Jim Webb, MAGA’s Forbidden Love, Will Never Survive Donald Trump
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The far right has a curious affection for the Democrat in exile. But Webb has an independent streak a mile wide and is allergic to authority. Will the base still love him when he tries to out-alpha Trump?
Having retroactively fired James Mattis (“essentially” fired, anyway), President Donald Trump is on the hunt for a more like-minded defense secretary to execute his vision for the military and the Middle East: somebody with a warlike bearing (Trump likes his defense secretaries “out of central casting”), who believes in a formidable and well-funded military, but who shares Trump’s skepticism of foreign interventions. Someone, in other words, like Jim Webb.
Multiple reports suggest the former Virginia senator is a front-runner to lead the Pentagon, and the MAGA crowd appears to approve. “There’s no man more qualified or better suited for that job than former Sen. Jim Webb,” writes Ryan Girdusky in the Washington Examiner . Prominent pro-Trump commentators such as Mollie Hemingway and Laura Ingraham, have piled on. Webb’s consistently-held views, Hemingway argued the first time his name was floated for the role, represent “the best version of Trump’s foreign policy, and one he consistently discussed during campaign speeches and debates.” The American Conservative ’s Curt Mills labeled Webb “practical” and “Senate confirmable,” and quotes Jim Hanson, president of the Security Studies Group, who calls Webb “a smart choice [who] believes in a strong military, used only when the need is unmistakable and the mission is crystal clear.”
Indeed, on paper, there is much for MAGA-world to love. While Webb is a Democrat, and briefly ran as one in the Democratic primary, he was the right kind of Democrat, one that the Trump base could love: a culturally-conservative Vietnam veteran who boasts about America’s military might but was a staunch opponent of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Webb shares Trump’s identitarian politics and masculine bravura, having alluded to killing an enemy soldier during a presidential debate in 2015 . More important, he’s one of the few Democrats who applauded Trump’s victory in 2016, telling the Richmond Times-Dispatch shortly after the election that Trump should be a wake-up call for a Democratic Party that had “descended from the party that had championed the rights of working people—regardless of race, creed, gender, or any other differentiation—to the point that it made white working people their most convenient whipping posts.” He is, as NBC News reporter Benjy Sarlin put it, “ MAGA-curious.”
But it’s this longstanding contrarianism, combined with an aggressive machismo, that could ultimately doom him as a hypothetical Trump Cabinet member. Trump, after all, has ousted allies he thought outshone him ( Steve Bannon ), who gave the impression they were in control ( John Kelly ), or who argued too vociferously ( Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster ). The president still distrusts allies such as John Bolton, the controversial national security adviser, whose love of asymmetric warfare clashes directly with his own instinct to cut and run. If there is one common attribute among the the lifers in the Trump West Wing, it is an unflinching loyalty, a high tolerance for humiliation, and an acquired taste for crow.
Webb, who resigned as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Navy after less than a year rather than make any budget cuts, and who didn’t last longer than one term in the Senate, does not seem inclined toward sycophancy. Will he put up with the tweets? The flip-flops? The policy incoherence that drove predecessors mad? “Their personality clash has the potential to balloon from amusing reality-show drama levels to really toxic dysfunction,” predicts conservative commentator Allahpundit at Hot Air. “Which is bad for any government agency but for the Pentagon especially.” In a White House where distinguished public servants have been reduced to soap-opera caricatures by the time they depart, the nomination of Webb, regardless of how much he approves the MAGA foreign-policy agenda, could essentially lead to two Donald Trumps facing off in Cabinet meetings. That’s a doppelgänger scenario that not even the most feverish Trump fanboy wants to see. (For what it's worth, on Friday afternoon, Trump tweeted that the New York Times story about Webb being considered is “fake news.” )
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(For what it's worth, on Friday afternoon, Trump tweeted that the New York Times story about Webb being considered is “fake news.” )
And Trump is well known for being a man of his word. ROFL
One part of me wants this to happen just for the clusterf**k effect it will undoubtedly be and the further demonstration of how demented Scumbag is but another part tells me that it's just not good to let Scumbag have any role as commander-in-chief. His mental illness and ignorance are just too dangerously explosive a combination.
I liked Jim Webb as Virginia's Senator and wish he had ran again. He is independent and stubborn too.
There is a very hardcore conservative on this site who claimed during the run up to the 2016 democrat primary that he would vote for Webb in the general election “if the dumbass democrats would nominate him”. It’s an interesting dynamic for sure, considering that the conservative in question is full on MAGA.
Well, let's never forget that if nothing else MAGAs have demonstrated don't generally operate in any kind of thought-driven way.
The latest from Scumbag is no-way has Webb been considered for the job. That obviously means it was by at least someone in the administration but Scumbag nixed it when he realized he be afraid to be in the same room with Webb.