It is a mystery to me why so many politicians and pundits are suddenly committing career and party suicide. I suppose it’s because there has been a failure to recognize that they’ve been living in and promoting a fantasy world. In the meantime, the president has called their bluff, exposed the cant, and forced them into chaos and ruinous policies.

The failure of the Weekly Standard and the decline of the National Review have exposed the not-conservative Trump haters as unpragmatic, unrealistic snobs. They are now shaking the begging cup to keep from having to earn an honest living. In the face of the president’s rising popularity among voters and the economic and diplomatic successes of this administration, they continue to believe that on the right there are readers and donors who will keep them at it.

As Karl Notturno at the Daily Caller opines:

Never-Trumpism is easy. Read a few conservative philosophers. Hold to a few core principles, no matter what. And express outrage at most of what Trump says. Adoration from the media and liberal friends will follow.

But Never-Trumpism is also unthinking. It fails to account for the real world. That’s why so many Never-Trumpers ended up being so wrong about the 2016 election. And that’s why they continue to stumble about in the dark and continue to make absolute fools of themselves, egged on by liberal pundits who revel that they can say, “I must be open-minded; I have conservative friends.”

Never-Trumpers, with their unchanging views, can’t understand why the world does not agree with them and thus conclude that the world has gone mad. And this leads them to indulge in the feel-good drug of believing that they are the last intelligent and sane people in the country. Although they aren’t exactly clear on who died and left them in charge of the conservative intellectual tradition, they are adamant that they are the rightful heir.

The Weekly Standard eventually failed due to irrelevance. The Bulwark, established immediately to replace the aforementioned, will likely continue this tradition of irrelevance, only occasionally rising into the spotlight when some liberal television show needs a token conservative who has been beaten into submission.

It’s sad to see these minds, which have so much potential, wasting away in a fantasy land. Stuck on the drug of arrogant, uncritical pseudo-intellectualism.

Fat chance. The man they detest is carrying out policies they so often claimed to support, and the voters -- most of whom they look down on -- approve.

About 3-in-4 American voters favor a populist-nationalist “America First” legal immigration, trade, and foreign policy platform from candidates running for office that prioritizes protecting the way of life and economic security of United States citizens above all else.

The latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds near unanimous support for populist-nationalist candidates among Republicans, conservatives, and President Trump supporters, as well as a majority of support from all voters.

The findings are the latest evidence that the open borders, globalization, and endless wars ideology of former administrations -- such as President George W. Bush’s -- has very little support with the American electorate.

The voters hold these views, despite the media’s nonstop lying. Voters are just not as stupid as the media thinks we are.

And after the last few weeks’ Jussie Smollett and Covington Catholic fiascos, more is about to come. The Mueller report -- I know we keep thinking it’s just around the corner -- will prove to be another face plant for them. You don’t actually need to see the report to know this. To quote Glenn Greenwald’s tweet: "[A]fter almost two years of the Mueller investigation, the number of Americans thus far indicted for criminally conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election is zero. We spend remarkably little time asking why this is."

Don Surber has the answer to Greenwald’s question: 

Counterintelligence Investigation is a cover-up to hide Obama's illegal spying on the Trump campaign using -- abusing -- our national security apparatus.

Bungling Bob Mueller and the media have spent two years trying to overturn the 2016 election. They cannot.

But an honest investigation would focus on Obama, Clapper, Brennan and Susan the Unmasker Rice.

Doubtless aware that the two-year political fiasco was coming to a disappointing end, Elijah Cummings and Adam Schiff, called convicted perjurer Michael Cohen to testify before the House Oversight Committee represented by Clinton spinner Lanny Davis.  

Among the highlights are these, as Sharyl Attkisson reports:

Final nails in the coffins

Nail 1 -- The Steele dossier: Cohen said, unequivocally, that he’s never visited Prague. That’s contrary to the now-discredited opposition research “dossier” the FBI presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain secret wiretaps.

Nail 2 -- BuzzFeed’s “bombshell”: Cohen said Trump never directed him to lie to investigators about the timing of a Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 campaign. That discredited the BuzzFeed “bombshell” and multiple anonymous sources that claimed Cohen had told special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump ordered Cohen to lie. Mueller also previously disputed the same report. (Note: While Cohen denied the BuzzFeed allegations that Trump had directed him to lie, Cohen stated that he did lie on Trump’s behalf, because he assumed Trump meant for him to do so.) [snip] Worst luck Cohen estimated that he secretly recorded people 100 times — but couldn’t cite any recordings proving claims against Trump.

While this farcical Congressional investigation led by the very man who lied when he denied directing the IRS to target tea party groups was going on, his party was splitting with contentious recriminations as the few remaining “moderates” fought back against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ threat to mount primary challenges against them.

Triggering the blowup was Wednesday’s votes on a bill to expand federal background checks for gun purchases. Twenty-six moderate Democrats joined Republicans in amending the legislation, adding a provision requiring that ICE be notified if an illegal immigrant seeks to purchase a gun. 

That infuriated liberals who have railed against ICE’s role in conducting mass deportations and embarrassed Democratic leaders who couldn’t keep their members in line on a high-profile bill. 

The Democratic infighting reflects a fractured caucus and diverse freshman class, with dozens of moderates elected in districts that President Trump won in 2016 at odds with hard-charging liberals. The split has exposed divisions among Pelosi and her top lieutenants, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), over the party strategy to keep its newfound majority.

When the Democrats held the White House, the Senate, and the House they did not vote to restrict gun ownership. Why? Because too many of them knew it would end their time in office. Only nincompoops could imagine such measures would pass muster with a party now less powerful.

In any event, kudos to the press and the Cortez wing for leading the party down a suicidal path, a path so clear even some in the media are alarmed about the far-left tilt of the ever-expanding kick line of Democratic would-be presidential nominees. 

Others, stalwart supporters of the party, are happy in their suicidal fantasy of the prospects for an even more leftist party.

Beyond the media, there is an entire theory from the academy and coffee houses of Cambridge, Berkeley, and Madison to the effect that Democrats have been too far to the right for a long long time. Maybe my favorite example of leftists determined to brew up the Kool Aid for the 2020 campaign comes from The New Republic, a former magazine, where Alex Sheppard writes of “The Overdue Death of Democratic ‘Pragmatism.'” [snip]

…This paragraph strikes me as especially wacko:

The party’s rightward drift began in the mid-1970s, when the so-called “Watergate Babies” began to replace New Deal Democrats, but proceeded in earnest in the 1980s due to Ronald Reagan’s two landslide victories. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed in the wake of Walter Mondale’s defeat in 1984, pushed Democrats to embrace balanced budgets, welfare reform, and other centrist policies. The argument was that the Democratic Party must meet American voters where they were. [snip]

First of all, losing 44 states in 1980 and then 49 states in 1984 does have a way of concentrating the mind about how to win an election, and high-octane leftism didn’t seem like the way.

…this sentence that really jumps out: “The party’s rightward drift began in the mid-1970s, when the so-called “Watergate Babies” began to replace New Deal Democrats...”

Sheppard has it exactly backwards. The so-called “Watergate babies” of 1974 marked the beginning of a major step change to the left for the Democratic Party…

I hope (and expect) that liberals will continue to indulge their revisionist history and slouch toward a suicidal campaign, even as I stock up on popcorn.

Me too. Pass the popcorn.