Avik Roy Cries Into His Beer

Avik RoyZack Beauchamp sat down in a bar and had a talk with Republican pseudo-intellectual Avik Roy, A Republican Intellectual Explains Why the Republican Party Is Going to Die. Avik Roy is so sad, I just want to give him a nice big hug. Just kidding! I actually want to slap him and tell him to grow up.

Avik Roy, like a lot of Republicans whose jobs don’t depend upon not doing so, is attacking Donald Trump. In the article, he noted that the Republican Party and the conservative movement is driven by white nationalism and not what he sees as true conservatism: limited government, social conservatism, and a strong military. But did it really take Donald Trump to make Avik Roy realize that the Republican base wasn’t actually in it for the tax cuts they never got? For the deregulation that caused them to lose their jobs? For the lead in their drinking water that mentally retarded their children? I don’t think so.

Avik Roy: Conservative Apologist

And this isn’t just my guess: Avik Roy is a conservative so he must be wrong. I’ve been following him for years. He’s never had a new idea — an unknown conservative approach to policy that might make the nation or the world better. Instead, he just hunts around for ways to justify conservative policy. Read my article, Avik Roy: Healthcare Apologist.

It describes part of Roy’s years’ long effort to find some healthcare system that was more “free market” than Obamacare. It always ended up the same way: he didn’t know how the system actually worked and it turned out that Obamacare was actually more “free market.” If he were an honest broker (or the “wonk” he claims to be), he would have admitted that Obamacare was the most “free market” healthcare system that could possibly work. But of course, it didn’t matter because like all conservative elites, he’s fine with the poor dying from treatable disease.

In addition, back in 2013, Roy explained what all this business of “equality of opportunity” really meant to Republicans like himself, Avik Roy Says Republican Reform Just Branding. It didn’t mean that kids got the same education and nutrition; it meant only that there weren’t explicit laws stopping the poor. In other words, as long as America didn’t have a caste system, we had equality of opportunity.

Avik Roy Is Responsible for Donald Trump

In this way, he was clearly lying to the American people every time he mentioned “equality of opportunity.” (Note: he waited until after the 2012 election to write that article.) This is a definition that is totally outside what the vast majority of Americans think the term means. So Avik Roy, the man now crying into his beer at the New York bar, has always seen his job being to lie to the American people generally and the Republican base in particular.

So now Donald Trump comes along and gains control of the Republican Party and the conservative movement by being a flat-out racist. Hey Avik: you were a big part of building Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party. I simply can’t think low enough of you to accept that it took the events of the last year for you to realize that the Republican Party and the conservative movement are built on a bedrock of racism.

Shame on Vox for giving this vile man the opportunity to whine and say he would never have supported a racist party. He should be in a room somewhere doing penance. And we should never hear from him again. Because he owns Trump. He was a big part of the machine that built Trump.

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About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

4 thoughts on “Avik Roy Cries Into His Beer

  1. An old college pal keeps saying we should talk on the phone sometime. And I want to. Just saying “hi bye” the other day lifted my spirits. The guy is interesting, principled, and kind.

    He’s also a Republican. Of the “liberals mean well, but they have no concept of reality” variety. And he’ll want to rip on Trump for betraying conservatism. Just swallow my tongue, be a patient listener, and change the subject to his family whenever possible, I guess.

    When we called out Nixon and Reagan and the rest for using coded race-baiting, we were told that’s not really what conservatism is. Meanwhile the sensible conservatives decried that race-baiting as “unfortunate” while praising, say Thatcher for “taking steps to reform Britain’s unsustainable social welfare system.” Creating the kind of community disruption and hopelessness that leads to fascism.

    Some of those writers are total hacks. Zakaria is an utter fraud. With many, though, I suspect they honestly believe this shit. For the same reason my college friend does. He can’t fail. This or that dream career might not work out, but he can’t fail — his family’s loaded. So the sensible-sounding term “fiscal responsibility” has no weight for him. Not for well-known, high-paid columnists. Brooks could write tomorrow, “my boss is a jerk who deserves being eaten alive by wasps” and he’d be fine professionally, he’d get work someplace else. “Creative destruction,” I believe it’s called.

    I’m sure most of these people either already do or soon will blame Trump on the excesses of liberalism. We pushed too far, you see, with insisting on the rights on non-straight male white Christians. Naturally there would be a backlash. While Trump’s statements are occasionally regrettable, his candidacy represents a useful corrective to the kind of media-approved liberal consensus that led to widespread disapproval of the Confederate flag, a sign of regional pride in one’s heritage which has been cherished for generations.

    Damn, that last sentence is bad enough to be a Friedman or Will. Luckily they aren’t reading this site. Uh-oh, what if Friedman’s cabdriver is?

    • Wow, that comment seemed to predict the next two days of posts.

      As for your friend, well, I think it all comes down to tribalism. I know that my politics are heavily based on my sense of myself as a nice guy and an open-minded guy. I’ve known a lot of conservatives who are focused on not being the fool. I get that. I don’t like to be the fool either. But I place mercy above justice, always. I get the theological imperative of turning the other cheek in Christianity, “You slapped me?! Slap me again!” It’s about who you are — in the case of Christianity, who you are for God.

      Of course, I think the “I’m no fool” crowd is mistaken. They’ve been taken for a ride for decades.

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