If there were any doubt that misogyny is a problem on the right, let us look today at the example that self-described conservative “Christian” Evan Kilgore of Turning Point USA has helpfully posted for everyone to analyze on Twitter. It should be mentioned that mere minutes after I confronted his behavior he deleted the tweet, but he doubled down shortly after and issued no apology.
The now-deleted tweet is below. In the interest of saving Christina Pushaw any embarrassment, I cut off the unflattering picture that he posted of her.
There has been an assault on Pushaw by Only-Trumpers because she is close to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). The main attackers are the very outspoken Trump supporters in the conservative sphere. Many of these Trump supporters work for organizations like Turning Point USA and are professional pot-stirrers who have used their social media recently and repeatedly to take unfair digs at not only DeSantis but everyone around him. These are the kind of primary shenanigans that I despise and refuse to take part in.
After deleting the tweet, Kilgore tweeted out this lame excuse.
Conservatives will clap their hands and laugh all day while making fun of Liberals and how crazy they look.
But the second one of their own is made fun of they all start crying and virtue-signaling about how bad it is to make fun of people.
This is why I hate the modern GOP.
— Evan Kilgore 🇺🇸 (@EvanAKilgore) May 27, 2023
“Conservatives will clap their hands and laugh all day while making fun of Liberals and how crazy they look. But the second one of their own is made fun of they all start crying and virtue-signaling about how bad it is to make fun of people. This is why I hate the modern GOP.”
First, I will absolutely clap my hands and laugh all day while making fun of the left and their crazy rainbow hair, bad teeth, and high obesity rate. That’s because they’re the enemy. But I don’t treat my friends this way. He can call that hypocrisy, but I call it good strategy. I will use any ridicule in my arsenal to destroy a leftist. You betcha. But I do not use those same weapons on ideological friends and the reason shouldn’t be a mystery. Ridicule works. It is a potent weapon and one that we should use often against THE LEFT. But using it against the right during a primary is suicidal.
I will also occasionally hold Republicans to the fire when they need it, but my language is usually less biting than what I would use on a Democrat. I’m not going to hurt my team unnecessarily. These people don’t understand we are all one team. What Kilgore suggests, that my opinion is an example of “the modern GOP,” is laughably false. I’m not part of the GOP at all. I’m just someone who has been commenting on it for twenty years from the outside.
What’s “modern” is this new breed of social media “influencer” taking primary competition to a whole new disgusting level that it should never have gone in the first place. The GOP has been historically polite, in many cases far too polite, to both friends and enemies. If only we could keep that politeness between friends and turn the zingy vitriol toward the people putting queer theory in our public schools.
But I don’t expect these youngsters to know that the GOP has been historically polite to a fault. I bet most of them never held an American Spectator in their hands and have no idea who William Buckley was and the only thing they know about the GOP comes from following its Instagram account. But perhaps when someone who’s been in this hellscape longer tells you you’ve lost the plot, a little humility would go a long way.
The kids today are so jubilant over their latest Twitter insult that they haven’t stopped to consider if any of this will boomerang back on their cause at some point. You have to get along with everyone after a primary, kids. (Yeah, I know. The elders complaining about “youngsters today” is definitely a meme. Hopefully, this isn’t the first step for me toward writing columns about the infantile nature of blue jeans in the style of George Will.)
We have too much at stake to turn friends into enemies.
Everyone with an IQ over 80 knows that the majority of conservative voters are going to vote for whoever the Republican nominee is and the fighting that happens within the party in the lead-up to the nomination process is simply a distraction and a dangerous one at that. Do none of these people think about the damage that they could be doing to conservatives in general when they do things like this?
