Kyle Smith had a brilliant column earlier in the week - really, it’s so good you need to read it in its entirety, so I won’t excerpt it here - satirizing conservative/Republican pundits who keep getting invited to appear in left-leaning media because of the potshots they keep taking at their own side’s most faithful and stalwart defenders, a group we called out back in October. I tend to think of these as Washington Generals conservatives, after the basketball “team” that travels with the Harlem Globetrotters, serving no purpose other than to be defeated. But a more interesting question is what motivates such people. Some, undoubtedly, are genuinely offended by, say, social conservatism, some have taken too easily to heart their own social circles, some have personal axes to grind, some just need the money, what have you. But I have been reminded frequently enough of late to be worth reposting here an extended quotation from George Orwell’s fine essay on James Burnham (himself a major figure of the Right of his day), as so much of what Orwell says could seem to apply as well to the Eeyores and ingratiators on today’s Right:

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