Jonah Goldberg, Professional Loser?

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | 115 Comments

“We lost. We are losers. . . . Our operatives are incompetent and we live in a dream world.”
— Rob Long of National Review, in an interview with Joe Hagan of New York magazine during a Caribbean cruise in November

Has National Review, an institution founded in opposition to liberalism, become part of the problem it was intended to solve? This thought has occurred to me with increasing frequency in recent years.

Last January, immediately after Rick Santorum’s stunning upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, I attended a debate-night event in Manchester, New Hampshire hosted by National Review and was stunned at their cheerful acquiescence in The Inevitability of Mitt Romney. The primary campaign had just begun, and it took another three months for Romney to lock up the nomination, yet the NR crowd were ready and willing to applaud the coronation of the GOP Establishment choice.

This apparent unwillingness to fight tough battles against long odds disturbed me then, and at Christmas, I was further disturbed to read the New York magazine account of National Review‘s post-election Caribbean cruise, which I summarized thus:

[A]n article you should read in its entirety, if you want to be thoroughly depressed about the uselessness of our conservative elite: Wonks, pundits, pollsters and consultants on a free tropical vacation paid for by elderly magazine subscribers who, we presume, were grateful to be in the intellectual presence of the presumed heirs of Bill Buckley.

Unless you consider pre-emptive surrender to be a clever strategy, there is clearly something wrong when a political movement’s flagship institution shows such a willing acceptance of defeat.

The problem is not merely that National Review was aboard the Romney bandwagon early, nor that Romney was subsequently defeated, but rather that no one at National Review seems ashamed of themselves for their roles in helping to bring about this disaster. If they are leaders of the conservative movement, and if the conservative movement has failed — which it quite obviously has, or otherwise Obama would not be ruling by executive fiat — where is the accountability?

While I’m not saying that Rich Lowry must commit seppuku, why is there no admission by anyone at National Review that they have failed the movement they presumed to lead? A contemplation of these dark thoughts was inspired by Jonah Goldberg’s latest column:

[The conservative] movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal with little concern for the real political success that can come only with persuading the unconverted.
A conservative journalist or activist can now make a decent living while never once bothering to persuade a liberal. Telling people only what they want to hear has become a vocation. Worse, it’s possible to be a rank-and-file conservative without once being exposed to a good liberal argument.

OK, a few questions immediately come to mind:

Who are these “hucksters”? If they are merely “stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal” for their own selfish purposes, they must be eliminated. Name names, please.
How much of this “bothering to persuade a liberal” has Jonah Goldberg done? Where is this legion of converts to conservatism — the Goldbergites, as it were — to whom he may point as evidence of his successful persuasion?
To which “good liberal argument” do we need to be exposed? Because the very fact that an argument is liberal would seem to me sufficient evidence that it is wrong, and so I’m having trouble with the concept of arguments that are both liberal and “good.”

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding Jonah’s argument. Maybe I’m just a huckster “stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal.” However, Goldberg seems to be on more solid ground here:

To listen to many grassroots conservatives, the GOP establishment is a cabal of weak-kneed sellouts who regularly light votive candles to a poster of liberal Republican icon Nelson Rockefeller.
This is not only not true, it’s a destructive myth. . . .
It’s not that the GOP isn’t conservative enough, it’s that it isn’t tactically smart or persuasive enough to move the rest of the nation in a more conservative direction.

Because Goldberg is insufficiently explicit — he won’t name the “hucksters” — it is only by inference that we may deduce that this is a reference to the embarrassingly ineffective “Dump Boehner” movement that sought to unseat the Republican Speaker of the House. And if that’s the case, I agree: Boehner and the House GOP aren’t the problem. The real problem is the gross ineptitude of Senate Republicans, whose warped political judgment was manifested in the May 2009 decision of NRSC Chairman John Cornyn to back Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, and which has been further evidenced in their multiple blunders of the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. But I digress . . .

While Goldberg’s vague jab at “hucksters” is likely aimed at those who organized the “Dump Boehner” movement, perhaps it is also retroactive excuse-making for National Review‘s Romney bandwagon trip that so disturbed me last January in New Hampshire. The unwillingness of the NR crowd to consider Santorum as a viable alternative to Romney bugged me then, and it still bugs me now.

Look at the exit polls: In Ohio, Romney got only 81% of the conservative vote, while Obama got 88% of the liberal vote. Thirty-five percent of Ohio voters called themselves conservative, as compared to 22% who identified as liberal. If Romney had gotten a larger share of the conservative vote, he would have won Ohio. Now, here are the truly frightening numbers: Obama got 44% of the Catholic vote in Ohio, and 29% of the evangelical (or “born again”) Protestant vote.

