This is my response to Allahpundit finally leaving Hotair and exiting the conservative pundit space.
Allahpundit was a conservative political commentator for a long time. I remember back when I was in law school in 2004, following his blog "Allah is in the house" in which he LARPed as the Muslim God Allah and made fun of terrorists and Democrats. It was one of the funniest things online at the time. I knew he was going places, and he did.
From his blog his patron Michelle Malkin boosted him to the commercial web site Hotair, where he's been for 16 years. He mentioned that he's written 36,591 total posts. I've probably read most of them.
In his earlier, pre-Trump years, he was a consistently right wing voice. But somewhere between 2016-2020, he changed, and he changed in a big way. He wouldn't admit this. In his mind, I'm sure he thinks that he didn't change, everyone else did. But he's wrong.
When I first went on twitter a couple years ago, I followed him. His posts on Twitter were almost unrecognizable from the man I used to read regularly. Quite frankly, he had transformed into a garden variety moderate Democrat, not a Right winger at all. It took me some time to understand why he changed, but I think I have a reasonably confident answer:
FEAR.
Allahpundit joined the Right out of fear. The precipitating event was 9/11. Fear of terrorism caused a flight to right wing authoritarianism. This explains why Allahpundit took a sharp Left turn in 2020: the fearful in 2020 embraced Left wing authoritarianism in response to COVID. Allahpundit's takes on COVID lined up perfectly with those of mainstream Democrats and Redditors. All talk of freedom and individuality was purged from his mind. It's a sad thing to see.
But that wasn't the only thing Allahpundit was irrationally afraid of: Trump. I openly admit Trump tried to build a cult of personality around himself, but anyone with common sense could see that he was never going to be able to pull it off. Even on January 6, the day that struck such UTTER TERROR into the hearts of these laughable little scared children, there were at most a few dozen people willing to fight the cops for Trump, and most of them only got keyed up because the cops started getting aggressive with them first and it escalated.
I can forgive a Right winger not liking Trump. Trump is not the Right. Hell, Trump betrayed Right wing principles on more than 1 occasion. But I can't forgive a person for taking left wing political positions, sounding and acting like a filthy Democrat, and then trying to pretend that this is somehow justified by their desire to undermine Trump. Nah, it isn't about Trump anymore, it's about having so much TDS that you want to nuke the entire Right in revenge for the perception that the Right is corrupt for having embraced Trump at all. But why did the Right embrace Trump? Because the Left has been beating up on and personally attacking the Right nonstop for over a decade, and Trump was the 1st and only candidate willing to punch back hard and keep throwing punches. Trump actually made the Right feel like it wasn't stuck playing perpetual defense whining "b-b-but we're not racist! honest!" all the damn time.
And this is how I know AP is not a Republican and hasn't been a Republican for a long time now:
What is the right’s “cause” at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump’s latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that.
Sounds like something AOC would write, and of course it's wrong. Imagine how stupid AP needs to be to be VERY ONLINE and not even be able to mentally recall the most recent Republican Platform embodied by Republican Senators in Rick Scott's 12 point Plan: https://rescueamerica.com/12-point-plan/ I would say that that is a pretty good summary of where the Republican Party is at in terms of policy preferences. (1) American pride and school choice, (2) color blindness and racial equality, (3) re-fund the police and support law and order (4) secure our border, better quality immigrants, and no welfare for immigrants (5) stop socialism and grow the economy, balance the budget and cut government spending (6) reduce federal power, return it to the states, and get the debt under control (7) election security (8) promote the American family (9) "Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science" (10) protect religious liberty and stop big tech censorship (11) "We are Americans, not globalists" (12) CUT TAXES.
HELL YEAH, BROTHER.
That's a lot of ambitious policy proposals and causes, so how is AP saying "Republicans don't stand for anything?" Because he's a libtard now, and libtards have this weird mental defect where they think that the sole function of government is to push socialist authoritarian policies down the throats of Americans. Anything like, like the 12 point above, it practically invisible and incomprehensible to them. They can only think in terms of dictatorial edicts that declare top-down socialist war on things, without ever solving them. ("war on poverty" anyone?)
And THAT is the problem with Allahpundit and Nevertrumpers like him: maybe they used to be Republicans back in the GWB era when they thought Right wing socialism was on the menu, but these people are fundamentally socialists, authoritarians, and statists, and they look around and see that the Right loathes the Government now. Rather than admitting that they're socialists, they scapegoat Trump and the supposed threat he poses (which anyone without diagnosable TDS can plainly see is no threat) in order to deflect from the fact that they simply love Big Government, and loved it when GWB-era Republicans ran up spending to make them feel safe from terrorism with security theater.
The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats, smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way. Give the leader a free hand. It’s plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are.
Literal TDS. Sad. Nothing in the above bears any resemblance to reality.
I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue’s footstool. To the extent my work at Hot Air has made that clear, I’m happy with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr_complex
Never forget, it’s not the 30 percent of Trump worshipers within the party who brought the GOP to what it is. It’s the next 50 percent, the look-what-the-libs-made-me-do zombie partisans, who could have said no but didn’t. I said no. Put it on my tombstone.
"The entire Right wing is evil and must be destroyed because I don't like Trump" TDS. As a member of that "next 50 percent", let me say this to AP: I am thinking with crystal clear clarity. You, on the other hand, have had all your logic and reason derailed by what I can only describe as a mental illness.
If the average populist slobberer had a few like you in their ear, we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in... You can count on one hand the number of successful right-of-center sites willing to hold populism to account for its excesses and the Dispatch is a very distinguished member of that distinguished group. Of course I’d be interested in writing for it.
