The “Strange New Respect” Award Makes a Comeback
20th February 2016
The “Strange New Respect” Award is the invention of Tom Bethell, who noted decades ago how liberals would always start praising a conservative or Republican who showed signs of moderation, Bob Dole being a great example. “New respect”—a phrase you’d actually see in the media—was a euphemism for “moved to the left.”
It is a totem of insincere liberalism, a coy way of attacking present-day conservatives. My corollary is that for liberals, the only good conservative is a dead conservative. Back in the 1960s, William F. Buckley was attacked as a fascist or worse, and dismissed as a retrograde force. Today, of course, liberals call him a “national treasure,” and bemoan that today’s conservatism isn’t more like Buckley. (This is Sam Tanenhaus’s favorite hobby horse.)
Ditto for Dwight Eisenhower, whom liberals regarded in his time as an unenlightened dummy, until some liberals decided he was okay after all—actually pretty good in fact—a discovery that coincided with the need to find every way possible way to trash Richard Nixon. Who, come to think about it, many liberals nowadays say as actually pretty good if it wasn’t for that whole Watergate thing.
Apparently Trump makes some of them wish to return to the days of George W. Bush. I am reminded of what Malcolm X said about Martin Luther King: ‘They talk to him because the alternative is to talk to me.’ So I guess Donald Trump is the Malcolm X of the Republican Party.
Which sort of make sense if you think about it….