Is Jonah Goldberg willing to admit what seems obvious to me, namely that nominating a moderate Mormon contributed to the weakening of GOP support among conservative Christians? Isn’t it possible that an adamantly pro-life Catholic would have done better?

Understand that this isn’t an argument about “purity.” It’s an argument about competence: How do you win in politics?

The fact that the Romney campaign failed to win a sufficient share of conservative voters cannot be blamed on “hucksters.”

Scapegoating and blame-shifting are not attributes of responsible leadership, and if National Review claims to be leading a movement, shouldn’t the recent electoral catastrophe cause them to reflect on their own role in this defeat?

Losing makes me angry. It enrages me. Defeat is a humiliation that insults my sense of personal honor. And what I’m hearing from Jonah Goldberg and his National Review colleagues does not convey a similar feeling of outrage. They have been beaten, embarrassed and publicly shamed, and yet they don’t seem even slightly bothered by their current status as ineffectual laughingstocks, objects of scorn and ridicule.

Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you . . . a loser.

The National Review Institute Summit will convene Jan. 25 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC., and while I deny any intention to stir up rage, paranoia and so forth, I sure hope some pissed-off conservatives will show up and ask tough questions of those who claim to be the rightful heirs of Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan.

Oh — did I mention Joe Scarborough will be there?

Category: Jonah Goldberg

Comments

115 Responses to “Jonah Goldberg, Professional Loser?”

Quartermaster
January 17th, 2013 @ 9:55 pm

If you put him in a missile silo in SD, maybe we could hoax the Spetnaz into raiding the place. JUst tell them there is plenty of Dyevs and and lottsa Wodka but only if they decently dispose, in Spetznaz style, of Jonah boy.

And no, Spetznaz style has nothing to do with that clownish Korean thing idiots have been going crazy over.

I just realized I may be getting old….
Quartermaster
January 17th, 2013 @ 9:57 pm

Goldberg is a huckster. He needs to quit looking in the mirror when he tries to describe other people. It just confuses him.
Jimmie
January 17th, 2013 @ 10:00 pm

Bob, “good” and “right” are not synonyms. There are good liberal arguments, in the sense that there are arguments from the left that are rational. We don’t agree with them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m completely sure Goldberg ran across several of them while researching the two books he’s written about liberalism and the arguments (mostly bad) that liberals make.

Seriously, we’re going to stake out the position that Jonah Goldberg is on the outside of conservatism? Seriously?
M. Thompson
January 17th, 2013 @ 10:11 pm

The big thing should be to sack the consultant class, and hire in some of the New Media boys.
John Cunningham
January 17th, 2013 @ 10:48 pm

It has become clear to me that the GOP leadership in Congress, the consultants, and types like the NR writers are the Washington Generals of this era. they plan to lose, so they can keep their cushy jobs in DC and keep the rural boobs from having any influence.
John LaRosa
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:43 am

I’ll be at the summit and I’m sure there will be some lively discussions. As one of the only MA-based consultants who said “HELL NO!” to Romney from the get go, I’m game for rejecting some false premises and ruffling a few feathers. I won’t go as far as you did, Stacy, because, while they were indeed squishy proponents of that “inevitability” nonsense, National Review didn’t lose this election for the GOP…the primary voters did by picking Mitt, and Mitt did by being Mitt. I simply don’t give them as much credit for “influence” as you do.
Thane_Eichenauer
January 18th, 2013 @ 1:47 am

Bypass the middleman. Have “Somybody with bucks” take his checkbook to lunch with Stacy McCain and Smitty. I am sure they could work out a plan.
1389AD
January 18th, 2013 @ 2:14 am

Jonah Goldberg and the National Review aren’t conservative at all, IMO. Like the national GOP, they are just another false-flag operation whose purpose is to suck the oxygen out of conservatism. Neither deserve our money or our support.

Moreover, I can recall the National Review trashing the Serbian people during the Clinton years. They are not to be trusted.
1389AD
January 18th, 2013 @ 2:15 am

They call him “Flipper”: Too many people supported Romney precisely BECAUSE they knew he could never be elected.
1389AD
January 18th, 2013 @ 2:16 am

Anybody who would vote for a baby-killer isn’t even a Christian, much less a Roman Catholic.
echosyst
January 18th, 2013 @ 2:51 am

You make some good points but Santorum would have lost worse than Romney. He pretended to be a Conservative better than Mitt but he is not by any stretch. Truth be told Mitt was the best of some lousy choices.

