The Paradigm Continues Its Unstoppable Shift
by Jack Dunigan
The Weekly Standard, home of some of the last Never Trumpers including Bill Kristol, closed its doors forever on Friday, December 14, 2018. Declining subscriptions and an editorial policy that appealed to fewer and fewer readers because of its anti-Trump stance are among the reasons for the company’s demise. Traditionally conservative organizations now find themselves under increasing pressure to find their way in the midst of a massive paradigm shift in politics worldwide.
The old conservative vs liberal, small government vs big government, liberty vs tyranny paradigm has been confused and unable to find a path forward since the end of the cold war. What was once an obvious threat ended when the Soviet Union went out of business and the lines 
of us vs them had become much less identifiable, much less threatening. What evolved was a new world order that was one sided and elitist. Evolved might be an inaccurate term if we limit its definition to improving because of the environment and ecosystem. The political parties have NOT evolved. They have NOT adapted. They still think in terms and conditions that no longer exist.
Beginning with the administration of the late George H.W. Bush, the Republican party effectively became Democrat lite. Both parties expanded government, grew softer and softer on illegal immigration, enlarged government programs, and borrowed more money. Both became increasingly elitist. Both ignored the gulf between them and most 
of the country. Even those who did see a gulf dismissed it because they, as the political ruling class, “knew better.” This condescending attitude was by no means a Democrat party exclusive. John Boehner, former Speaker of the House dismissed the Tea Party with less than flattering terms.
In the run up to the 2016 election, when former presidential adviser David Gergen was asked who he preferred as the next president. He responded that he thought the candidates would be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton and he was fine with either. He was fine with either because Republicans and Democrats had become so much alike.
But there is a shift in process…a gigantic one. There is an accelerating movement away from globalism and towards nationalist populism. Evidence of that is the election of Trump in the US, nationalist/populist leaders in Hungary, Italy, Holland, Austria, and the Brexit vote in the UK. Macron, hailed as the savior of globalism, is on the ropes in France with an approval rating hovering around 20%. There were truly conservative candidates running in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries but none could find traction. Why not? Because they were running on a paradigm that had shifted away from them and a base that in years past would have been solidly in their camp.
The voters are not all that interested in smaller government. They are fiercely interested in a government that works for them, not against them. Thus Trump! His appeal was…and is…to the forgotten masses who had rightly come to believe that their own government was not governing in their interest. The same is true in Europe. Fully 75% of France’s citizens do NOT believe their government has their citizen’s interest at heart.
Rasmussen, one of the most reliable and accurate polling companies, places Trumps approval rating as President this week 5% higher than was Obama’s at the exact same time in his presidency. This astonishing number is even more astonishing given the 95%+ negative press he receives and the fawning adoration given Obama during his presidency.
Yet, neither the so-called press nor political parties get it. They still think in terms that their readers and voters have long since moved past. First RedState.com fired most of its staff due to declining readership. Now, the Weekly Standard has shut down. There seem to be more Never Trump writers than there are Never Trump readers.
“Stephen F. Hayes, the Standard’s editor in chief wrote that “This is a volatile time in American journalism and politics. Many media outlets have responded to the challenges of the moment by prioritizing affirmation over information, giving in to the pull of polarization and the lure of clickbait. I’ll spare you the soapbox and the sanctimony. To put it simply: I’m proud that we’ve remained both conservative and independent, providing substantive reporting and analysis based on facts, logic and reason.”
It’s the last line that is particularly enlightening and revealing. “Analysis based on facts, logic and reason” is only partially correct for The Weekly Standard…and indeed for most of journalism today. They have indeed looked at the facts, but it is the logic and reason side of the equation that doesn’t hold true. They have used facts to reinforce what they already believed and to validate those beliefs even if they must twist into contortions to do so. The worst offender is Bill Kristol, such a rabid never-Trumper that he joined forces with the left to do what he could to defeat Trump in 2016. Recently he has suggested he would run in 2020. Good luck with that.
The facts should always be used to arrive at a conclusion not to substantiate a conclusion we want to prove. That process of following facts to arrive at a conclusion is the process true and ethical journalists pursue. The facts often challenge our conclusions. They always trouble honest people who want to know what is really real because those true and ethical journalists remain committed to understanding things as they are not as they think they should be or wish them to be. True and ethical journalists read the facts. They never read into them.
Love him or hate him, Trump’s unorthodox political savvy has brought him to the head of a movement that will endure for decades. I venture that Trump has not produced the times. The times have produced Trump. Voters are in rebellion against the orthodoxy that is yet proclaimed loudly albeit sanctimoniously from the platforms of historic political parties. Paris is burning. Voters are rejoicing. American journalists are seething.
Historically and traditionally, the journalist made his/her voice worthwhile and validated the reader/listener’s allegiance and attention because they as journalists were skeptical of power, their perspective was that of the outsider looking in. Following WWII, journalists were taught and trained in pedestrian institutions like the University of Indiana. Those common-man journalists found their voice by speaking for the ordinary person and by being skeptical of power, the trappings of power, and the snobbery that accompanies both. And the journalism of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s reflected that outsider appeal. There was no internet and very few opinion programs on either radio or television.
Now, the opposite is true. Too many so-called and would-be journalists come from ivy league institutions. They find places to write for with prestigious names. They get TV shows named after them and call their programs important-sounding things like The Situation Room or State of the Union or Reliable Sources. Thus, having succumbed to the intoxication of fame and fortune, they take on the air of self-importance and begin to speak, not for the common man, not to the common man, but speaking down to the common man. They have become the insiders once decried by their predecessors and in so doing, they have garnered a simmering resentment in their readers and listeners to which they are both blind and deaf. Gay Talese, respected writer and journalist (one of those educated in lowly University of Alabama) says that they “are confounded when someone, when anyone, dares challenge, ignore, or disregard them.”
They cannot understand how the country could elect Trump or Orban in Hungary or why Macron in France could be in such deep trouble. Nor could The Weekly Standard figure it out even though they claim to be committed to facts, logic, and reason. Indeed, like the political parties they write articles about, they cannot see how they have devolved.
So, we stop buying their newspapers, fail to renew subscriptions to their magazines, and simply turn off the TV. Despite the objections, confusion, and alarm of self-important journalists and pundits, the paradigm continues its unstoppable shift.
