Letter to the Editor: You're Wrong, Duke!

By Selwyn Duke

In response to my recent article “Tucker Carlson’s Misguided Attack on Republicans,” I received positive feedback — and also a bit of the negative variety. Here’s one email from a disappointed longtime reader (my response is below):

Republicans in Congress are massively elected by conservatives. That is the vast majority the Republican base. Given that, why is no conservative ever allowed to be in a leadership position? McConnell and Kevin McCarthy represent the liberal wing of the party. McConnell controls the vast NRSC war chest and he uses it to perform character assassination openly in any primary where a conservative threaten the seat of a leftist Republican. McConnell pays for the massive TV campaigns that repeat lies over and over and over with tens of millions of dollars to maintain his absolute dominance over the conservatives.

Angelo Codevilla, a wiser man and more informed by experience than you or me, understood the Uniparty and how it totally controls America now, and how it “detests” the people. It is obvious to any observer that cares to pay attention. To sugarcoat things does not change reality. If there was a real party, a serious one, representing conservatives, it would not have allowed 40 years of election fraud that works to benefit only the party that the Republicans opposed. If we had a serious party it would not have stood idly by and even helped facilitate the theft of the election in 2020. That is exactly what Mitch McConnell did.

Sorry. I usually like your columns, but your failure in this case to understand our enemy is the reason we are losing everywhere.

Kent Ramsay

My response:

Dear Mr. Ramsey,

I can answer your question, though not in brief.

Republicans in Congress are, for sure, massively elected by conservatives, but not all “conservatives” are created equal (so to speak). The average “conservative” in the NYC metropolitan area or NJ is quite a bit different from the average “conservative” in rural Alabama or Mississippi. Consequently, the Republicans they elect are different, and the lukewarm contingent in Congress currently has the majority; the MAGA wing doesn’t. (You can add to this the rule that when something “comes out of committee,” it tends to be banal and plain vanilla. Ergo Mitch McConnell.)

The goal, of course, is to grow the MAGA wing, insofar as this is possible, while working with the neo-cons in common-ground areas. We did, after all, ally with Stalin during WWII, as odious as he was, correct? And today we’re allied with Saudi Arabia and other unsavory nations because “Politics makes strange bedfellows”; needless to say, this rule doesn’t change just because at issue is domestic politics.

I dislike McConnell, but the reality is what I stated in my article: He shepherded the three SCOTUS justices onto the Court, thus helping set the stage for Dobbs and the good rulings we’ve seen subsequently. This wouldn’t have happened had someone such as Chuck Schumer been majority leader at the time. This isn’t to say I’m in love with the three justices in question (I consider Kavanaugh a weak man); it is to say that having them is head and shoulders above having three more Ketanji Brown Jacksons. This is simply a fact, not opinion. Nor does recognizing reality amount to sugarcoating anything.

There also was a study in the 1950s that discovered what is obvious to the discerning: No matter what time and place is in question, the leaders always end up being worse than the people. This helps explain why GOP congressmen pale in comparison those electing them.

This, of course, is the fault of humanity, as its members generally, ever and always (with some exceptions), lack the discernment to well distinguish between good and evil. That’s what we’re up against and is why politicians will always disappoint relatively virtuous people who expect something approximating virtue from their leaders. All we can do is work to incrementally improve the political sphere while also trying to transform the culture so that what’s possible in politics — that “art of the possible” — is greater virtue.

Oh, and I understand the enemy quite well — well enough to know that, at bottom, our battle is spiritual.

It is wise to see the similarities between things; it is unwise to see only the similarities.

God bless,

Selwyn Duke