There’s a striking similarity here between Vance’s behavior and Kevin Roberts’ a year ago. Both of these guys spend a lot of time harping on how fighting the Left is so urgent that it needs to be priority #1. And so both guys spend a lot of time, effort, and political capital running cover for Right-aligned figures who push conspiracy theories, hatred, and nonsense. But then they also show that, on second thought, they’re perfectly capable of savaging different Right-aligned figures when their actual in-group is under criticism—in fact, they’re *happy* to. It’s only when they go after actual conservatives that they show gusto or any real signs of life. So Kevin Roberts will defend Tucker Carlson, a discredited conspiracy-pushing lunatic, because it’s a big tent—but the conservatives who criticize Tucker are a “venomous coalition”. (Rewatch his video statement: that attack has the most vitality of anything he says.) Vance will refuse to move against an obvious and deeply troubling rise in toxic ideas in his party…….but when Republicans condemn a truly wretched attack ad suddenly he’s “disgusted” by them. And in case the picture emerging here is that Roberts and Vance simply want loyalty, circled wagons, and a unified front: let’s not forget that both of these two LOVE purity tests and publicly attacking people on the Right. Roberts will one day be kvetching about “the establishment” with rhetoric condemning their “typical” ambivalence and condemning the “atrocious leadership” of Sen. McConnell, and the next thing you know he’s calling conservative gatekeeping “stupid”. They don’t want unity and focus rather than the metaphorical “circular firing squads”; they are fine with circular firing squads just so long as they’re winning. (Worth noting: this also goes for Ramaswamy, he of such classics as “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t bought and paid for” and “NIKKI = CORRRUPT” from the 2024 GOP primary debates.) In a word: when Vance & Roberts do all this public lambasting, it is not because they are trying to just quell in-fighting to get everyone to “focus”. They think their clique of Russia-friendly, conspiratorial Reich-apologists should be running the show, and that their critics should be browbeaten into silence. And, yes, it’s deeply weird how both of these people have “friendships” with Tucker Carlson that both repeatedly speak very publicly about. Again, both of these two guys *love* vilifying “the Establishment” as a bunch of self-important sell-outs who betrayed their stated principles in the name of material gain, provincial institutional interests, and self-serving elitist personal networks, advancing a vision of societal good from the top-down while being insulated from actual people—so it is the *height* of *hypocrisy* when they not only do the same thing, but defend it using those same aspects as justifications. They’ve more or less said, “Sure, Tucker’s done glowing PR for a geopolitical foe and a war criminal, but he’s a buddy of mine. The only specific thing I’ll publicly frown upon is how he’s criticized Trump—because Trump’s an even bigger friend of mine than Tucker is.” Reprehensible.