-By Warner Todd Huston
On Friday afternoon at 4:43 PM I Tweeted what to me was just a *funny* Tweet about Megyn Kelly, Donald Trump and the first 2016 GOP debates. But nearly 24 hours later it is still getting tweets, re-tweets, messages, shares, and favorites and it doesn’t seem to be slowing at all. Despite that I thought it was just a throw away Tweet, it has revealed a deep cynicism about the media (including Fox News) and a frustration with the Republican Party that has proven to be a major problem that I think will doom any Republican candidate in 2016.
So, on Friday evening I threw out this Tweet about Megyn Kelly’s slap at Donald Trump in the debates on Thursday…
Hy, America: Let me introduce Megyn "don't you dare treat women as sex objects" Kelly. Give it up for her, folks… pic.twitter.com/Jguz7KNefe
— Warner Todd Huston (@warnerthuston) August 7, 2015
Now, let me get my own intentions explained. To me, I just thought this was an amusing statement of irony. I often post funny quips or photo memes just to get a rise out of people and to see what sort of impact I can make. To me this was just a funny juxtaposition. While Megyn was attacking Trump for being sexist, here she was objectifying herself in these photos. It was just a quick comment on Kelly wanting to have it both ways.
I have nothing against Kelly. She seems to do well enough on her show and her ratings are very good (note I don’t much watch TV news so I have never seen a full episode of her show). It does appear from the clips I’ve seen that she is a tough interviewer. I don’t want her fired and I see no reason to have her kicked off future GOP debate programs–as many do (see this petition demanding Kelly be fired from future debates).
On another note, Kelly was slamming Trump for a comment about a woman being “on your knees.” But it turns out that the woman Trump said that to is defending Trump saying she was not offended and that they were just trying to be “funny” with each other. So, Kelly made a big deal of nothing in this one case.
Now, I also must say that I am not a supporter of Donald Trump for the presidency. In my opinion he has no core principles. His businessman-like tendency to do “whatever works” is not the best idea for leading a country that is based on a particular ideology, a Constitution, and a Judeo-Christian ethos. His penchant to try anything that works is dangerous in the White House and is an unguided philosophy that does not work for a national leader.
However, I fully admit–and appreciate–Trump’s ability to tap into a deeper cynicism and mistrust of the political class. It is a mistrust and frustration I share. I also feel that the Republican Party is a failed party, one that left its own principles in the dust years ago, one that hates half its own constituents, and one that seem to see no reason to oppose the Democrats. And I will say right here and now that if these morons put liberal Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton, not only will Jeb lose to Hillary, but the GOP will cease to be a national party afterward. Half the nails in that coffin were pounded in when they picked liberal Mitt Romney in 2012. The rest will be pounded in by another stinking Bush in 2016.
Let’s face it. Donald Trump is far and away the leader of all GOP nominees not because he has the right philosophy, the right policies, and the right prescriptions for the country. He is leading because he has tapped into this anti-establishment nerve. Donald Trump has excited people less for what HE is doing and more for what the Republican Party is not doing, and that is refusing to recognize that it is failing to serve the American people and refusing to fight for conservatism.
Anyway, that all being said, the whole point about this Tweet I sent Friday is that it reveals this deep frustration. 90 percent of the re-tweets and messages about the Tweet that I got with this thing agree 100% with what the Twitter users who saw it *think* I meant by it. Many more are showing that they are all fired up by Donald Trump.
A small few took me to task for slut shaming Megyn Kelly, of course. Their point is certainly valid, too. I see no reason for Kelly to be ashamed of her photos. Oh, and these photos are real, by the way, not photoshopped like some few complainers Tweeted. They are from a GQ photo shoot from around 2010.
Anyway, the whole point, here, is that millions of Americans who vote center right are sick and tired of the Republican Party. They are tired of the lies, tired of the failures, tired of the timidity, tired of the empty words, they are just tired of feeling as though the GOP claims to represent the center right coalition but in practice bends over for the far left in the halls of Congress.
The GOP never fights. Every fight is “not the right time,” and after the party establishment caves in to the far left, anti-American Democrats, the GOP then swears that they will fight hard on the “next” issue because *that* one will be the right issue to fight for. Only that time never arrives.
The people are tired of the show votes that mean nothing. Tired of the bluster that withers in the face of liberal opposition, sick of a GOP that cares more about what The New York Times thinks than what Joe Six Pack thinks, the voters are simply done with the liberal, weak sisters of the GOP establishment that have proven to be liberals in Reagan’s clothing.
Center right voters can’t name a single issue that the Republican Party reliably stands for. While a whole raft of issues can be assigned to the Democrats, no one feels that the GOP stands for anything in particular, expect, perhaps, for some vague notion that they are “for the rich.”
Republican voters simply do not feel that they have two parties. They feel that they have the extremist, far left Democrats, and that the GOP is just another wing of that far left party. There just doesn’t seem to be any reason at all to vote GOP.
A vote for Democrats is certainly a vote to send the USA hurtling down the path of self-destructive socialism. But most feel that a vote for the GOP is a vote for walking instead of running down that same path.
The Tweet I sent–one that to me was just a quick, throw away quip–has truly revealed a schism in the center right that the GOP had better fully understand and take measures to deal with or it will absolutely lead to the end of the Grand Old Party.