The conservative movement in America today is an example of a people bereft of institutions — well, at least institutions deemed credible by the establishment opinion cartel.
Most Americans who identify as conservative share a slate of views: They want a secure border and a massive reduction of immigration, an end to foreign wars, and the halt of critical race theory and LGBT indoctrination in schools.
Such Americans believe there is sufficient evidence to prove the 2020 election was stolen; they feel the mainstream media exaggerates the threat of COVID-19 (which they hold to have been released by China ) in order to justify vaccine mandates and other freedom-restricting policies.
They are tired of the “racism,” “hate speech,” and “bigotry” being slung to attack anyone holding views once considered the norm in this country, and, as a result, are sick of political correctness.
Again, this description matches the great majority of “conservatives” in the United States. What it doesn’t match is the political and intellectual class that supposedly represents these millions of conservative Americans.
The disconnect between the ostensibly conservative party, the GOP, and the Republican base has been apparent for years. Voters gave Republicans Congress and the White House in order to repeal Obamacare, only to be sorely disappointed. They wanted a wall along the border but got none. They’re demanding that action be taken on election fraud, only to be told by their representatives that 2020 was “the most secure election in history.” They’re asking for protection against mask and vaccine mandates, only to have their cries for help fall on deaf ears.
And the “thought leaders” who for decades were held up as the standard-bearers of conservatism are just as disconnected. Big name publications such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, along with “intellectuals” such as George Will and Bill Kristol, have proven themselves just as violently opposed to the conservative agenda as Democrats.
In the case of the politicians, Americans have generally assumed that these Republicans are bought off. But what about the consevative intellectual elites? What’s their excuse for now standing hand-in-hand with the leftists who for so long they claimed to oppose?
It turns out the influencers and policy wonks were paid off, too.
In an exposé, Emerald Robinson described how National Review and other conservative think tanks and publications took money from Google, which the social media giant leveraged to get favorable coverage from the outlets.
Wrote Robinson:
There were rumors in the summer of 2018 that an audiotape was circulating that would send shockwaves through the think tanks of Washington and the conservative intellectual movement in particular. A top Google executive had been recorded telling his fellow employees that Google generously donated to conservative think tanks and magazines to dampen criticism of their anti-conservative bias. In essence, Google was buying off Conservatism Inc. and the GOP establishment to stay silent while Google monitored, harassed, and excluded Trump supporters.
The compromised organizations included the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Cato Institute, CPAC, the Weekly Standard, and National Review.
The audiotape in question eventually came into the hands of Wired, which ran a piece describing the contents of the tape. The article read:
The recording also offers candid insight into Google’s efforts to stop or water down two then-pending pieces of legislation, most notably a bill aimed at inhibiting sex trafficking that also removed some protections shielding internet companies from liability for the content on their platforms. “We’ve worked really hard behind the scenes for the last nine months to try to modify that bill, to slow it down,” said [Google Director of U.S. Policy] Kovacevich.
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and David French were among the establishment conservative figures who voiced outrage at the accusations. In the fallout from the controversy, however, both French and Goldberg stepped down from their long-held positions at the magazine.
National Review, however, has not relented from taking Google money. Robinson notes:
Meanwhile the funding of the magazine now relies even more heavily on Big Tech money: the back page of the June 1, 2021 issue was a full-page Facebook ad. Inside the same issue, in case you missed the point, there was a two-page ad from Google. The National Review didn’t bother trying to win back its old subscribers by becoming more conservative.
Of course, National Review founder William Buckley, Jr. was himself controlled opposition from the beginning. A member of the globalist-minded Council on Foreign Relations, he founded the magazine after working for the CIA, one of many former CIA operatives to become influential publishers.
The establishment has a long history of propping up “conservative” leaders whose only purpose is to ensure real conservatives never win — by convincing us it’s better to lose gracefully.
