If Joe Walsh Primaries Trump, Will We Stop Calling Him A Deadbeat Dad?

Unleash the 'Life's Been Good to Me So Far' Jokes!

Joe Walsh, the one-term tea party congressdick from Illinois turned passionate Never-Trumper on Twitter, is hoping to run against Donald Trump from the right. The Washington Post   reports Walsh is "leaning toward announcing a campaign next month," despite Trump's near total takeover of the GOP, and last week Walsh wrote an op-ed in the New York Times making the case for a real conservative challenge to Trump, saying that as a guy who won a single term in Congress during the teabagger rebellion of 2010, he knows "a thing or two about insurgencies" and their potential to shake up the establishment. Which sort of ignores the tiny detail that Donald Trump remains an unstable insurgent even when he is the establishment.

Still, Walsh, who was booted out of Congress by Tammy Duckworth and her robot feet in 2012, has made a real effort on Twitter to present himself as a voice of "principled" conservative anti-Trumpism. In his Times op-ed, Walsh even sorta-kinda apologized for his very worst rightwing crap, because maybe he has some shame or something? Just look at the repentance!

In Mr. Trump, I see the worst and ugliest iteration of views I expressed for the better part of a decade. To be sure, I've had my share of controversy. On more than one occasion, I questioned Mr. Obama's truthfulness about his religion. At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There's no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.

We like the part where he regrets having "questioned Mr. Obama's truthfulness about his religion" without going that simple step farther and saying he now believes Obama's repeated professions of Christian faith. Wouldn't do to be too friendly to that guy.

But hey, maybe Joe Walsh is genuinely sorry for little long-ago moments of insensitivity, like when he blamed Barack Obama for getting cops killed by a gunman in Dallas, and promised it was time for "war" against Obama and Black Lives Matter punks:

He later removed that tweet and insisted he only meant REAL Americans love cops, not Obama and other haters of cops, so honestly, it's unfair to hold it against him. 2016 was a long time ago and he's nicer now, he promises.

Which is why we should completely trust Walsh when he writes that Trump is

a racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base and advance his electoral prospects. In this, he inspires imitators .

And good for him, that linky is to a  Times article noting that the El Paso shooter's manifesto was an amalgam of talking points from Trump rallies and Fox News broadcasts. Mr Walsh has now eschewed race-baiting, so it would be very unfair to remind anyone that as recently as 2017, when Donald Trump was trying to murder Obamacare, Walsh complained that single-payer healthcare could never work in the USA because of this nation's diversity, which is a bad thing. You see, he explained, Canada and Europe aren't cursed with irresponsible brown people stealing all the free healthcare:  

You can't compare rest of the world to us! They do not have the big diverse populations that we have. They do not have the inner city populations that we have. I'll tell you what. People on Medicaid, I mean, Medicaid kills people because of the quality of the care. We can't afford Medicaid anymore!

We sure are glad Walsh repudiates all that shit, for sure. In the Times, he explains he's become a better person because of Trump:

Mr. Trump has taken the legitimate differences that Americans have on policy and turned them into personal division. He's caused me to change my tone and to reflect upon where I went over the line and to focus on policy differences moving forward.

Walsh Does seem to at least be making some kind of attempt. Look at the difference in tone in just a year!

Spring 2018:

I have a right to pray to whatever God I want to pray to. I have a right to call Obama a Muslim and call Trump a t… https: //t.co/ps2cefENi8

— Joe Walsh (@Joe Walsh) 1519703992.0 

I'm sick & tired of all the rest of us always trying to fix the screwed up Muslim world. The Muslim world needs to fix itself.

— Joe Walsh (@Joe Walsh) 1523243975.0 

Good. The world is a much better place anytime a Muslim terrorist is killed. 50 of em killed on Monday? That's fa… https: //t.co/wcn54H325E

— Joe Walsh (@Joe Walsh) 1526476424.0 

Spring 2019:

It's pretty easy to not be political and say the following: 1. The white supremacist, anti-Muslim hate that attacke… https://t.co/Tu8Hd95S6Z

— Joe Walsh (@Joe Walsh) 1552655573.0 

That's an improvement! Walsh says that a really strong challenger to Trump would

make the case for strong borders — instead of warning of "invaders," dragging us down, turning neighbor against neighbor.

So instead of all that dehumanizing talk about immigrants being vermin infecting America, Walsh would talk about strong borders without the racism, at least not the overt kind. Make dog whistles great again!

Frankly, we would be happy to see Walsh challenge Trump from the right. He makes for much better copy than William Weld does, and anything that might split the GOP is very, very welcome.

Plus, it would be fun to see the fiscal conservative once again try to explain his repeated efforts to dodge paying child support. 

[ NYT / WaPo ]

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