Dec 01 2009
‘True’ Conservatives Turning Reagan’s Big Tent Into A Pup Tent
It is not a good day for conservatives when folks like Charles Johnson leave the movement in such obvious disgust
I was asked what went wrong by one of my more ‘pure’ conservative readers (he loves to dig at this independent conservative centrist). What went wrong is the ‘true conservatives’ and their vitriol. Charles Johnson is very sharp and was an asset to ‘the right’. He is I think, on balance, a good person. What people should be asking themselves is how did a good person become so filled with anger.
Johnson clearly has lost his tolerance – which happens when you are around a bunch of intolerant people too long. As he disagreed on some subjects, the vitriol he received just poisoned his view of conservatives. His angry departure is a reflection of what he’s been experiencing. The intolerant folks burned out his tolerance. I have experienced it myself, I just have an easier time dismissing the jabs.
What Johnson forgot is there are a more centrist conservatives than ‘true’ conservatives. When he departed ‘the right’ he sadly turned his back on a lot of good people (Inhofe comes to mind). That is his problem and his mistake. It just makes this situation all the worse.
I agree with Johnson on many subjects. The big exceptions are Palin and AGW I guess. But I don’t throw people under the bus because I disagree with them. And I don’t try to tear them down personally (that’s intolerance in spades). The right is now justifying the snub by throwing more jabs at Johnson. Folks need to learn when to stop digging.
I also don’t group people and spread the sins and failures of a few across them all. It is why I remain a conservative and challenge the drama queens who call themselves ‘true conservatives’. I have not given up on Reagan’s big tent yet.
The fact CJ is both bitter and a lost cause is a reflection on the toxic characters in the far right. It is a sad day for ‘the right’ when you chase someone like Johnson out of the big tent. If this continues all the right will be is a bunch of purists in pup tent.
43 Responses to “‘True’ Conservatives Turning Reagan’s Big Tent Into A Pup Tent”
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I stopped reading his stuff over a year ago.
You know his stupid blog? He considered it such a privilege to register
that he only opened the gate for a few minutes at a time
assuming all his acolytes would hang about panting.
What an ego!
But over at atlasshrugs Pamela Geller has a whole bunch of
great photos of Sarah Palin supporters at a book signing.
I’m voting for Palin – Petreaus in 12, (hope so)
Sorry, AJ, Charles Johnson went off the deep end about a year ago.
He used to have a good site…but over the last 12 months, he’s degenerated into attacking anyone who does not agree with him 100%.
Which is neither realistic nor the basis of rational discussion. Merely sad.
Charles Johnson was never in “the movement”. He called himself a “9/11 conservative”.
He is a nut and I say good riddance. It is a GOOD day when Johnson leaves the movement. I have little use for people who ban others for simply disagreeing with them. I have disagreed with some positions on this blog over the years but that is healthy. It is good for people to see multiple perspectives and for people to be able to use persuasion to explain their side of the issue. And I have agreed with CJ over the years on some issues (creationism in the schools, is one example). But AJ, you have never gone back to past posts and change them to make them say different things now than you had at the time. Johnson does that. I have no respect for someone without integrity and I don’t believe Johnson has any.
Frankly, after trying to get an account on LGF for years, I really didn’t want to be associated with all the “anti-Creationism” stuff that seemed to fill about a 1/3 of his posts (I’m neutral on that stuff because neither side can make a coherent argument and probably never will .. it all turns into a philosophical argument that is a total waste of my time).
Yep — Charles Johnson never was conservative or “right wing”.
Here’s proof in his own words:
http://tinyurl.com/yzh4wyj
CJ strikes me not as someone who has any respect for the big tent prospect in the first place, but as someone who delights in throwing wrenches into it. Or … releasing a jarful of mosquitos into it.
His constant berating of anyone who might profess belief that we were created by God is not only rude, it’s unnecessarily divisive. He may as well make the leap and say anyone who believes in God is also chasing myths and fairy tales. The two positions pretty much fit hand and glove.
What he doesn’t seem to realize or respect is that he is insulting people’s religious beliefs that have been instilled from childhood, or come about as a result of tragic loss, failure, or deep introspection. Frankly, if I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t want him in my party either.
