Okay, unless you’re familiar with the swing-band classic “When Reuban Swings the Cuban”—and you probably aren’t—you’re probably guessing that I’m accusing Jennifer Reuban of going communist, and I’m not.
There was a time when I spent so much time making fun of Jennie for her passionately Likudist psyche—she once denounced Sen. Rand Paul for not applauding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with sufficient vigor—that I had to give it up. It was just too damn easy! “Picking on Jennie gets boring,” I snickered, “because she’s so predictable. My readers deserve new jokes, and Jennie’s such an old one!”
Well, that was then. Now Jennie’s swung left, stunned straight by both Donald Trump’s depthless mendacity and the Republican Party’s depthless surrender to it.1 As a result, many of Jennie’s old compatriots on the neocon Right are bit miffed at the change in Comrade Jennie, particularly since she gets paid Washington Post bucks—and post-Jeff Bezos Washington Post bucks at that—to dump on them, to the extent that “Jen Rubin” is virtually the new “Quisling”.
A case in point is a recent “G-File” post from former National Review guy Jonah Goldberg, now substacking it with “The Dispatch”, who rambles discursively over a number of issues neoconian,2 among them explaining why he thinks Bill Kristol’s notion that “real conservatives” like himself ought to consider not merely opposing Donald Trump but actually joining the Democratic Party is a terrible idea. Says Jonah
Joining the Democratic Party would, of political and psychological necessity, require a similar transformation leftward. One need only look at Jen Rubin, Max Boot, and Steve Schmidt to see how quickly that can happen. Now, Bill is no Jen Rubin.
Yeah, Bill! You want to end up looking like “Jen Rubin”? That’s gotta sting! In fact, I suspect that both Max, who also now draws those sweet WashPost bucks since he’s gone liberal, and Jennie never really cared that much about the Second Amendment, didn’t hate homos, and also weren’t all that sure that life begins at conception. And it sure wouldn’t surprise me that Jonah feels pretty much the same way.3 But Jonah, though he talks harshly about Trump and all who support him, can’t quite cross over all the way. Because, well, because Jonah be Jonah:
I opted to make peace with being in the remnant [of anti-Trump conservatives], and resolved to get through this by simply telling the truth as I saw it. I’m not saying everyone else is lying (though many are). I’m saying that the need to stay “relevant” caused a lot of conservative intellectuals and pundits—and of course countless politicians—to redefine the truth to fit the political facts on the ground. I don’t want to adjust my sails to the partisan political winds.
First of all, it does seem like Jonah is saying that “everyone else is lying”, and lying for profit—except for Jonah, of course—that Jennifer Rubin is as big a whore as Mitch McConnell, which ain’t the way I see it. I think pretending that “simply telling the truth” places one equidistant between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi is nonsense. Never in our history has a major political party committed itself to such a vicious and corrupting lie as the belief, which is now the lodestone of the Republican Party, that Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 election from Donald Trump. And we won’t “get through this” just by being patient. Over and over again, conservatives have waited for “someone else” to take care of Donald Trump for them. And over and over again, they have failed. If you want to drive a stake through Donald Trump’s heart, Jonah, you’ll have to swing the mallet yourself.
1. Here’s a sample of Jennie’s recent thinking on the subject. Jennie was actually hired by WashPost editorial page editor Fred Hiatt to serve as an attack dog for Israel, but Jennie’s practically forfeited that role to act as a, well, “dogged” and incisive critic of Trump’s, and the entire Republican Party’s, numberless infamies.
2. “Discursive” is right! The guy either has forearms like Popeye or a mouth like Linda Lovelace.
3. The inclusion of Steve Schmidt on Jonah’s turncoat list was a serious twist of the knife on Jonah’s part. Steve, unlike Max and Jennie, doesn’t opine for a living. Stevo was one of the founders of the once high flying “Lincoln Project”, founded by never-Trumping conservatives to launch “independent” attacks on Trump. The Project was already a serious dumpster blaze when Jonah wrote this in February (I discussed the Project’s flailings and failings here), but last week the New York Times’ Danny Hakim, Maggie Astor, and Jo Becker threw a 55-gallon drum of aviation fuel on the fire with tales of furious internecine warfare as the founders dreamed of, and struggled for control over, projected billion-dollar political empires, until a sex scandal blew the whole thing up. Doing good never looked so lucrative!
