Commentary
We often hear the term “inside baseball” when someone attempts to explain something not readily known. In politics, we often hear commentators attempt to explain things taking place behind the scenes. Normally, it concerns a subject in which the public isn’t privy to, or not particularly interested.
I have made a number of observations lately on changes occurring in the political coverage by the media, and thought I would give you a little inside baseball. It involves new media outlets and some familiar names and faces you will see on Fox News Channel.
It’s not about those journalism pretenders on the left who don’t hide their bias. I’m going to tell you about individuals who consider themselves true conservatives. They jumped ship when Donald Trump campaigned and later won the presidency in 2016.
Although I don’t pretend to have inside knowledge of the thinking going on in the news offices of the Fox News Channel, I do know from communication exchanges I have had with Bret Baier, that Fox makes every effort to seek opposing views. You need to know their backgrounds.
That brings me to two new news entities and familiar faces associated with them; faces we are seeing again on Fox. The Dispatch and The Bulwark are the two organizations, with newsletters and podcasts to present their views. Both have anti-Trump and Never Trump ties, oppose Trumpism, and regularly attack followers.
Two political writers, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg founded The Dispatch. Neoconservative Bill Kristol recently joined the staff at The Bulwark, founded by Charlie Sykes.
Hayes was once editor in chief of The Weekly Standard magazine, and a regular panelist on Bret Baier’s evening broadcast on Fox until he took a sabbatical of sorts for a year in Spain with his family, with word in December 2018 that the magazine would cease publication. He got his grounding in conservatism working at the Heritage Foundation in the late nineties.
Goldberg worked at the American Enterprise Institute in the nineties before joining the National Review as its digital editor and later the magazine’s editor. As a syndicated columnist, his views have appeared in a number of newspapers and have led to guest appearances on television news programs.
Sykes is best known for his radio talk show in Milwaukee, but has written a number of op-eds that have been published in leading newspapers. Kristol joined him at The Bulwark after dabbling on Twitter following the demise of The Weekly Standard.
Common with each of them is their belief that Trump has taken the Republican party unaligned with conservative thinking.
Some of you may recall that the National Review, once the pride of the late William F. Buckley, came out against Trump in 2016, saying, “he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative consensus with the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
“Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as Donald himself.”
There were a number of people who signed on with the National Review, who have since come to their senses – Ben Domenech, Erick Erickson, Dana Loesch, Katie Pavlich, and Thomas Sowell – recognizing that it was Obama failures that helped Trump win.
Goldberg, who led the Review’s assault on Trump, still a Never Trumper, now denies The Dispatch is Trump-obsessed, even though in The Dispatch of October 8, 2021, he wrote, “I believe that Trump and his followers, apologists, and enablers are an ongoing threat to democracy,” followed by “Can the GOP survive Trump’s never-ending obsession with himself? on the October 15, 2021.
Yet, Goldberg accuses his conservative friends at The Bulwark of having a Trump obsession, writing, “If you wake up every morning trying to argue about why Trump is bad and the people who like Trump are evil, you’re just as obsessed with him as the people who wake up every morning want to prove that Trump is a glorious statesman and everything he does is great.”
Meanwhile, The Bulwark claims to provide “political analysis and reporting free from the constraints of partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices.”
That didn’t keep The Bulwark from doing a recent hit piece on Kari Lake, a Trump supporter running for governor of Arizona.
I have to admit that I chuckled when I read, “It’s fun to watch fat weaklings throw girl punches at each other,” in the blog Ace of Spades, covering the duel between The Dispatch and The Bulwark.
In Hayes, I detect someone who sees the handwriting on the wall when it comes to conservatism today. Three years into the Trump presidency, he surprisingly noted how his conservative colleagues seem now to accommodate Trumpism.
“In defense of the people who are defenders or supporters of the president, if we did this as a checklist … he’s done more conservative things than I would have guessed for sure,” said Hayes, “there’s no question about it.”
Considering whether America can exist without a conservative movement, Hayes says, “I think on one hand you sort of have to keep fighting” for those things we believe in.”
Kristol, who vehemently opposes Trump, suggests that “the country, the movement, and the party need a really fundamental rethinking of an awful lot of things and maybe it’s a moment of opportunity.”
That may be, but Republicans have had a taste of the Make America Great Again movement and promises kept. They’re not going to be interested in the ideas of “Old Washington,” and the likes of Bush, Dole, McCain and Romney.
Hayes foresees a free for all with the involvement of Trump. “He’s not going away. He’ll be there, shaping ideas and pushing his followers.”
I hope this little inside baseball look at the new media outlets and the familiar names and faces on their rosters, will help you better understand where they’re coming from.
Now, more than ever … may God continue to bless the United States of America.
