The rumors has circulated for at least a week, and then Bill Kristol had to drop the news:
All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard. I want to express my gratitude to our readers and my admiration for my colleagues. We worked hard to put out a quality magazine, and we had a good time doing so. And we have much more to do. Onward!— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 14, 2018
There are a few problems, however, with this tweet (although there is plenty to find in Kristol's tweets that should lead us to question his sanity or his hold on reality.
The Weekly Standard used to be good. When they focused on domestic policy, they did a great job. When they focused on Republican wins in blue states, such as Larry Hogan's victory in Maryland, they wrote pretty decent work.
When it came to Trump, however, the derangement was too much to take. One contact told me that he had subscribed to the Standard for decades. But the Anti-Trump rants were too much for him. He ended up cancelling his subscription.
Why would anyone want to pay for a small-time conservative publication when they can get all kinds of anti-Trump animus from just about any other broadcast for free!
Yet one has to ask. What triggered Kristol to relentless attack President Trump, and to do so in the most puerile fashion? Just to show the level of immaturity:
It would be interesting to hear reactions from James Mattis and John Kelly. https://t.co/5NWAWeT4Ed— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 1, 2019
Kristol is a militant neocon. He has liberal tendencies on other issues, no doubt, but when it comes to military force and exposure, he wants the United States everywhere doing everything they can.
Donald Trump ran on the exact opposite platform. He wanted to pull our troops out of their committments in other countries. He recognized that the United States had been picking up the tab on protecting everyone else. To the best of my knowledge, Trump is the only President who has expresssly questioned why American forces are still stationed in ... Germany! Yes indeed, these more isolationist/realist leanings are a much-needed tonic in Washington DC.
Here's more from Kristol, just today!
The dog theme is standing out for Kristol.By the way, dogs don't get fired. Presidents get fired after one failed and embarrassing term. Unless they're impeached and convicted first. https://t.co/5NWAWeT4Ed— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 1, 2019
Then it gets really silly:
Dogs > Trump.— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 1, 2019
Imagine these tweets broadened into larger published broadsides in a monthly overpriced magazine?
We get the idea--and we get why the Weekly Standard went down the tubes really quickly. Another irony comes to mind: these anti-Trump neocons have marked President Trump for his lack of rhetorical flair. Then there's Kristol's manic tweets ...
Why did Kristol lose it over Donald Trump?
The political/foreign policy intelligentsia had been running Washington DC for decades, at least since George H.W. Bush came to power in 1988. The Big Government Globalists pretty much maintained their big foreign policy chokehold over Washington DC, and they did so ably no matter which party was in power.
Then came President Trump. A full-on populist outsider, he took over the Republican Party, and then took it back to its pro-American, pro-worker roots. The Neocon Cloud of intellectuals had their foreign policy fantasies put on hold, to say the least.
Now that President Trump has pledged to remove troops from Syria, and now that he has intimated that he is drawing down the United States extended forces in Afghanistan. Trump is moving on that draw-down promise now.
But Kristol has hated Trump for much longer than that. When the President announced his decision to break a pledge and keep troops in Afghanistan, Kristol still hated Trump. So, it's more than the foreign policy disputes.
The fact is that Trump is not "one of them." He is not like the political establishment elite. Trump betrays concern for the common man, especially Americans at home. Trump went to college, but he didn't go to the hoity-toity Ivy League Schools. His manners are boorish to some. He doesn't worry about what people think of him. Unlike much of the political class, he is not interested in what the press thinks of him, but rather he delights in torturing their lack of standards and ethics.
And speaking of standards ...
The Weekly Standard went from advocating a clear set of views to attacking one man. They gave up objectivity and started letting their subjective hatred for Trump peer through the pages and throughout the editorials. There is nothing wrong with reasoned, seasoned disagreement. With Kristol and his editorial coterie, however, they didn't simply disagree with President Trump's differing foreign policy or even domestic policy views. They found the man himself to be disagreeable. They chose to write, condemn, despise the man in such a disagreeable fashion, too.
Anti-Trumpism has become tedious, low-grade, unimportant, and no one wants to pay big money to read it. The Weekly Standard gave up its standards in the hopes that they could hoist President Trump on their own military standard. They ended up shivving themselves on their own pétard!
Or, as Kathy Griffin would say,"He Broke Me!"
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