And then of course his eagerness to label people as racist on the basis of any possible tenuous tie or relationship. He even tried to explicitly label Rush Limbaugh as racist, someone I know from 20 years listening is anything but.
I guess the latest device he’s going to use to supposedly discredit those on the right is AGW. Anyone who believes in what he calls a “nontroversy”, that AGW is largely a politically motivated hoax, is a flat-Earth theory believing anti-science mouth-breather.
But it’s not so much his positions that bother me, it’s the vindictive way HE treats those who might disagree with him. He’s in a category separate from Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. His category is quite simply …… Jerk.
My problem with categorizing far right wing is that I don’t see much vitriolic comments from the. What I see is that they end up being correct after all.
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Johnson lost me over the HATE and virtiol spewed by him against Ron Paul.
You may not like all of Ron Paul’s positions, but he is still one of(if not the) best conservatives in the house.
Johnson was spewing out right hate against the guy…just like he did palin and beck and others.
That guy is a whackjob and anyone should be ashamed at going to that site ever again.
Respectfully, I’ll have to disagree with you about Charles Johnson, AJ. From what I’ve seen over the last year or so, Charles Johnson was always the archetypical tactless-geek jerk.
And I don’t think it’s just his wild disgust with the worst people on our side of the aisle, either. He apparently went out of his way to find the most appalling signs in the 9/11 DC Tea Party (many of which weren’t really all that horrid) and present them as a smear on all the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who showed up. Now maybe Johnson saw the Tea Parties as just a rightwing thing, but I always thought the Tea Parties were about people from BOTH sides of the political aisle appalled and frightened and angered by the federal government’s mad rush to seize control of our lives in the months since Obama was inaugurated. The whole point of the Tea Parties was that it was a reaction by ordinary people, people who made their own protest signs out of artboard and magic markers and then paid their own way to come to DC from all over the country, and not just some fascist or nativist or Dominionist cabal that saw a chance to make trouble.
My own less-than-expert opinion on Charles Johnson is that his own thin-skinnedness probably has as much or more to do with his reversion-to-type than his witnessing of the worst of the Right. He seems to have a tendency to ban people with little or no warning, not over being rude or attacking another poster or posting something offensive, but merely for disagreeing with Charles. You can get some lively reading just by googling for “people banned from little green footballs.”
Just my two cents.
“true Conservative” …”Pure” … “independent conservative centrists’ … “intolerant people” … “centrist conservatives” … “far right” …
—————–
I am still lobbying for better terms… Considering myself a
.
“Responsible Conservative.”
.
I suspect most of us could embrace that description instead of the creative [and other/many times ugly, insulting] adjectives that are thrown around…
Folks, the fact Johnson has been pissed for over a year does only indicates those pushing him did not have the common sense to just let him disagree – like all good Americans can.
He was not a conservative, he was an ally from center left. To govern you need these people on your side, not your opponents side. This ain’t rocket science, you really only need high school civics to figure this one out.
Do I care if the far right pisses of all of the center from center left to center right???
LOL! Of course not. I would be the best thing to happen to America if the center rose up and dumped fringes. And that will be clear in 2010 and 2012.
Just for the record, I’m no “true conservative” and never have been. I used to support you all the way, until you attacked me and demonized me for pointing out that Charles Johnson was an anti-scientific nutcase. Go look up that post – you made a big public proclamation of your undying support for Charles Johnson, and I simply said I had to leave (after having been a long time poster here) if that was the case. Even at that time, it was clear that LGF had turned into nothing but another DU. How could you not have seen that? But your response was to attack me, slander me, and tell me that I should stay off your blog, so I did.
Go back and look, I said *nothing* negative about you in that post or any other. Nevertheless, you lashed out and attacked me quite viciously for my opinion, something I thought was quite uncalled for. (Go back, look it up, compare what I wrote to what you wrote) That’s why I’ve stayed away.
