Weekly Standard

Bill’s shattered Kristol ball

Bill Kristol suggested that to get rid of Trump Republicans, it might be necessary for anti-Trumpers to be “with the Democrats for a while.” In a chat with Politico this weekend, the Weekly Standard founder proposed a Gretchen Whitmer-Abigail Spanberger ticket, in what would be a perfect combination of TikTok mom-schmaltz and Beltway hackery. Luckily, though, Kristol’s prediction record is — to put it nicely — lacking. Let’s start in 2008. Kristol was a huge proponent of then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin for John McCain’s vice presidential pick, saying, “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin.” McCain and Palin lost by 10 million votes and received only 173 electoral votes to Obama and Biden’s 365. It’s not like Kristol was just a decade too early, either.

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Who funds #NeverTrump?

On December 17, 2018, the Weekly Standard published its final issue. The brand had been damaged beyond salvation; its anti-Trump gambit had failed, and spectacularly so. According to one report, the Standard’s print circulation dropped 30 percent between 2013 and 2017. For the first two years of Trump’s presidency, the Weekly Standard was far from an independent voice — it served as an organ for the Resistance.

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An exhaustive list of ‘Conservative Critics’ from The Bulwark

News from the #NeverTrump bubble, as Weekly Standard spinoff site The Bulwark have decided to keep tally of every conservative who expresses discomfort or opposition to Trump’s declaration of a national emergency for wall money. It’s an ambitious branching out into listicles for the site, whose preferred format up until that point had been ‘please, someone, anyone, primary Trump’. Their piece, entitled ‘Conservative Critics of Trump’s Non-Emergency Declaration, Listed’, categorizes opponents of the executive cash grab by their area of work.

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Don’t blame Trump for the demise of the Weekly Standard

If the Weekly Standard closes down by year’s end, as is widely expected and as Spectator USA first reported, the country will have lost one of its few remaining writer’s magazines. But for most people, the caliber of writing from Andrew Ferguson or Christopher Caldwell or Matt Labash is not what stands out about the Weekly Standard. Its reputation is tied to the Iraq War and to its founding editor’s reinvention of himself as the most acerbic NeverTrumper on Twitter. The latter has led the New York Times and other outlets to blame the closed-mindedness of conservatives toward criticism of Trump for the magazine’s demise.

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