It was this tweet which caught my eye:

BINGO: Our democracy is under attack, for real, by a large portion of a major political party which seeks to utterly transform the relationship between the government and the governed.https://t.co/DLISIPTBBA via @BulwarkOnline

— Jennifer ‘pro-voting’ Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) April 22, 2021

Wikipedia describes The Bulwark as:

an American anti-Trump conservative news and opinion website founded in 2018 by commentators Charlie Sykes and Bill Kristol.^[1][2][3] Its publisher is Sarah Longwell.^[4] While it launched as a news aggregator, it was revamped into a news and opinion site using key digital staffers from the defunct magazine The Weekly Standard.

Anti-Trump? That’s why Jennifer Rubin likes it! Mrs Rubin has allowed her visceral hatred of former President Trump to change views she previously held:

Rubin has been one of the most vocal conservative-leaning writers to criticize Donald Trump, as well as the overall behavior of the Republican Party during Trump’s term in office. Rubin denounced Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement as “a dog whistle to the far right”, and designed to please his “climate change denial, right-wing base that revels in scientific illiteracy.” Previously, after Barack Obama had approved the agreement, Rubin characterized it as “nonsense” and argued that it would not achieve anything. Rubin described Trump’s 2017 decision to not implement parts of the Iran nuclear deal as the “emotional temper tantrum of an unhinged president.” She had previously said that “if you examine the Iran deal in any detail, you will be horrified as to what is in there.” Rubin strongly supported the United States officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Early in his presidency, she criticized Trump for not doing so, saying that it was indicative of his tendency to “never keep his word.” She concluded that Trump “looks buffoonish in his hasty retreat”. In December 2017, after Trump announced that he would move the embassy, she said it was “a foreign policy move without purpose.”^[29]

In August 2019, Rubin was a guest on a panel on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” with the premise that Mr. Trump leads “an extreme administration” that is “dangerous.” Rubin said: “It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again“. ^[30]

In a tweet referenced by CNN Media, Mike Huckabee questioned Rubin, writing: “Jen Rubin is WAPO’s excuse for conservative,” and adding that Rubin’s “contempt for all things Trump exposes her and WAPO as fake news“.^[31]

In April 2021 Rubin was declared winner of the second annual Liberal Hack Tournament, hosted by the “Ruthless” variety progrum, becoming the first woman to win the title.^[32]

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic argued that after the 2012 presidential election, Rubin criticized aspects of the Mitt Romney campaign that she had previously praised, with Friedersdorf insisting that she had acted as “a disingenuous mouthpiece for her favored candidate”.^[33]

In a November 21, 2013, column, Rubin called on the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) to end its campaign against same-sex marriage.^[34]

In September of 2020, she announced that she no longer described herself as a conservative, but given he criticisms of Mitt Romney’s positions and support of same-sex ‘marriage,’ perhaps she should have done that a decade earlier.

On to The Bulwark:

Did We Forget Our Democracy Is Still Under Threat?

Complacency is an inherent weakness of democracy.

by Sarah Longwell | April 22, 2021 | 5:30 AM EDT

Old joke: An old fish and a young fish pass each other. The old fish says, “Fine water today, isn’t it?” The young fish replies, “What’s water?”

This, I have learned in hundreds of hours of focus groups, is how many Americans think about democracy—or more accurately, don’t think about it. Democracy is the system we have, and have inherited, but most of our experiences with any of the alternatives are so remote that we view democracy as the default state. As something that just is.

That isn’t to say that Americans don’t think about politics. Oh, do we. Probably more than is helpful. We have, as a people, some pretty out-there opinions and preferences and expectations about politics.

But mostly when we think about politics, we think about the results we want. These choices are often framed in terms of personalities. Certainly, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the United States: Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, Bibi Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron—the list of personalities that more or less define political divides in democratic societies is long and diverse.

Sometimes the results we want are framed not as people, but as policies: higher taxes or lower taxes, more environmental regulation or less, strong national defense or retrenchment. Maybe having policy preferences is civically healthier than having preferences merely for certain individuals over others. Or maybe character is destiny and policy is transient, so choosing the better person is the way to go.

Miss Longwell continues on, to tell us about the enormous, enormous! dangers of the Capitol kerfuffle, but somehow manages to forget the definition of the words she uses:

Our freedom and self-government are under threat from domestic authoritarian cults in tacit—if not enthusiastic—alliance with foreign despots who desire that the world’s oldest democracy succumb to corrupt populist autocracy.

Uhhh, populist is defined as:

(noun) a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
(adj.) relating to or characteristic of a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

while autocracy is defined as:

a system of government by one person with absolute power.

Thus, a “populist autocracy” is a contradiction in terms.

“(D)omestic authoritarian cults”? It isn’t the Republicans who have held themselves in thrall to Democratic Governors exercising apparently unchecked power to issue orders regulating our lives under the pretext of protecting us from the China virus.^[1]See this to explain why I have started to, occasionally, refer to COVID-19 as the China virus or Wuhan virus.

It isn’t the Republicans who are trying to control every aspect of our lives, to define other people’s beliefs as “hate crimes,” and to “cancel” people with whom they disagree from public life. Miss Longwell is upset, very upset, that we are now “debating corporate tax rates, Dr. Seuss, and trans bathroom access, like nothing ever happened,” as though she hasn’t come to grips with the fact that, though conservatives might not like it, we recognize that Joe Biden is President, that the Democrats control both Houses of Congress, and that we have to do everything we can to fight back against the leftists’ agenda.

But here’s where Miss Longwell really goes off the reservation:

Our democracy is under attack, for real, by a large portion of a major political party which seeks to utterly transform the relationship between the government and the governed.

Well, yes, we are trying to change the relationship between the government and the governed, because the government has become far, far, far too powerful. When a state Governor says that he can order us not to have too many people in our homes, and sets up ‘snitch hotlines’ so officious little Karens can tattle on us, when the Mayor of our largest city says that he can send the gendarmerie into your homes if you’ve traveled from the United Kingdom, then yes, we want to change that.

But, more than that, if a large portion of a major political party seeks to change that relationship, is that not democracy? If a large group of people want to change things, well doesn’t the First Amendment, which (supposedly) protects our freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right of the people peaceably to assemble to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, protect our right to seek change, to ask for change, to demand change?

For Miss Longwell and Mrs Rubin, it appears that democracy is all well and good . . . as long as it produces the results they want. But people, acting in concert, to change things away from what they want? Now that’s a threat, and cannot be tolerated.