The only reason for posting now is simply to point out that yes, I was *absolutely* right about CJ – he is an anti-scientific bigot – and YOU were completely wrong about him. He had changed, and while you have good judgment about ideas, you apparently have poor judgment about people. You judged him wrong, and you’ve judged me wrong and slandered me even though I never did anything like that to you.
And that’s what this all boils down to – you are still furious at me because I was right, and you were wrong. Check out the lucianne comments about CJ today – your name came up, and NOT because of me. It’s your reputation that has been hurt by this, not anyone else’s, and that’s what I was trying to warn you about when this first came up. Your posts are some of the best on the web, but why do you think you aren’t linked to nearly as much as you otherwise would be?
You’ve got to be careful about the company you keep.
Look what the far right, allegedly “Christians” are doing to Huck today. He’s now too “Christian” to be POTUS?
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
Sorry you felt attacked, not my intention.
But now you know how Charles feels. Not pleasant. And I sincerely do mean my apology.
BTW – I am an adult and I will keep the company I want to keep.
Actuall, Johnson’s reason for doing this is posted right now on the first line of his wep page. Hits on his page are “soaring”. It is all about traffic.
[...] also AJ Strata for another take on Charles Johnson’s Why I Parted Ways With The Right. Posted by [...]
I really dislike this conversation about who is more or less conservative then the next person, who is ruining the party and who is good for the party, who is making the tent bigger and who is making it smaller. How bad or good is Beck, Palin, Milken et al. I read the blogs to find different points of view, each party has their share of what I would call nuts or at times nutty. However I find it interesting, their thinking process, or lack of it, what information they use to inform their conclusions. This information helps me to sort through my thinking. Rants I don’t find very useful and out right lies are hard to sort through. I’m trying to think why vilifying someone for their thoughts is a good idea? It is obvious to me that each party has their share of far rights and far lefts, that seems to be a fact of ordinary life, not a big, impossible problem.
AJ:
Charles is a nutcase. Plain and simple. I stopped looking at his site long ago because he had some of the most vicious antiMuslim crap going on in the comments you can imagine, and now he has gone off the deep end about other people? I mean come on, he went from one extreme to the other.
Terrye,
Do you honestly think calling a fellow American a nutcase is impressing me????
Besides, AJ, you are a prime example of the kind of person Charles Johnson is raving about. The man is no victim. He hates Palin, and you do not, he despises people who do not believe in man made global warming.
And Pat Buchanan? He actually whines about the right and Pat Buchanan? Pat is a darling the left on msnbc. There is not a dimes worth of difference between his antisemitism and antiBush ranting and half the nonsense from the left…and here is Johnson putting Buchanan in the same category with Limbaugh.
I don’t much like Beck. I think he is an opportunist, and using a few people like Beck to paint everyone on the right is just dumb.
Impressing you? I don’t much care if it impresses you AJ, it is how I feel. I have agreed with you on all kinds of issues. Like immigration. I supported Bush when a lot of people on the right abandoned him, but Johnson is not a victim, he is just having a tantrum and attacking all sorts of people, Christians, pro lifers, he does not care.
the vitriol he received just poisoned his view of conservatives. His angry departure is a reflection of what he’s been experiencing.
AJ:
I don’t know if you’re aware of it but Charles Johnson’s BFF Killgore Trout spent a late night at Hot Air spouting “nigger” on multiple posts. He taunted his late night audience with the fact he hadn’t been immediately banned (even though the site monitors were in bed).
How would you like that if that happened to you?
BTW:
CJ never denounced Killgore Trouts’ behavior.
The posts were authenticated by ISPN.
Vitriol? You mentioned experiencing vitriol?
One time I almost got driven off his site because I jumped on someone for making wet back comments about Mexicans, back then Charles had no problem with that kind of stuff in his comments. You could make fun of Muslims and the way the women dressed. He was always putting up pictures of Palestinians marching with guns and raving about the R.O.P. {religion of peace}.
I was so disgusted by that kind of thing that I stopped even going there…and now here Charles Johnson is talking about other people saying things that pale in comparison to the very stuff he used to put on his own site.