These attacks on Pushaw for her looks are not new. Laura Loomer consistently posts horrific things about Pushaw that are always centered on her looks. I don’t know what happened to Laura. I used to like her a lot. But lately, she’s caught up in a Trump-or-die frenzy that has made her decidedly less palatable. At one time Loomer was a funny gadfly, trolling social media companies for their censorship and pointing out inconsistencies in Nancy Pelosi’s border policies by camping on her lawn. I enjoyed Loomer very much when she was aiming her weapons at the left. I do not enjoy her at all now that she has decided to shoot right.
It should also be noted that Loomer has a lot of nerve to comment on someone else’s plastic surgery when we can look back through pictures of her and see the obvious surgical changes in her appearance over the years.
After the primary, you can always go back to acting.
I loved you in Escape from LA! pic.twitter.com/e7NuIANA33
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 27, 2023
I have been reluctant to even write about this primary because of how nasty it has become. But I am too old to care what any of these young, overeager social climbers think about me anymore. The best thing about getting older is the ever-dwindling give-a-hoot meter. I’m all out of hoots to give! If conservatives want to be successful and have a unified party that can win elections and defeat the left then reckless puppies like these have got to be sidelined immediately. Don’t take my advice if you don’t want to. I’m going to be out of this game sooner rather than later because it’s nothing but an exercise in coping with the repeated failure of a losing sports team.
It all feels like a doomed Herculean effort to continue to try to talk sense into anyone these days. When the more circumspect of us are gone from this rodeo, the only people you’ll be left with to give you their thoughts and opinions on things are going to be showboating posers looking for clicks. I don’t think they do what they do for your good or the country’s good. It is my opinion that the people who behave this way do so only for their own glory, their own notoriety, and their own advancement. Be careful who you follow.
I don’t find it particularly necessary to tell you who I’m supporting in this primary because I’m not even sure if I’m going to vote in it. I may not even vote in the presidential election because I live in New York and my vote doesn’t count. But if it did, and I decided to vote, I would be voting for whoever was opposing the demonic Democrats.
Anyone telling you that Ron DeSantis is someone they could never vote for under any circumstances should be completely and totally ignored, ridiculed, and dismissed from any position of influence within the Republican Party. I would say the same for anyone saying the same thing about Donald Trump. If you can’t see the vast improvement between either of those candidates and anyone that the left has in mind for this country you’re either lying for some personal gain or you’re stupid. It’s time to tell these primary attack dogs to stop playing these stupid games within the conservative family. It feels like domestic abuse. Stop damaging one candidate over the other for your own personal gain.
It is also worth mentioning that all of these people you see with tens of thousands of followers on social media who are hyping one candidate using negativity campaigns we usually reserve for Democrats are all positioning themselves to be in the administration of the candidate of their choice. I have grave concerns that the people with the biggest social media presence who are advocating for Donald Trump in this primary are some of the people we would want furthest away from the reins of power and it would behoove our former president to take a hard look at the people he has surrounded himself with yet again. Trump has never been very good at picking good people and that should concern you.
I haven’t seen anyone on DeSantis’s side, however, taking these same low-blows at Trump or his staff. Perhaps it has happened, but I haven’t seen it so it couldn’t have gotten much traction, at least in my social media feeds. But nearly every day, for the last several months when I open Twitter I have seen the most hateful, vile, misogynistic vomit being hurled at the DeSantis family and his staff. It needs to stop. And the people who are doing it need to be publicly shamed and removed from influential conservative organizations. Or don’t! Leave them there and watch the party burn itself to the ground for all I care. This thing is probably not savable, so… whatever.
It is one thing to have a robust primary full of disagreements on policy, approach, style, and even some good-natured jokes. But there should be a difference between how you treat your friends, who we may disagree with on nuance, versus how we treat Democrats who are the enemies of liberty itself.
The left is watching, and right now Team Trump is an embarrassment to me and the rest of us who have been working ourselves to death for the last several decades trying to bring conservatism back in America. They’re making a mockery of our values, our goals, and our reputations. Those of you engaged in this stupid juvenile display of high school politics don’t deserve a seat at any table near the Republican party. Maybe you could learn to code.
