Cap’n Bill And The Mailman’s Son Want To “Save America”

The effete aristocrat who loves opera, Greek philosophy and battles President Trump in his magazine The Weekly Standard, on CNN and MSNBC and his quirky Twitter account has come up with a stratagem to save America.

During the 2016 primary season he watched in abject horror as one GOP candidate after the other (Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich) surrendered to the man he called “loathsome”, “a con man”, “a charlatan and a demagogue”.

Trump didn’t just steamroll the Republican field he made a mockery of the cherished conservative ideals Kristol has spent more than 30 years touting.

Each year The Weekly Standard embarks on an annual cruise for which its subscribers pay several thousand dollars for a cabin on the ship and a chance to spend time with its founder Cap’n Bill Kristol.

During the 2017 cruise, Kristol’s sardonic sense of the gallows began to anger his readers. His unrelenting drumbeat of criticism for the Trump Administration grew pointless and his readers told him so every chance they got.

To Trump, Kristol IS the rigged system he’s fighting against, the personification of an elite establishment overdue for a rude awakening.

Kristol has a reputation for predictions gone wrong. In 2002, he said military action in Iraq “would start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy.” He insisted the Bush tax cuts would ease the deficit, rather than exploding it. In 2008, he predicted Obama would not win a single presidential primary; in 2011, that Rudy Giuliani would run for President; and, in 2015, that Joe Biden would. On different occasions late in the Obama era, Kristol declared that Jennifer Granholm, the former Michigan governor, was about to be picked as a Supreme Court Justice and likely to wind up on a national ticket as Obama’s Vice-President.

Kristol badly wants a Republican to primary President Trump in 2020. The smarmy “conservative” has been traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire in search of that someone.

In New Hampshire this past Wednesday, Kristol, speaking to an audience at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics said two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich would be "the most obvious candidate" to primary Trump though the governor’s personality and moderate politics have turned off leaders in Kristol’s orbit. No shit, Sherlock.

Very interesting, lively and wide-ranging conversation over dinner here in Columbus with @JohnKasich. What topics did we cover and what conclusions did we draw?
Silentium est aurum. pic.twitter.com/C3rAcmWPCm

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 3, 2018

Kristol acknowledged that he could be wrong about the state of the Republican Party—that it’s possible Republicans won’t be convinced they made a mistake and will re-nominate Trump.

This states perfectly what the never-Trumpers on the right refuse to grasp. https://t.co/kdA0PJ1DT6

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 25, 2018

I dunno. I may not be who you have in mind (I always said that if I were in some swing state and the election came down to me, I'd have probably voted Trump). But I completely understand why some principled conservatives wouldn't. This is one possible line of reasoning. pic.twitter.com/Ko816mPK5m

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 25, 2018

There's also the more relevant Q: Who gives a rat's ass about how people voted almost 2 years ago? We have one president now. Even if you think Hillary would be a thousand times worse, that doesn't absolve Trump of anything. And yet it's "But Hillary!" all over the place.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) May 25, 2018

Well, you could have said “who gives a rat’s ass in your first response,” instead of going all Solzhenitzyn on us. After all, David’s tweet was about voting.

— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 25, 2018

Don’tcha just love the manner in which Brit Hume humiliates the RINOs?  Yeah. Me too.