I agree with WWS on this AJ. And you did attack WWS in a very vicious way that made me also walk away from you for a long time. Most of the time you write really good stuff and I really respect you for that. However, when you attack those who care for you and support you, that respect aways drops a good bit.
I think that what you are trying to say when you rant about “true conservatives” is that you feel that there is a point to view that can cause some slightly right leaning people to be put off. Conservatives are far more tolerant and fair than liberals any day of the week. Give people a little more credit than you have. Have a little faith, I do.
Your extreme emotional reaction to some issues resulting in attacks on your readers is not worthy of your intellect. You can do better than that. While I agree that we should respect people, don’t forget that respect goes two ways. I would definitely fall into your “true conservative” category on several subjects, especially immigration (I live in Texas and deal with the by products of rampant illegal immigration every day – Amnesty is not the answer because illegals don’t and won’t care. While a path to citizenship for current illegals can be constructed it comes with a very bad taste to those of us who have been with living the nightmare for so long.), so since you have decided to simply insult me about it, I will take my leave again after this.
When I walked away, I remember you posting a small note to me that said that you as a Marine Dad will always have my back. I wanted to say thank you and that I always knew that and you need to be assured that I have your back too. So, in light of that I have to ask you to stand back and think about what people you intellectually respect are telling you. Only people who respect you as much as many of your regular readers and I do will tell you the truth about yourself. Practice what you preach and stop trying to push people away.
Hooah!! 101st Airborne deploying to Afghanistan in April ‘10. God please keep them all safe.
I know he throws me in the camp with the others at times. I still see no reason to denigrate him in return.
Turn thy cheek!
From watching some of the battles CJ has created in the past 1 ½ years I would say this was a self generated exit. Not a matter of being a big tent, as much as one of the persons in the tent attempting to define and drive the terms, agenda, and rules as they go. Reagan and conservatism won out by a clear focus on those ideals and built around them. He comes back or he does not; conservative ideals and by extension the Republican party are fine as long as the party focuses on the ideals, not the idiosyncrasies of one of the members.
A view from the Lizard Bunker:
http://tinyurl.com/cff9fb
CJ was never really from the right and simply it was is user base of commenters that made the site what it was and not the lackluster postings CJ himself did.
Since then he has banned over 5000 of his best commenters and developed a new group of CJbots to take their place.
As far as which way the country is drifting the unregistered voter base of over 44 million in the voter age population per the census is mostly the conservative sleeping giant that all this policy choices will likely awaken.
Even Rasmussen is showing today Dems deserting that party id in droves to near parity and you have to take into account the lopsided balance in the largest blue states.
The distribution is more key than the absolute numbers.
Some just are not going for the new middle the far left progressives keep marking down with all their goal post moving.
Strata,
Are you losing your mind?
It is a good thing this schmuck finally went were his heart and actions were for a long time.
How can you defend somebody like him?
What does it say about YOU?
Do you honestly think calling a fellow American a nutcase is impressing me????
Apparently CJ, who makes a ritual of calling people names has impressed you.
So I won’t call CJ a nutcase, but just casual reading clearly demonstrates that he has severe mental stability problems.
It is not a good day for conservatives when folks like Charles Johnson leave the movement .
He hasn’t gone anywhere, he’s exactly where he’s always been. he has not now nor never has had any redeeming qualities. All his friends are right there where they’ve always been. I won’t bother saying good riddance because he hasn’t gone anywhere.
He was not a conservative, he was an ally from center left
If CJ was ever an ally of conservatives, it has never been apparent. He mostly is an ally of Charles Johnson.
I read him for a while 5 years ago, but have only skimmed infrequently since. Not someone who’s opinion I value, in fact, just the opposite.
sjreidhead:
Huckabee blew it big time with the commutation of Clemmons ( – and it was not the first act of clemency that had gone bad (DuMont). He deserves the heat he gets on this one.
His use of his Christianity to excuse his screwup is, sadly, typical of him. I’m sorry, but his conduct during the 2008 campaign royally ticked me off.
