On Thursday, it was reported that Jonah Goldberg of the National Review and Stephen Hayes, the former editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard, were teaming up to launch a new media company.
This announcement comes in the wake of the launch of The Bulwark website by still other survivors of the scuttled Weekly Standard―their goal being to “push back against the moral and intellectual corruption that now poses an existential threat to conservatism as a viable political force.”
Not content to be just the source of employment for erstwhile Bill Kristolites, The Bulwark is already throwing sharp elbows. In a controversial piece in The Atlantic last week, The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes fired a warning shot at some of the more highbrow apologists for Trumpism.
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“A lot of folks have had a free shot to get in bed with some of the most disreputable [people] out there, and they still have a veneer of respectability,” Sykes told The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins. “We want to raise the opportunity cost.”
Some people read this piece (titled, “Naming and Shaming the Pro-Trump Elite”) as a threat that The Bulwark is about to engage in the kind of activism that might include personal attacks on some of my conservative friends (like Hugh Hewitt or Henry Olsen). After all, Sykes, in his interview with Coppins, compares The Bulwark’s writers to Somali pirates.
I reached out to Sykes for clarification. “There’s no list of people that we’re trying to embarrass,” he assured me. He reminds me that, once upon a time, National Review took on Ayn Rand. To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with fighting about ideas and the future of conservatism. “We are in the process of having this debate about the future of conservatism,” Sykes says, “so let’s have that debate.”
This debate matters, partly because Trump has little room for internal opposition. In the wake of Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight committee on Wednesday, he is facing increasingly choppy waters. It is looking more and more likely that House Democrats will impeach him, and he’s probably going to need the votes of at least 30 Republican Senators to stave off removal.
What is more, even if he survives impeachment, his reelection bid is in serious jeopardy. A new Quinnipiac University Poll of Texas voters shows Donald Trump “in a statistical tie with Biden, 47-46 percent; Sanders, 47-45 percent; and O’Rourke, 47-46 percent.”
Without Texas’ 36 electoral votes, there is no path for Trump or any Republican to 270 electoral votes. Having written off California and New York, Republicans without Texas are dead in the water.
This probably increases the odds that Beto O’Rourke (who just announced he wouldn’t run for Senate again) gets in. Even if he fails to win the nomination, the chance of putting Texas in play would make Beto (or Julian Castro) top-tier running mate picks.
Democrats in Texas have been predicting a demographic time bomb for decades, but this isn’t solely about more Latinos. It is hard to say how many white, college-educated suburban voters Republican governors created or imported from states like California, as part of the Texas Enterprise Fund, a business incentive fund which, in 2004, then-Governor Rick Perry referred to as “a new deal-closing fund that has helped bring 14,000 new jobs and $6 billion in capital investments to the state in just one year.”
Heck, Texas even boasts a program to lure Hollywood filmmakers to the Lone Star state, via tax incentives. And it’s hard to say how many of these new suburban Texans (many of whom might have voted Republican in the past) are specifically repelled by Trump.
Trump didn’t exactly create this reality, but he has most certainly accelerated a trend that might otherwise have happened more slowly as Texas became more urban and suburban. By backing Trump, Republicans bet on the votes of working-class whites in the Rust Belt, while risking the voters of the growing Southwest. This always felt like a bad long-term bet.
It might be easy to dismiss the Never Trumpers’ shot across the bow. To the naysayers on the left and on the Trump right, Never Trump is a joke—the politicians almost all salute Trump in the end. Trump can’t afford any attrition from Republicans if he is going to survive 2020.
There will be huge pressure on the renegade conservatives to fall in line, because of a rising impeachment threat and the risk of losing traditional red states like Texas and Georgia.
Trump still enjoys the support of most of the GOP conference and by the looks of things this week, all of the CPAC conference. With speeches by Diamond and Silk, “Doctor” Seb Gorka, and Rick from Pawn Stars (I kind of like him), this isn’t the most venerable collection of conservative intellectuals.
Still, the rise of anti-Trump conservative outlets, coupled with the fact that 13 House Republicans voted to block his “emergency” declaration, demonstrates the existence of a nascent resistance. And with the aforementioned challenges he faces from Democrats, he doesn’t need to be fighting a two-front war.
It is worth noting that these new Never Trump media operations are starting to take shape as the election season is gearing up, suggesting they are prepared to put conservatism over party. But they will be severely tested.
The Bulwark’s logo, indicative of the rough waters that lie ahead, is the silhouette of a storm-tossed ship. The imagery is not accidental. Never Trumpers are swimming upstream against the increasingly radicalized left and the Trumpist right.
And based on recent developments, they’re gonna need a bigger boat.
