THE WORST DECISIONS ALMOST ALWAYS COME FROM UNQUESTIONED BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS.

That's long been a message of mine, and here I'm quoting Tucker Carlson's Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.  It's not going to be a long Book Review N^o. 3, as the author covers some of the same ground as Kurt Schlichter in Militant Normals, if, perhaps, in a less hyperbolic way.  That is, where Mr Schlichter makes up a spoiled Millennial called Kaden to represent the kind of credentialed softie who votes Democrat and eats Kale and holds Normals in contempt, Mr Carlson introduces a genuine spoiled Millennial named Chelsea Clinton.  Likewise, where Mr Schlichter slags on cruise-shilling Conservative Establishment squishes as a class, Mr Carlson goes directly after William Kristol.  Both books raise the same point about contemporary Democrats, which, in Ship, you find on page 169, about the Democrat post-mortem.  "If voters think you hate them for how they were born, they won't vote for you."  (There are all manner of extensions to that argument, but not today.)

Two books, both polemical, but National Review's Jim Geraghty suggests, in a less provocative way, that there's something there.

Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or sent letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don’t make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they’re making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they’re doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle. Meanwhile, conservative candidates lose, kicking the dirt after primary day or the general election, convinced that if they had just had another $100,000 for get-out-the-vote operations, they might have come out on top.

It's worth noting that National Review devoted an entire issue to all the ways one Donald Trump wasn't a True Conservative, but the failures, electoral or otherwise, don't necessarily involve Donald Trump.

Imagine if instead of disappearing down rat holes and being spent on more fundraising, just $10 million of that $127 million to $177 million sum had been better spent. Imagine if that $10 million had gone to the campaigns of the GOP candidates in the 20 House districts that they lost by five percentage points or less in 2018. That’s $500,000 per campaign. If Mia Love had 625 more votes in Utah, she would have held her seat. Think she and her campaign could have identified and mobilized another 700 Love-supporting voters in her district if they had another half-million?

That's consistent with Mr Carlson's closing recommendation. Political elites, attend to the people.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)