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If you ever had any doubt whether the Lincoln Project or The Bulwark were anything more than cynical grifts to try to fleece the unsuspecting and to separate deep pocket leftist donors from their cash, let that doubt now be dispelled. It is entirely possible that The Dispatch belongs in this august company as well.
Today we learned that Rick Wilson is now an editor of some sort at that staunchly conservative Daily Beast (read Daily Beast Editor-at-Large Launches Ridiculous Disgusting Tirade Against Trump Supporters). It will be interesting to see how long he can milk his “loyal conservative who can’t stomach the GOP of Trump” schtick, but it probably needs to be for quite a while:
Weaver’s fellow Lincoln Project founder Wilson also has an interesting financial past. According to IRS documents, the GOP strategist has an outstanding $389,420 federal tax lien against his Tallahassee, Florida, home, and his bank moved to foreclose on the property in 2016.
Wilson, a best-selling author with 1 million Twitter followers, has never disclosed the money woes publicly, allowing him to sneer online about Trump’s decision never to release his own taxes — at one point calling him “Brokeahontas,” despite the fact that American Express had taken Wilson to court for his own unpaid $25,729 credit card bill the year before, documents show.
Nearly simultaneously, Bill Kristol was fellating Joe Biden over his choice of Center for American Progress chieftess Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget.
Serious conservatives, responsible moderates, and hard-headed liberals should want a tough-minded OMB head. OMB is where Cabinet secretaries’ ill-considered projects go to die, where programs are evaluated, where trade-offs are made. Neera Tanden is the right person for the job.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 30, 2020
This is clearly in “I’ll say or do anything so long as the money keeps coming” territory.
Neera Tanden is simply not qualified to head OMB. Putting that aside, the only empirical qualification that I’ve seen for her appointment thus far is that she’d be the first woman of Indian descent to ever head that agency. That, actually, is not a qualification.
My colleague Bonchie covers all the details here Biden Wants a Wild Conspiracy Theorist as OMB Head, Republicans Laugh Uncontrollable. To make a long story short, Tanden was an active participant in peddling virtually all aspects of the Russia Hoax. That alone is a disqualification as it marks someone as either an imbecile or devoid of integrity. During her chief-ness as CAP, she physically assaulted one of her staffers who had the temerity to ask Hillary Clinton a question about her role in the Iraq War. While trying to tamp down staff anger over sexual harassment and retaliation for reporting it, Tanden held an all-hands meeting in which she repeatedly named the “anonymous” complainant. As if things didn’t get bad enough, she’s also advising New Jersy Gauleiter Phil Murphy on response to the Wuhan virus.
Her nomination seems to be dead in the water. Neither of the Senate chairmen who have to approve of her will even commit to holding a hearing.
NEWS — The two GOP senators in line to chair committees that will hold @neeratanden’s OMB confirmation hearings won’t commit to holding them if they keep majority. One of them, Portman, tells me he believes Biden should withdraw Tanden, pick someone else https://t.co/kpwCyrtp9L
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) December 1, 2020
.@JohnCornyn says that @neeratanden is perhaps Biden’s “worst nominee so far.”
“I think, in light of her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, that it creates certainly a problematic path.”
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) November 30, 2020
Glenn Greenwald insinuates that there is a personal relationship between Kristol and Tanden that has developed during his Quisling period:
You should include a comment about how many times you two have had lunch and other meetings over the past 4 years.
But I say earnestly that I’m glad Biden is choosing Neera Tanden & that Bill Kristol is dispatched to praise the choice. Dems need a bright mirror in front of them: https://t.co/NYtBA48z5f
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 30, 2020
That may be true, but I think, as Wison’s hegira to Daily Beast indicates, it signifies the grifters of the NeverTrump movement waking up to the realization that, contrary to their boasts, they are never going to be welcomed back into the Republican Party or conservative movement as principled saviors. They are going to be forever associated with betrayal, and doxxing and lying, and doxxing and they simply aren’t going to be employable by any politician on the right. Kristol is trying to position himself as someone who can convince Republican senators to give Joe Biden a honeymoon and treat him with the respect and deference his party failed to show to either George Bush or Donald Trump. It isn’t going to work. No one cares what Kristol says and the GOP base to not in the mood for forgive and forget the past four years plus an election mired in fraud.
We haven’t heard the last of Kristol. He doesn’t have the requisite dignity just to go away. But what we can do is to make each of his public utterances the subject of ridicule and we can remind anyone who hires him that doing so is not a cost-free endeavor.
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