Bill Kristol on the brilliance of Ben Carson’s Facebook post

/ Historiann

nelsonmuntzIt’s been a doleful week around the ranch, so here’s a free laugh–William Kristol, writing in the Weekly Standard about something Ben Carson wrote this week: “Granted, it’s just a Facebook post. But it does suggest qualities of mind and soul that have been sorely missing in recent American public life.”

Never mind that his claims about the so-called “Founding Fathers” are historically incorrect–much like his theories on Holocaust-halting gun-toting Jews and the grain-storage technologies of the ancients.  Let us all pause with wonder that one of the self-appointed mandarins from the intellectual wing of the Republican party is 1) paying homage to Ben Carson 2) because of a Facebook post.  

Because God and Man at Yale had already been written, I suppose.  

(Side note and a warning:  do you find that right-wing opinion and “news” sites are the absolute worst for irritating pop-up ads and screen garbage?  I do, and I think it’s a sign that these publications have a pretty low opinion of their readership’s average intelligence.  Who else puts up with this?)

You almost have to feel sorry for some of the Republicans this year.  Almost, if they hadn’t been trolling for the kind of base they’ve got now for half a century, and Bill and his mommy and daddy have been the ones chumming the waters for just about that same period of time.  Cue Nelson Muntz here!

You’re still big, Bill–it’s the pictures that got small.

6 thoughts on “Bill Kristol on the brilliance of Ben Carson’s Facebook post”

  2. Outside of a surgical suite, Carson is a dimwit. The problem for Republicans now is that he’s the most popular dimwit on their roster! And now some of the establishment like Kristol are trying to make peace with/suck up to him!!!

    Comedy gold, friends.

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  3. Well Bill Kristol is just a patsy. He was the talent scout who found Sarah Palin, another grifter and poster child for GOP anti-Intellectualism. Its hard to believe Ben Carson is an actual Presidential candidate. At this point he must be doing it for tax purposes and a shot at amassing more Wingnut Welfare, like Mike Huckabee.

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  4. You all must treat yourself to James Wolcott’s latest column on the Donald Trump phenomenon:

    An orange Elvis squirted from a can of Cheez Whiz, the Trump of The Apprentice bent the distortion field of Reality TV until it fit him like a girdle. But Reality TV is an ensemble genre, and The Apprentice depended on the variety pack of prime-time has-beens and discount divas to draw viewers until its formula got stale. What’s distinctive about Trump’s campaign so far is that it reads strictly as a solo act. He doesn’t seem to tote the retinue of consultants and advisers that most campaigns lavish lousy money on, has few allies, and his wife, Melania, is a murmur in the breeze, seldom seen and even less heard. It is his weaponized mouth that has gotten Trump where he is. The performance art that has loogied him to the top of the Republican polls is insult comedy, and an insult comic as presidential timber is not something the Founders anticipated, judging from the screams resonating from the Hereafter.

    . . . . .

    No one has been a more sneering serial violator of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”) than Trump. . . . Yes, he has slagged entire peoples (Mexicans, Muslims), but such broad stereotyping is becoming standard Republican Party sheet music. It is the bitching contempt with which he treats anyone on his own partisan side who vexes his prickly highness, such as Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, that is without parallel in politics. That he not only has gotten away with it but has become emboldened with each flare-up attests to the intestinal rot of discipline and cohesion in the G.O.P. ever since the Tea Party boarded ship. The lack of respect Trump has for the party reflects the lack of respect it has for itself, and there’s no referee to stop this free-for-all. Never mind that the majority of Trump’s schoolyard taunts aren’t witty or funny and often border on the subliterate, they succeed in delivering electric shocks and uncovering weak spots, occasionally hitting on something so obvious that it somehow managed to be overlooked by our overpaid Beltway soothsayers.

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    • Astounding. A great essay. The analogy with Silvio Berlusconi is particularly apt. It is also frightening. The Trump/Berlusconi/Rickels campaign conjures up an age of post-politics adrift in a sea of institutional dysfunction.

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