Mona Charen, the conservative columnist who called out Republicans who back accused sexual harassers like President Donald Trump and Roy Moore at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, said that the experience was an encouraging one.
Charen faced audible boos and jeers from the crowd at CPAC on Saturday when she criticized Trump and Moore, but she says she’s also seen an outpouring of support since speaking up about the way GOP leaders have treated sexual misconduct among prominent candidates.
“There are fewer and fewer people who are speaking up. Even I was getting depressed and demoralized,” she said Monday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “But since I said what I did, there’s been such an outpouring of support that I feel more than ever that people who are — who adhere to basic principles of dignity and integrity and belief that we should stand up for honesty, there are a lot of them out there, and they just need a little encouragement, I think.”
After she left the CPAC stage, she was approached by security guard and escorted out of the venue, Charen told “Morning Joe.” However, she said that on her way out, she did see some CPAC attendees give her “the thumbs up.”
Charen lamented the general embrace of Trump in the Republican party.
“There’s a tone of sort of sophomoric clownishness that’s creeped into conservatism now,” she said. “There’s this mood of trolling the opposition, that if you can create liberal tears, then anything goes.”
She noted that CPAC invited the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right political party.
“What was the point of inviting her? It was again to create a response, to jab a needle in the eye of liberals. They think it’s a game; it’s not. It’s not a game,” Charen said.
Uh, Mona, Glad you can see it now (something about scales falling from your eyes - perhaps?) but this description fits what has been going on at Fox and Friends, on Hannity (and on the defunct O Rielly Factor) for years.
I remember an event for John McCain in his '08 campaign in which given a scenario of a war vet, losing insurance, was met with jeering from the audience of “let him die”! This isn’t new. It is just now straight at the heart, rather than the fringe of the party.
“There’s a tone of sort of sophomoric clownishness that’s creeped into
conservatism now,” she said. “There’s this mood of trolling the
opposition, that if you can create liberal tears than anything goes.”
If a big, loud, brassy and discordant clown car can be considered a tone, then yeah. Seriously, she has just described her rationale for leaving the Republican party. It is not a political entity anymore.
“It was again to create a response, to jab a needle in the eye of liberals.”
If that is all they are there for, then governance is no longer a mission for the party. Leave it, jump ship and find something that makes sense and is actually productive.
It is good that she is setting some sort of bar.
It is sad that the bar is set so low.
It is sadder that so many Republicans fail to clear it.
Governance hasn’t been an issue for the republicans since Eisenhower.
I think it actually was during a Republican candidates debate. Five Republicans on stage not a single one reacted to the “let him die” shout - not one.