Many Republican observers of the Utah Senate race have noted Evan McMullin’s obviously false claims at anything approaching ideological conservatism. But it strikes me that this is the wrong understanding of the bald Mormon CIA agent who seeks to unseat constitutional conservative Senator Mike Lee.
McMullin is more properly understood as a deep state plant who will represent the interests of the likes of Peter Strzok if elected by voters apparently unaware of his completely fictionalized position matrix.
I interviewed McMullin when he was running against Donald Trump as a “principled conservative,” hoping to twist Utah into the Democratic column and drive the 2016 presidential stakes into the Congress. (Bill Kristol had a lot of crazy ideas about this back in the day; people deal with grief and loss in different ways.) At the time, McMullin claimed to be a tried and true conservative on abortion, guns, federalism, taxes, you name it — he took the positions of 80 to 90 percent of conservative voters on every question. It was well-rehearsed. But it was obviously rehearsed. Dig any deeper, and you could tell the man was reciting lines instead of telling the truth.
McMullin ultimately failed in his endeavor. He still owes more than half a million in debt for that extremely silly campaign. But he didn’t stop there — he then tried to ingratiate himself to the American #Resistance in every respect. He now spews the talking points of Kristol’s Bulwark publication, creating a veneer of clichéd Republicanism that seems more at home on broadcast TV dramas. What is McMullin lying about — that he’s a Straussian, or that he’s any good at it?
Since his embarrassing, costly, and fanciful attempt to block Donald Trump in 2016 — the libertarian candidates did six times better — McMullin has since found fit to do what is necessary to achieve a shot at a Senate seat in Utah. This includes rejiggering his poll-tested talking points, marrying a woman with kids from a prior marriage, and sucking up to the Mitt Romney machine (which wants Mike Lee gone but without their fingerprints on any of it).
There is something deeply odd about the way in which the least serious members of the media seem so eager to embrace hairless men with obviously false slogans as champions against Trump and Trumpism. Whether Michael Avenatti or Evan McMullin, such men can never be trusted. But what’s perhaps more disturbing about a Utah voter even considering a vote for McMullin over Lee is that the former’s entire history is of loyalty to the deep state and all its works. He will be immediately distrusted if sent to the Senate, sidelined from conferences, incapable of working for committees or moving legislation. He exists merely to remove Mike Lee, which is apparently something certain people want.
Utah might as well elect Peter Strzok to the Senate and cut out the middle man. If you’re going to be a demonstration of the failure of the American deep state, you should own it to the hilt.