AJ:
While I know some on the right (Malkin, RS McCain, and Mark Levin, among others) are very hard to stomach, at the same time, Johnson was grossly unfair to Glenn Beck (who was debunking the FEMA camp rumors, among other things). Johnson went off the rails a while ago. It was a shame that both he and RS McCain could not lose that dust-up.
Beck lately has become the first person on the right to really try to develop a long-term plan. I am also willing to wager that unlike most of his critics (like Johnson), I have read at least one of the books he recommends (The 5000 Year Leap), and I don’t see much offensive in that.
But Johnson’s screed was way off base.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/12/someone-needs-attention.html
AJ, everyone has an agenda, whether, right, center or left, each with their strong beliefs. You have strong beliefs about being a centrist. I still love you!
And we have names for all the nutjobs across the spectrum! So what?
I want to say that, if the Tea Party movement did not have an agenda and strong beliefs, you and I would be suffering from obamacare’s taxes at this very moment, not to mention cap and trade.
There are certain things that conservatives have as core principles, high priorities: smaller government, strong military, free trade, pro-capitalism, low taxes, right to life and the strong belief in human potential NOT government potential. Social conservatives will add some others, I am sure, which I may or may not agree with.
Fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, neo-conservatives, paleo conservatives would all share a belief in the above characteristics. Are there nutcases in all of these categories? Heck, yes. Do they argue and debate amongst themselves? Again, yes.
There are many people and some tenets that my church has instituted that I absolutely do not agree with but I am not going to leave but rather stay to outlast the foolishness.
Personally, I don’t think there was a way to keep Charles happy. Just my opinion.
Here’s a priceless comment from CJ, just today:
I didn’t go into this expecting to come out as a proponent of AGW, but the vast weight of the evidence forced me to accept it.
And, of course, he’s referring to all that faked/altered ‘vast evidence”
wonder if the revelation of the ‘real’ evidence would force him to accept it?
not a chance….
[...] The Far Right has now doomed itself. What a few of us thought was a problem is now turning into a rotten carcass, dead, rank, and full of disease ridden maggots and filth. Not only have they managed to throw Reagan under the bus, but now they are stating that a Christian is not capable of being POTUS. [...]
Redteam, the case made by the alarmist is persuasive to many. The Earth is warming. Could you or others debunk it scientifically?
Sadly those who can debunk it ignored it for too long, not thinking it would take hold. Now we have to work 100 times as hard to roll it all back.
That is not Johnson’s fault.
Harold, no excuses for Johnson’s problems, and no excuses for those who drove a left of center icon from ‘the right.
Do you know where this nation would be without Joe Lieberman? We would have run from Iraq and made al Qaeda famous.
That’s what happens when this pattern is repeated.
“Do you know where this nation would be without Joe Lieberman? We would have run from Iraq and made al Qaeda famous.”
Joe Lieberman is a grown up who cares about his country. He doesn’t sit around and whine about how dangerous Christians are and how “far” Right people like Sarah Palin have ruined our country.
Charles Johnson is like Andrew Sullivan. A sad, unserious creature who runs a pathetic blog. He had a reality check like many of us did on 9/11 but that’s apparently ancient history now. Nobody drove him away.
Could you or others debunk it scientifically?
no need to. look at the raw data. it proves itself.
there have been many times, over time, that the earth was much hotter.
the question should be just the opposite. How could anyone take the raw data and convince anyone there is such a thing as ‘AGW’?
I have a tecnnical, scientific, management background and I can say for sure there is no raw data that supports AGW.
AJ:
Lieberman is a good man and I respect him. Charles Johnson is a jerk. Big difference.
Lieberman turned from his party for the good of the country on Iraq and the War on Terror in general.
Charles Johnson, on the other hand, seems to be out for Charles Johnson. The post seemed to be very self-serving and more a recitation of Stuff you’d hear from Keith Olbermann.
As I said, I’d be impressed with Johnson’s beef with Glenn Beck if I had any indication that he had actually bothered to read The 5000 Year Leap. He need sto actually take Beck’s ideas on, not potshots.
I, myself, find Charles Johnson’s post pretty extreme; and James Joyner’s post about it much more sane.
Johnson Breaks From The Right
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/charles_johnson_breaks_from_the_right/