This notion that the “establishment” picked Romney is mostly nonsense too. He got more votes in the primaries and everybody knew he wasn’t ideal. Nobody was talked into voting for Romney because of NR or any other Conservative outlet.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:12 am

I agreed with pretty much nothing you wrote here.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:13 am

Serbs were behaving badly during the Clinton years. So that’s understandable. But yeah, NR is so squishy they make noise when they walk.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:17 am

I had to do a quick visual inspection. Yep, still corporeal.

I find myself in 100% agreement with Jaynie59 here.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:21 am

Mormonism? I thought it was the long-simmering debate over longbows versus crossbows.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:24 am

Well, point of order, that was nearly all before the convention. After the convention, most of us shut up about that and so did he.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:25 am

Roamin’ Catholics?
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:34 am

Interesting timing of this article Stacy. I had seen the “Grow up” BS from Goldberg posted at some other site (Townhall, maybe? I forget). So just to see if NR had all jumped on the squish-wagon, I took a quick perusal of NRO.

My first impression was “Gaaaaaaa!”

Followed by “Needs more Steyn!”

Followed by “Gaaaaaah!”

And that was just the front page. When I clicked to an article by some bozo reviewing “Frontrunners for 2016” I wanted to reach through the screen and smack somebody.

Of course, I feel the same about Hot Air, Powerline, and Althouse, too, but I’ve been too nice to write it here. Until today. Now I’ll shut up about it.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:39 am

Exactly. He was a surprisingly good candidate. He just wasn’t the right guy. That sounds contradictory, but if the right guy had run exactly the same, hard-hitting, well-organized events, managed press kind of campaign Romney ran, Obama would have been stomped to the curb.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 5:43 am

“…you need to go full Stalin on Goldberg’s ass…”

It’s the Lenin-like goatee, isn’t it? I bet he gets that all the time.
Jaynie59
January 18th, 2013 @ 6:09 am

I still can’t believe he did it. Thank goodness Alan Dershowitz stuck up for her. And I can’t stand Alan Dershowitz. But I have more respect for him now than I do for Jonah Goldberg.
Parker
January 18th, 2013 @ 7:50 am

I like a lot of Goldberg’s stuff – but I think he was a complete punk when it came to John Derbyshire’s essay on race relations (at another web site).
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January 18th, 2013 @ 8:12 am

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1389AD
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:15 am

No, the Serbs were NOT behaving badly during the Clinton years, or before. It was all Clinton administration propaganda to make an excuse for a war to appease the Saudis by helping them to set up a Wahhabi stronghold in the Balkans.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:36 am

I never wrote that Mr. Goldberg was not a conservative. He most certainly is, but he has willfully blinded himself [as have many over at NRO] to the illegitimacy of all Leftist ideas.

No argument can be classified as rational that is based on fantastical premises developed in the sterile laboratories of the mind, as all Leftist thought has been.

Now, speaking of the capital ‘L’ Libertarians [ie: those who are Ideologues], they can make rational arguments because, though they, too, are guilty of spending too much time in the lab – the premises they put in their petri dishes come from Right Reason, which grows outside of laboratories in the Real World.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:40 am

No…you don’t. The man is a conservative. He’s just not utilizing his Right Reason in a number of matters.

Are we imposing some kind of Test on conservatives now? That is not very conservative. Russell Kirk:

…For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/ten-conservative-principles/
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:42 am

No analogy. Just a phrase that’s entered our slang.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:44 am

That’s a long-simmering internal conservative debate [BTW: I’m with the Plantagenets on this one].
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:54 am

If NR is to be saved, it must move out of New York and Washington. Nothing, I think, need more be said about why the latter makes sense. As to the former: there’s a special breed of conservative called ‘The New York Conservative’ that tends to be Hamiltonian in it’s thinking. The New York Post while clearly a conservative newspaper, is the perfect example of this. Read their editorials and you’ll see.
Eric Ashley
January 18th, 2013 @ 9:34 am

Bzzzz. As one of the conservatives who fought the Mitt to the line, no, we’re not the problem. The problem is the Establishment trying to stuff a liberal down the throat of a conservative party.
Klejdys
January 18th, 2013 @ 9:51 am

I disagree, unless you can pull some concrete data showing that voters across large parts of the region were influenced by it. A Romney admin wouldn’t do much, but we surely wouldn’t be talking about gun control executive orders (as empty as they are) right now.
John LaRosa
January 18th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

No. That’s Rich Lowrie. Different spelling and person.
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January 18th, 2013 @ 10:52 am

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daisy
January 18th, 2013 @ 11:29 am

I didn’t want to vote for a Mormon but I held my nose and did so. Most of my fellow Catholics and none of the Evangelicals I’ve met agreed with me.
Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 11:56 am

