A Surefire Litmus Test

RFK, Reliable News, Refugees, &tc.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to The Quarter Inch!

I have a simple, easy, surefire way to figure out whether someone—a politician, a journalist, or commentator—is an actual political conservative or a Kool-Aid drinking cult fanatic:

Figure out what they think of the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

And, Done. It’s an infallible litmus test. There is no possible universe wherein RFK, Jr. is remotely an acceptable person to be nominated by a conservative for so much as chief cook and bottle-washer, much less head of HHS. Sadly, it is evident that the Republican Party is filled with Kool-Aid drinking cultists. There is nothing Dear Leader can do that they will resist.

We shall see shortly if there are any Republican Senators willing to prove me wrong.

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It has been a whirlwind first week for the new President and his administration, and nearly impossible for even a political addict like me to keep up on the rapid developments. I can’t imagine that the normal person going about their daily business has much of a grasp on it.

So I want to make a few recommendations to you. Now, more than ever, it is imperative to find principled and honest voices in a media landscape littered with partisan sycophants. Happily, such voices do exist and I want to commend them to you.

Erick Erickson is a national treasure. He is irrefutably the lone—as in sole—talk radio personality to stick to his conservative guns in the face of withering fire (in the form of advertising boycotts and so forth) from both the radical left and the lunatic right. Erick is smart, politically savvy, and will always, always tell you what he believes. He carries water for nobody, and praises President Trump when warranted and criticizes him when warranted. A straight-shooter. If you can’t find him on a local radio station, you can listen to his show online and in podcast form. He also writes a Substack newsletter to which you should subscribe.

National Review continues to be utterly indispensable. Let me show you what I mean. Yesterday journalist (I guess that’s what you call him) Matthew Yglesias posted this little broadside against the magazine:

So if you were to believe Matthew Yglesias, National Review is just a partisan Republican rag shilling for Trump. Charlie Cooke got, um, really fed up. Here’s a taste:

This is a great point — if you ignore that, since Trump became president, we’ve run institutional editorials that called on Trump to enforce the TikTok ban — and outlined why it’s not optional; criticized some of his pardons; assessed the executive orders we liked and disliked; praised his anti-DEI initiatives — and explained why; called for the reinstatement of the protection of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo; advised the Senate to reject Tulsi Gabbard; endorsed Trump’s removal of the United States from the Paris climate accords; and made the case against the abuse of the FACE Act.

It’s a great point — if you ignore that we’ve run five (one, two, three, four, five) bylined pieces on Trump’s argument against birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants; multiple bylined pieces on Trump’s pardoning those responsible for January 6; plus a bunch of bylined pieces and posts on the rescission of the EV mandate, on the correct scope of anti-DEI efforts; on the wisdom of the removal of security clearances; on how Republicans should reform the budget process; on the “three tough calls Republicans have to make”; on whether tariffs are constitutionally within the president’s remit; on whether tariffs are populist; on “Trump’s inchoate trade policy”; on the “Iron Dome” executive order; on the new makeup of the Pentagon; on the new administration’s Iran policy; on that Iran policy’s results thus far; on whether Trump’s inauguration speech was expansionist; on the appropriateness of conditioning federal aid; on Trump’s belligerence against Colombia — and another on that; on Trump’s approach to Israel; on the effect of pro-life laws; on the future of AI policy; and more.

And that’s before we get to the podcasts, which have looked at the inauguration and Trump’s pardons; the first policy moves Trump has made as president; Trump’s executive orders; Trump’s spat with Colombia; and Trump’s visit to California.

That’s quite the spanking for Matthew Yglesias. To sum up: National Review is a conservative media outlet, not a Republican one, and such publications are few and far between in the current landscape. They are not The Bulwark, a Trump “resistance” rag now almost indistinguishable from, say, The New Republic. Do yourself a favor for the next four years and subscribe to NRPlus. For more on National Review, a couple of years ago I wrote a lengthier appreciation for them.

The Dispatch also continues to be, for the most part, an excellent resource for principled conservative analysis. Their daily “Morning Dispatch” is worth its weight in gold for summarizing the news of the day, and, of course, you get Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson thrown in for good measure. Alas, I cannot recommend that you read their guy Nick Cattagio, who has, it appears to me, been on a years-long descent into the kind of bitterness and rage characteristic of the mentally unwell, doomed to wake up every day to write the exact same 3,000 words about how awful everything is. The man doesn’t “doomscroll.” He writes the “doomscroll.”