I only highlight this in closing to make a final point. Allahpundit is a socialist, and he is calling everyone who isn't a socialist a "populist slobberer". He doesn't respect the fact that many Americans truly and correctly see government as THE PROBLEM because his statist, New Yorker mind simply cannot comprehend a world in which the Government is not the ultimate problem solver for all things in society. He sees those fighting against socialism as a rabble of peasants rioting and burning in protest of the lapses of their betters, instead of seeing them as truly intelligent people working to reign in the socialist excesses and abuses of our present Big government.
Trump completely broke Allahpundit. He became a full blown leftist. Not a moderate Democrat. Full blown progressive leftist.
Did you see his insane Covid takes? He is one of the worst hysterics.
Allahpundit is now another Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and Tom Nichols. Just a spineless grifter playing the role of good "MSNBC Republican".
Does Bill Kristol still claim to be conservative?
Yes McAuliffe in the VA governor race in 2021 bragged about getting the conservative Bill Kristol endorsement and he then lost to Glenn Youngkin! 🤣
Isn't he the one who wants, and I quote, a "neoliberal world order?"
Oh I never heard him say that. I’ve just seen him repeatedly say he is a conservative
I think that's still the claim but, yes, he wants a neoliberal world order.
Neolibs and necons are basically the same sort of globalist scum.
There isn’t a reality where an effective political leader doesn’t organically become the center of a “cult of personality”. Obama is probably the most pathologically revered president of all time, but you don’t see anyone pointing fingers at his “demagoguery” or “cult of personality”. That’s because these are leftist smears against effective right wing politicians. It’s basically code for “people I hate really like this dude”. They do the same thing with fascism, which is essentially a smear against nationalism.
This is also something that gets lost a lot in the history of the mid '10s. This very notion is always why the "altright" became a thing and powered up as it did.
Like, I can promise that most people who called themselves that at the time had no idea who Richard Spencer was, nor any Neo-Nazi/Supremacist ideals. They simply say an alternative right wing party who wasn't cucked out, and instead was loud and proud. One that struck back and made them feel like they weren't the losers in a constant defensive game. The Left managed to successfully kill the name by forcing that Spencer association on it, but the ideals of being different than the old pathetic boomer GOP still are felt in nearly all right wing groups to this day.
There is also the libtard idea that because the Right acts more like a bulwark of rejecting or dismantling anything the Left tries, they don't have ideals and just want to destroy. Which misses one of the most fundamental aspects of most right wing ideologies, which is smaller, less involved governments (aka just keeping them out of anything instead of using them to force stuff like the Left does).
Before Hillary and The Glowniggers hopped onto the alt-right train and diverted it, alt-right was simply the coalition birthed from the Tea Party movement, people who wanted to shrink the government, get rid of the income tax, end the Fed, and stop interfering in foreign wars - but otherwise didn't necessarily care so much about traditional "conservative" values. Now alt-right is apparently anyone who isn't a leftist.
Leftism is a philosophy of (culture) war. Rightism is a reaction to that. It's about time the Right learned what it actually means to be right-wing. The AP is either pretending not to understand (a leftist tactic) or staffed by NPCs that by their nature don't understand meta-narratives, they can only follow their programming.
"Hillary and The Glowniggers" sounds like the name of a punk rock band
AP won't like what happens now. He is going to be forgotten as just another shill who betrayed everything he pretended to care about because of a personal beef. No one will follow him over to Dispatch.
This is not the first time that someone in the right of center pundit class went bat shit nuts, the guy who ran the LittleGreenFootball blog, Andrew Sullivan, went absolutely crazy over Sarah Palin, and was foaming at the mouth obsessed with Trig Palin. He waged a one man jihad on her from his position at The Atlantic, and it went on for years.
The Atlantic had right of center pundits?
The one value that takes precedent over nearly all others is having a fucking spine. If you won't stand up for your values...you don't have any.
Most of the worst sins and character defects come from not having a firm grim on your values and your spine.
Looks like this dude didn't have his stuff in order, and ended up looking like a clown, because he's a pussy.
never heard of him. sounds like a faggot and a cuck.
Communists always call everyone not sufficiently leftwing a fascist, even other communists.
Analpundit was never conservative and this got borne out during the Obama years.
At best he’s a centrist who got temporarily red pulled after 9/11 but rapidly turned back when W mucked things up and Obama came along (not unlike little green footballs blog)
For me it was when Obama came into office that I noticed Analpundits changes and that he was effectively a poser. Obama could do no wrong - things that he attacked W for got a pass with Obama (or even praised) and speaking Ill of Obama or pointing out atheist fallacies was verboten on the Hot Air blog.
When Biden says he works with Republicans he’s talking about Analpundit.
What Trump did was put a glaring spotlight on all of this and much of the GOPe and how far out of touch they were. I had readily expected Jeb Jeb to adopt some of Trumps talking points during the primaries of 2016 as Trump was talking plainly about immigration issues and how the government was more concerned about helping other nations than our own people. Sure, the rhetoric was strong and harsh but the underlying ideas were correct for what the GOP claimed to stand for (and the DNC for that matter)
What shocked me was the complete rejection by Jeb Jeb and actually defending open borders and spending more money on other nations and the bureaucratic state. He couldn’t even lie about it to get the nomination - he just outright rejected it!
Analpundit did the same thing - orange man bad even if he’s saying what I said for the past 8 years.
My god, this guy still has people who trust him? He votes consistently the way the NOW asks and has done for his entire political career.