So You’re Saying There’s a New Sheriff In Town?

Christie Rubio's DeSantis.

By , and
57

Sarah, Steve, and Jonah rank the winners and losers of Wednesday’s GOP primary debate and vent about the embarrassing failure of the elite university presidents to denounce calls for genocide against the Jews. Also:
-Kevin McCarthy’s retirement
-The loser caucus
-Trump’s plans for a second term
-Contemplating the end of America
-Sarah explains the first rule of apologies
-University presidents smirk at genocide
-The value of challenging views at colleges

Show notes:

-McCarthy’s strange retirement video

-G-File: Antisemitism Is Just a Symptom

-Kash Patel: “We’re going to come after you.”

By , and
Comments (57)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Brett

    Love you guys but this podcast was like there's a guy on deck yelling about an iceberg ahead, he's heading up to tell the captain and ya'll are like wait, hold up, before you go, don't you think red curtains would look better in this ballroom than peach? You really ought to give the captain that message too. Haley just "didn't stand out" and DeSantis "doesn't hit moments."

    We are trying to save a republic here. Do you know what time it is, basically, which I mean in exactly the opposite way MAGA means it.

    Collapse
  2. R. James

    Haley had a bad night, certainly her worst debate. Christie stepped on a landmine over the children reassignment surgery issue. And no one on the right outside of the Dispatch comment section and the ACELA corridor cares about Christie's "rubioing" (?) DeSantis. DeSantis had his best debate. Vivek continues to be scum. The only viable path to build a coalition to beat Trump is still DeSantis, because the others have positioned themselves to repel a majority of likely Republican voters.

    The fact that the Dispatch (Hayes and Isgur) can't even acknowledge that DeSantis had a good debate. It shows their bias. Which is also interesting because the Dispatch still hasn't endorsed anyone, even though they clearly favor Haley.

    Collapse
  3. William Hodes

    There are buckets and there are buckets. And there are buckets within buckets. Perhaps there is even Bucket Intersectionality. But the Master Bucket--if it is permissible to use that term--in the downfall of Liz Magill was the Double Standard Bucket, not the Hypocrisy Bucket or the Speech-Conduct-Violence Bucket.

    Hypocrisy focuses on the offender's words and ideas. But Double Standard focuses on what the offender has actually done in the past and is now doing or threatening to do in the future.

    There could be a campus world in which harmful, hateful, demeaning, and derogatory speech about or against blacks and gays and transgendered persons is frowned upon, but does not result in disciplinary action or ruined careers. In that world, odious speech that was brigaded with action and bled over into targeted and imminent threats and harassment would be investigated and punished.

    In that world, "calling for" the genocide of Jews would indeed be evaluated according to how those "calls" were issued. Leaflet? Op-Ed? Disgusting posters featuring hangliders? Peaceful demonstration with fiery oratory? Physical obstruction on the way to class? Taunting individual Jews in the cafeteria? Forcing Jews fearing for their actuall physical safety into hiding in a library?

    In that world, it would have been appropriate for Liz Magill and Claudine Gay to personally condemn the manifest Jew hatred--as both did to some extent--but then get down into the weeds on context.

    But that world--the world of Skokie, Brandenburg, the Slants Rock Band, and the ACLU before it destroyed itself and its reason for existence--is not the world we have lived in for twenty or thirty years. So for Liz Magill to suddenly revert to that world only in this one instance was unacceptable and made her resignation or firing inevitable.

    In one of the last pieces he wrote for The Dispatch, David French noted that the First Amendment (and similar principles in the private sector) have never been stronger in the courts, and never weaker in elite and bien-piensant society. (Side note: I'm also looking at you, American Bar Association.) As her life and career developed, Liz got caught up as those competing worlds collided.

    Daughter of an Eighth Circuit judge, sister to a state court judge, educated at Yale and UVA, clerkships with the conservative J. Harvie Wilkerson and then Ruth Ginsburg in OT 1996, and then on to teaching at UVA Law School. (As she alluded to in her semi-apology, her intellectual roots are in parsing First Amendment contexts!)

    But then Liz embarked on a illustrious career in university administration--from UVA to Stanford to Penn. And in that world--the campus world we actually have--the emphasis is on "protecting" a special set of "victims." Even in that world, it would have been possible for her to have admitted Jewish students to the protected class. She could have issued a presidential decree saying that anyone caught with a hanglider poster would not only earn her personal condemnation, but be brought up on charges for being insensitive!

    But that would have been wrong also! There are two ways to cure inequality or unequal treatment--level up or level down. Perhaps, just perhaps, Liz Magill's downfall could turn into the very beginnings of a pivot towards that "other" world, as Steve and Jonah both suggested. Perhaps, just perhaps, the next President of Penn will start initiatives--not in the glare of a crisis, but carefully and thoughtfully--that will take seriously the speech-action-violence continuum that the courts insist upon.

    Hate speech is not violence, and physical obstruction of hateful speech is not an acceptable form of "speech." Just ask Dean Jenny Martinez, Liz Magill's successor at Stanford Law.

    Collapse
  4. Acre00

    If they teach you at Harvard not to write like an asshole, why do so many Harvard grads seem to go out of their way to write and talk like assholes? Why did the Harvard president go in front of the entire nation and quite explicitly be an asshole?

    Collapse
  5. Joe

    The congressional testimony on Hamas and genocide was the university presidents' "very fine people on both sides" moment. Elise Stefanik endorsed a man for President who dined with Nick Fuentes. Can anyone rule out the possibility that Kanye will end up on the campaign trail with Trump? Can anyone really say that Trump will not praise the "Jew Coup" guy that he gave a special WH press pass during his first term?

    There is a huge problem in American politics today that antisemitism is only unacceptable when it is on the other side. Those that refuse to condemn antisemitism on their own side create a whataboutism argument for the other side to excuse their own antisemites.

    Collapse
  6. Max Marshall

    I’ve been trying to figure out why Ron DeSantis’ manner of speaking is so cringy, but I think I’ve finally got it: he sounds like a personal injury lawyer taping an ad. “I’ll fight for you!” (Nods head aggressively for emphasis).

    Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    Mmaughan0

    Was disappointed no one got Jonah’s “dictator without the tater” joke

    Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    Johncalhounjohn

    At 50 minutes Sarah let’s it be known what Dispatchi know!

    Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    Holly Merriman

    Did Steve Hayes just say that Farm to Table is woke?

    Collapse
  10. Lovell.Eugene

    Geez! I listen to a Dispatch podcast and the political left/right appear absolutely nuts. It does not seem real. Unfortunately, I know it is. I am worried that “the centre cannot hold”. I tell myself that I am too old, that the younger ones will have to resolve this. Yet, I am younger than the two likely nominees for President (in a kind of perverse irony).

    Collapse
Load More