~~~~~~~~~
Idiot. After JFK’s death there was no way LBJ wouldn’t be elected, it was a “memorial” vote.
If you’re a liberal you’ll never ever “understand” the American right. Everything about liberalism is based on greed and emotion. So common sense like conservatism doesn’t penetrate.
Perlstein
Handsomely ignorant of his own inherent bigotry
Trump didn’t run as a conservative.
He ran as a populist.
$1 trillion on infrastructure spending.
Main thing are the SCOTUS picks. That’s why we desperately needed Trump to win.
Hope his presidency doesn’t become George W. round 3 with pointless wars.
Pure hatred. Has to invoke the pro-isolation (pro-Hitler) rallies before WWII, the 1920’s KKK, and everything else to justify his hatred of “American” values in “the white suburbs”
Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society, anti-Semites
You can use anti semitism or racism or homophobia etc and that line decscribes where the GOP and what was once called conservatism went off the rails and became no different than the left about traditional America....that we are bigots and our history is one of Christian bigotry and racism and sexism and xenophobia and not to be respected but destroyed
I don't think it's what Buckley wanted but it explains Krauthammer and Brooks and Kristol and the Bushes and Paul Ryan and National Review and Standard and Spectator etc.....and open borders
we are racists for wanting illegal little brown Indians kept out or let in only in small amounts
Folks the GOP is the real problem.....just look at them now ..working harder against Trump than they ever did Obama
He is none of these. He is an American. And throughout the short but glorious history of our nation Americans have been known as people who try new shit and if it don't work try something else till they find what solves the problem. This basically comes from being born in a market economy where results are what got you the prize. Long story short Americans learned how to make mistakes and learn from them very fast and adapt.
Politicians are basically diametrically opposed to such a philosophy. If they do something that is a mistake they will deny it is such and double down on the stupid and get their minions to go forth and shout down the truth till the lie becomes the accepted truth.
Trump was not just elected by the rightwingers or conservatives etc. He was elected by Americans many of them had voted for Barrack Obama. They figured out it was a mistake and learned and adapted. This confuses the occupants of the ivory towers because they had worked so hard to deny the truth that liberals (Obama and Hitlery) were screwing things up. Now they sit around and write papers trying to explain the phenomenon and fail miserably when anyone with an IQ north of 70 can tell you...
Americans were just tired of the same old shit...
Are there others besides me who believe many voters
turned to Trump because they thought the Democrats
were going too far left, too damned fast? I’m not
talking about myself because I am a lifelong conservative.
A large number of people don’t just vote FOR one side,
they also vote AGAINST the other. You wouldn’t know
it by all the water the media carried for the liberals
for years but throngs of people just are not willing to jump
on the Obama socialist bandwagon. And, Trump offered
enough conservative ideas to draw other voters away
from the get along RINO candidates.
Guys like Perlstein can’t and won’t understand that we
don’t reside in a vacuum.
Yeah, right...............
terms like “the right” or “conservative” are ultimately just different ways of saying “big government”.
there are very few non-socialists in government today, as indicated by the response to some of Trumps proposals that actually contain a fair amount of conservative content.
despite the conventional wisdom Trump is the most conservative president we have had in many decades, perhaps longer, if you define it in terms of shrinking government scope, size, and power.
this will, no doubt, surprise some.
“conservative” has no meaning by itself anymore. its like a participation ribbon. nobody has to actually believe in anything to claim it.
libertarian economists = ruinous policy.
Fascist states are like that, stomp out the opposition.
The Left LOVES dictatorships when they hold the power.
As opposed to Stalinist apologists and Red Dupe traitors.
It’s an interesting read - all the more remarkable considering that he obviously wrote it without ever speaking to a Trump supporter or a real conservative.
Intellectual = one who can not do anything of value, who demands to be paid for telling others what to do and how to do it.
Ping to NYT alleged “historian’s” article including knee-slappers:
quote:
The alien narrative continues today in the work of National Review writers like Andrew McCarthy (“How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda”) and Lisa Schiffren (who argued that Obama’s parents could be secret Communists because “for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or ’60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics”). And it found its most potent expression in Donald Trump’s stubborn insistence that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.