Alas, that misses the point. It was part of the historical record, and conservatives may have been quiet about it, but they didn’t forget. Many did not go to booth because of it. Given teh choice you’ll have to go a long way to show them why they should have.
Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:02 pm

Bob, his behavior in that regard is why I classify him as a faux conservative. I think there are reasonable litmus tests as to whether an individual is conservative or not. The ability to recognize leftism as illegitimate is one such test. Jonah fails miserably in that regard. There is also the maturity test in his case he fails. That leads to problems like teh above, but it manifests in his preening actions as well. I find him distasteful in many regards, but his willing blindness towards leftism’s legitimacy is the worst factor in his disfavor.
Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:04 pm

The GOP *is not* a conservative party. It never has been. It congealed around a core of Whigs who stood for big government and crony capitalism. It has never changed from its founding, and i seriously doubt it ever will.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:10 pm

I’m still not buying the “a bunch of conservatives stayed home” stuff. First, anyone who CHOSE to stay home? Not a conservative. They’d better not try to pass as conservative around me. I’ll let everyone know better.

Second, anyone else who chose to stay home, also not conservative. Probably more libertarian. I don’t think they threw the election to Obama. Not enough of them to do so.

(BTW, I’m sure some evangelicals stayed home, but they aren’t all conservative any more, either. A lot of big, mega churches are headed leftward, more and more these days.)

Third, anyone staying home because #Mormon? Also not a conservative (because of Article VI).

And finally, we had reports of record Republican turnout all day long.

So I call it for Romney, minus the necessary fraud to throw it to Obama without triggering A) outrage, B) defiance of the lawsuit settlement that prevents Republicans from addressing vote fraud.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:15 pm

I’m sticking with my trusty, open carry halberd.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:24 pm

Yes. Every once in a while I’ll see one linked and it’s almost like reading A l t h o u s e.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:40 pm

Sorry. Not buying it. You don’t have war crime tribunals in the Hague to prop up Bill Clinton. Not in the nineties.

Nowdays? Sure, they’d lie about anything to keep Obama’s halo on. But the photographic evidence, the testimonies, and the reporting from all news media present an incredibly difficult-to-deny case that the Serbs fucked up, big time.

Were the Serbs fucked over, earlier? Sure. But they only compounded the error by behaving like medieval conscripts.

The more disgusting behavior over here, other than Clinton’s, by the way, was that of feminists, who never seem to manage to give a $hit what happens to women in foreign countries.
K-Bob
January 18th, 2013 @ 12:41 pm

Dershowitz is one of the few liberals I can listen to without blood shooting from my eyes.
The Other Jeff S.
January 18th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

Could not agree more.
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Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 7:37 pm

I suppose if you say it enough Bob, you might believe it. I know actual conservatives that stayed home because there was no real choice. I saw it in ’92 when it was between Bush I and Slick Willie. If you want to define conservative in that manner you are welcome to it. Just keep believing your delusions and being consistent. I’ll stay out here in the real world where conservative have a very hard time pulling a lever when there is as little difference in philosophybeween Zer0 and Mittens as demonstrated by Mittens’ behavior as MssGov.

And please save me the wounded protestation about how he had a libtard General Assembly. He signed the bill they produced when he could have vetoed bill after bill.

Your definition is simply a crotchety personal definition that won’t hold water, or even hot air.
Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 7:39 pm

Given Mittens’ behavior as MassGOv, we don’t have the slightest idea how he would behave on the Federal level. I’d be forced to say that he would behave much like he did as MassGov. His record there was pretty sorry.
Quartermaster
January 18th, 2013 @ 7:43 pm

No one here is saying NR lost the election. They are saying NR isn’t much on the conservative scene anymore because it has gone moderate. People like Goldberg and Lowry are simply symptoms of the much deeper problem that Buckley bequeathed to teh world by his death.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:15 pm

None of those reasons disqualify him, in my opinion, from being a conservative. It’s a way of life, as Russell Kirk has stated.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:25 pm

I don’t think they’ve ‘gone moderate’. They’re still conservative, but either (1) have gone Establishment or (2) have willfully blinded themselves to the Leftist danger.

Regarding (2): Many conservatives think the Left is worthy of being allowed in polite society, that they are like opponents of the past: differing with us, but, ultimately, believing that America is a grand country [see: Democrat Republicans vs. the Whigs]. However, the Left In America are the descendants of the Communists and Nihilists of Europe. They are a foreign, alien group that despises everything The United States stands for. These blinded conservatives merely refuse to acknowledge the alien-ness of the Left.
Bob Belvedere
January 18th, 2013 @ 8:28 pm

It is the only newspaper I subscribe to because, on balance, it’s the best [The WSJ would be, but it’s news side has been Leftist for quite some time, whereas the NYP’s is to the Right].