Desperation. Update to this story.
Via The Federalist:
In his latest attempt to be politically relevant and antagonize the president, Bill Kristol is threatening to form a committee to oppose Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020. Kristol, editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, told the New York Times that he has begun “informal conversations about creating a ‘Committee Not to Renominate the President.’”
In the August 5 article, “Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow,” the NeverTrumper said “we need to take one shot at liberating the Republican Party from Trump, and conservatism from Trumpism.” The article suggests Republicans such as John Kasich, Tom Cotton, and even Vice President Mike Pence are preparing to challenge Trump in a presidential primary.
The article got a lot of attention over the weekend, but it’s anybody’s guess what an informal conversation means in Kristolworld. It’s unlikely this insulated scold deigned to travel anywhere outside of New York City or Washington DC to engage in such conversations with regular folks. It could mean he had a rosé-fueled chat with Evan McMullin, whom Kristol backed for president in 2016. Or perhaps it was dull dinner-party banter with fellow anti-Trumpers where they took turns bragging about all the likes on their latest predatory tweets.
Please, I’m DesperateKristol followed up the NYT article with a gem of an idea that conservatives should rebrand themselves as liberals: “Seriously. We’re for liberal democracy, liberal world order, liberal economy, liberal education.” Liberal is the new conservative? Mmmkay. This guy probably couldn’t get hired to run a low-level municipal race, let alone figure out how to take out a sitting president.
Then again, Trump needn’t worry about Kristol’s latest threat because most of his previous efforts to form groups and committees have failed. For example, he announced a “New Center” last November and nothing seems to have materialized outside of an initial article and scant news coverage of it.
But in perhaps Kristol’s shadiest move, he is trying to pin the NYT article on Pence although it is highly likely the story idea came from Kristol himself. The two reporters, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, wrote a very similar piece in March 2016 about efforts to derail Trump; Kristol was cited then as having “circulated a memo to a small number of conservative allies detailing the process by which an independent candidate could get on general-election ballots across the country.” The week before the article was published, Burns sub-tweeted Kristol and said “Today is the Super Bowl of Bill Kristol Twitter.” Kristol also helped promote Burns’ book last year about a dysfunctional Trump campaign.