For such a time as this: Two priorities for conservatives and the GOP

The dispute roiling the political right needs to be briefly and simply addressed, without elaborate discussions into which endless causes for dispute can be interpolated.  Obfuscating the matter that way is the worst thing for the right.  Everyone from Vice President Vance to Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, to legacy media and hundreds (or who knows, thousands) of social media users has been engaging vigorously with the obfuscating factors of personalities and feelings, exaggerated depictions of the arguments of others, and elliptical allusions that provoke further rounds of exaggeration in the search for honest definitions.

Cut through all that.  The dispute is about Nick Fuentes, a thoroughgoing antisemite, racist, and misogynist, being interviewed in a friendly and non-challenging manner by Tucker Carlson — and the choice of Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, to not repudiate that behavior by Carlson.  It is correctly argued that allowing Fuentes to come on Carlson’s widely-watched podcast and spew his toxic sentiments without vigorous pushback amounts to a mainstreaming of those sentiments, as if they can be entertained on their merits in respectable or moral discourse.

They can’t be.  That is established, by centuries of trial, error, and bloody mistakes, and is not up for review.

And as long as Carlson is perceived to be a political commentator on the right, the right has to reject the false premise that antisemitism, racism, and misogyny may have something to say.  (The left has rejecting to do, but that is not our problem here, and it doesn’t excuse failures on the right.)

I repudiate the premise absolutely.  I haven’t considered Carlson to be a right-wing figure for quite some time, nor do I regard his so-called “groyper” followers as being right-wing.  There’s no significant political overlap between that niche faction and the mainstream right.

And that’s what needs to be said, honestly and straightforwardly, without caveat or cough.  It’s supremely simple:

“That’s not us.  That’s not who we are.  When that line of patter is opening its mouth, it’s not speaking for the right.”

Fuentes, Carlson, and their groypers can say whatever they want.  But they aren’t the right, and they aren’t speaking for the right.  They aren’t in the right’s American “tent,” and they can’t be as long as they say things the right is dedicated and consecrated to not even believe, much less say.

Kevin Roberts might be just the person to turn to for that statement – if he could make it.  As the president of what is arguably the premier, highest-profile right-wing think tank, he would be the ideal framer of a strong, clean right-wing position against mainstreaming hatred of Jews, hatred between races, and vicious denigration of women by men (or men by women, if that is at issue.  It isn’t, in this case).

But so far, he hasn’t been able to get past his personal connections with Tucker Carlson to condemn the behavior.  Neither has VP JD Vance.

It isn’t necessary to have a public hanging of a person to make the point.  Mercy can be extended on a personal basis to the person, even as the behavior is being rejected wholesale.

But a false idea of mercy to the person is, by the kindest interpretation of their silence, preventing key leaders from rejecting the behavior, and ensuring their institutions and offices are on record as rejecting it.

They haven’t found the words, the balancing point of the moral and necessary posture, to make the clarifying statement.

None of this is about freedom of speech.  It’s about what is said, by the leaders free and morally obligated to say it.

So here is what needs to be done.

Repudiate antisemitism, racism, and misogyny on behalf of the right. Condemn, disavow, and reject them.  Issue a warning that they have no place in the right’s tent: in our beliefs, premises, or speech.  Say what you want, advocates for such views, but don’t expect the right to engage with you as if you have any valid points to make.

Full stop.  That is what needs to be affirmed and established.  No other “discussion” is necessary.  It’s a policy choice by the right, not a censorship of speech, and anyone who  can’t make that choice right now, without further discussion at a table with evil, isn’t in the tent either.

We aren’t going to find that groypers are a key to getting candidates elected.  They’re not reliable voters anyway, even at the starting point of actually voting.

The genuinely right-wing voters who reject antisemitism, racism, and misogyny are far more numerous.  Those are the voters we need.  They are what the political right must be.  Out of all the things you are free to choose and say, choose that.

Then turn, with that settled, to winning in 2026.

A word on that.  If the right doesn’t establish that its tent is not a haven for antisemitism, racism, and misogyny, it will fragment suicidally and never win the reins of America’s governments again.

No condition of liberty, limited government, federalism in governmental operation, and respect for the people can be established or sustained in an environment of vengeful and divisive hatreds.  The two are incompatible.

There is no such thing as being able to simultaneously respect the rights of others and deal with them in goodwill, under the minimal government suited to people of excellent character, while separating Jews out to be hated, and slandered with the most grotesque and stupidly repetitive lies.

Nor can such an incoherent impossibility make a managed success of race hatred, or hating and despising women.

It’s not possible to avoid turning every premise of life into a lie, when such hatreds rule the heart and mind.  Life can’t prosper when it’s founded on lies.  The reason America is so fragmented and uneasy today is that decades of political lies are unraveling.  People of both sexes, each race, and all ethnic and religious backgrounds have been involved in building our house on lies.  There is no demographic in these regards that is peculiarly at fault.

And the first thing we have to do is repudiate the systematized hatred theories that hook us like duped, stupid fish and haul us to our doom.  We cannot move forward without doing that.  The Democrats can’t lead the way.  Systematizing hatred is their bread and butter.  It’s the fundamental premise of Marxism:  we are inherently divided against each other.  As the party exists today – as the dominant left exists – they have no political purpose without it.

It has to be the right.  And it can’t be swept under the rug and left to fester.  Handling it isn’t about rejecting people.  It’s about rejecting a point of view:  a set of toxic, corrupting premises that deal only destruction and death.

We’ll never get elected on the speech we magnanimously “don’t shut down,” and leave dangling, unattended, as potentially representing our party’s or movement’s image.  It’s the speech we choose to affirm and prioritize that gets us elected.  Speech is to be free, of course; whatever people want can float around out there; but to govern ourselves with integrity and in peace, we have to choose which speech we affirm and agree to.

President Trump demonstrated that reality in both 2016 and 2024.  It’s what he said about policy and perspective that got him elected.  It’s what he said that assured voters he meant what they were looking for.

Do it.  Repudiate antisemitism, racism, and misogyny – for the entities we are responsible for, the conservative movement and the Republican Party.  Say that’s not in our tent.  No waffling; just say it.  Just like that.  Get it done and move on.

The priority that goes with it is winning in 2026.  Do the wrong thing and lose the future to internecine disputes featuring deflection, invective, and an endless stream of devious, involuted premises.  Those things will have us by the short hairs forever, if we keep giving them oxygen.

But do the right thing, and win.