On Tuesday’s edition of the liberal Republican group therapy show known as Deadline: White House, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens celebrated Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s donation to Alabama Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones as a sign of “hope” that some in the party will stand up against Roy Moore and President Trump.
Just before the show came back on the air at 4:46 p.m. Eastern, Flake tweeted a picture of a $100 check to the Jones campaign with the reason for the check being “Country over Party.”
Wallace returned from the commercial break by declaring that “there is hope” with this news that Flake would be giving to a Democrat, not disappointment in what’s clearly virtue-signaling by Flake.
Forget the fact that Flake considers himself to be a true conservative and Jones is strongly pro-abortion or that Flake and company could simply urge people to stay home or support a write-in candidate against Moore. Instead, there were brownie points to be scored in the eyes of MSNBC and the rest of the liberal media.
Alas, that didn’t seem to matter to the fervent anti-Trump Republicans on the show. Stephens replied to Wallace with a mini-sermon that started by stating that Flake’s donation to Jones makes his refusal to walk out of a White House meeting today “forgivable.”
Nonetheless, Stephens lamented how he doesn’t recognize the GOP since Trump launched his campaign:
STEPHENS: You know, I find myself and I think a lot of my friends in the same position, which is, where in a I can't believe what I'm saying moment, because for so much of my political life, I have just been sort of consistently and instinctively on the side of the Republican Party. That’s when it was a matter of the sort of policies they were espousing and especially a version of the Republican Party that was about free trade, enterprise, openness —
WALLACE: Democracy.
STEPHENS: — democracy, human rights and so on. That party, incredibly, in the space of just a year and a half —
WALLACE: Gone
STEPHENS: — and no longer — simply no longer exists and, so you have to ask, ultimately, what are your political priorities?
The Times columnist added that he “would like to see a tax bill passed” or government deregulation, but both things are less important than “the moral health of the party.” Reading between the lines, Stephens essentially argued for Flake’s position that Jones must win.
“Can I say to my children, you ought to be Republicans because of X? And the answer any of them would give me is inarguable: How can I belong to a party that endorses a pedophile? That is, by the way, that's going to haunt the Republican Party, I suspect, for decades,” Stephens concluded.
Here’s the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Deadline: White House on December 5:
MSNBC’s Deadline: White House
December 5, 2017
4:46 p.m. Eastern
NICOLLE WALLACE: As if on queue, Jeff Flake just tweeting, maybe in response to John Heilemann, I don't know, a check that he wrote to Doug Jones for U.S. Senate for $100, under the headline “Country over Party.” Brett, there is hope.
BRET STEPHENS: Yeah, well, look, good for Jeff Flake and, you know, if you don’t have the presence to walk out of one meeting, I think that’s forgivable. You know, I find myself and I think a lot of my friends in the same position, which is, where in a I can't believe what I'm saying moment, because for so much of my political life, I have just been sort of consistently and instinctively on the side of the Republican Party. That’s when it was a matter of the sort of policies they were espousing and especially a version of the Republican Party that was about free trade, enterprise, openness —
WALLACE: Democracy.
STEPHENS: — democracy, human rights and so on. That party, incredibly, in the space of just a year and a half —
WALLACE: Gone
STEPHENS: — and no longer — simply no longer exists and, so you have to ask, ultimately, what are your political priorities? Much as I would like to see a tax bill passed or deregulation or one thing or another —
WALLACE: Right.
STEPHENS: — all of that pales compared to the moral health of the party. Can I say to my children, you ought to be Republicans because of X? And the answer any of them would give me is inarguable: How can I belong to a party that endorses a pedophile? That is, by the way, that's going to haunt the Republican Party, I suspect, for decades.
