The Resistance Has Gained Some Very Strange Bedfellows

"Politics makes strange bedfellows." -- Charles Dudley Warner


Individual-1 continues to lose friends. No, I don't mean all the indictments. I mean defectors. The Grand Old Party is losing people!

Thom Glick

Back during the campaign and early days of the administration, plenty of conservatives left the party and distanced themselves from the emperor with no clothes.

George Will, the well-known columnist and conservative mouthpiece of several media outlets, not only didn't support TЯUMP but fled from the Republican party altogether early on, and recently urged folks to vote against the Republican party in the midterms. Another conservative writer, Max Boot, also left the party. And so did Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

Bush 41 was famously vocal about his vote for Hillary in 2016.

And there ware lesser-known, non-politically powered, folks who also fled, like Tom Nichols.

Joe Scarborough of FAUX News left the GOP, while his colleague Shep Smith has been a frequent critic of the MAGA-lomanic, lashing out frequently. Shep was one of the earliest FAUX-sters to call out the crap:





There were a whole lotta conservatives who opposed the campaign.

(As a side note, the right's answer to this trend was the recent #WalkAway campaign, bot-driven and spearheaded by a millennial no-name. The right was eager to embrace his story, but the campaign kind of sputtered. In my search, I  saw mostly the rightest of right-wing media covering it. This WaPo article explained it.)

But these days, even the shriekiest Trumpeters are slowly backing away. Who are we kidding? The back-pedaling is so furious that there's red skid marks all over the nation.

Just look at this. Woke Bill Kristol:

Woke Bill Kristol is perhaps one of the most jarring aspects of Trump’s tenure in office. https://t.co/p4iNk8pIho

— We're Stronger Together (@CharlieReece) August 5, 2018

Kristol is organizing a campaign to find a Republican candidate that can beat 45.


Now even the most stauch of FAUX news cheerleaders have somehow seen the light and are speaking out. Recently, Geraldo Rivera had an emotional plea about the migrants being tear-gassed at the border.

It’s about time one of the Fox News mouth pieces became so rattled that they broke the narrative on air. Never would have guessed it would be Geraldo. pic.twitter.com/0yicl0sJmZ

— Timothy Michael Jennings (@TheTimJennings) November 27, 2018

And what?! Even Tucker Carlson, another FAUX news comrade, turned on his messiah. The snide, sarcastic windbag recently gave an interview to Swiss magazine Die Weitwoche. He lamented 45's lack of ability to realize his promises, and incredibly said, "I don't think he's capable. I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the system." (As an aside, I found him much more reasonable in written words. The few times I've seen him on TV I've wanted to barf.)


And just this week. This.

Ammon freaking Bundy?! Remember him? He and his cronies occupied a bird refuge in Oregon and kept the Feds at bay for a month (one man was killed). And before that, his militia group occupied some grazing land in Nevada. Now, the infamous leader of the militia movement quit the movement and came out in solidarity with the migrant caravan! Though it's in his nature to just plain hate the federal government (though the group identifies with the far-right of American politics), he waxed poetic about the migrants when he said in his interview with BuzzFeed News,  “To group them all up like, frankly, our president has done — you know, trying to speak respectfully — but he has basically called them all criminals and said they’re not coming in here. What about individuals, those who have come for reasons of need for their families, you know, the fathers and mothers and children that come here and were willing to go through the process to apply for asylum so they can come into this country and benefit from not having to be oppressed continually?” He continued, "I believe President Trump, the best way I could explain it, is that he's a nationalist, and a nationalist in my view makes the decision that best benefits the nation, not the individual. That is not freedom, and that is not what America was built upon."

<Little Sister Resister picks her jaw off the floor>

I count all of these defections in my "Positives" file. The Resistance will take all comers. If these far-right folks have any inkling of soul, all is not lost. So keep talking to your conservative friends and family. Evoke national interests and the founding fathers in your discussions. Use moral framing when you talk to them. Keep working on them. The Resistance is winning.