Who Said It, Hillary Clinton or Conservatism, Inc.?

In light of Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” I thought it would be fun to play a game.  There has been a lot of moral preening on the intellectual Right combined with talk about keeping the sacred flame of True Conservatism™ alive.  Tellingly, there has been much more talk about protecting Conservatism, Inc. than about protecting the country and her people.

And for more than a year that cloying moral superiority has led directly to open contempt not just for Donald Trump, but for the 80% of Republican voters who support him.  It is a contempt shared by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

So let’s play the game.  Who said it, Hillary Clinton or Conservatism, Inc.?

1. (Voters) “who think Donald Trump is the greatest thing. Oh, it’s something. But the fact of the matter is most of them are childless, single men who masturbate to Anime. They’re not real political players. These are not people who matter in the overall course of humanity.”  Former Bush Strategist Rick Wilson
2. “There are three kinds of Trump supporters: 1) Don’t know 2) Don’t care 3) Racist assholes”  Ben Howe, Contributing Editor of Redstate.com
3. “The white supremacists who back Trump had to be crying a bit into their swastikas tonight. Trump said nice things about Israel. (NOTE: Not all Trump supporters are white supremacists, but a hell of a lot of white supremacists are Trump supporters)”  Erick Erickson
4. Trump supporters have “a vicious, reductive worldview.” Kevin Williamson, National Review
5. “So this was pretty shocking and shameful, I’ve seen a lot of, but this is not a meeting of the Republican National Committee. This is a meeting of brownshirts.”  Former GOP Senator Gordon Humphrey
6. “They (Trump supporters) celebrate in Trump what progressives saw in Bill Clinton: a cudgel with which to bludgeon one’s enemies, real or perceived, though I expect that “winning” as its own justification is going to look a lot less persuasive to the Right come November. Principles, standards of personal conduct, moral codes, honor — from that point of view, these are only participation trophies for the insufficiently ruthless. That this attitude should prevail so strongly among the world’s losers — the aggrieved, those who lament, endlessly, that the deck is stacked against them and their kind — constitutes a kind of inverted Nietzschean ethic, not that this would ever occur to them.”  Kevin Williamson, National Review
7. “Trump is a fascist. That’s not a term I use loosely or often, but he’s earned it.”  Max Boot, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations 
8. “You want somebody (referring to Trump) who has divided us, who is grooming Brownshirts? I was at the caucus last night. I had never seen anything like it. These Trump supporters were beyond recognition as anything I’ve ever seen — rude, vile, nasty.”  Glenn Beck
9. “You know, just to be grossly generalist, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”  Hillary Clinton, Democrat candidate for President of the United States

Hillary and the #NeverTrumpers seem to have a lot in common and not just when it comes to their affection for open borders, Davos-style trade policy, and foreign policy misadventures.  It also extends to how they view their fellow Americans.  Here’s the short version: Democrats think that Republicans are mouth-breathing racists and Nazis while #NeverTrump conservatives think that Republicans are mouth-breathing racists and crypto-Nazis.

It’s a fine distinction that will surely warrant a spate of navel-gazing apologias (not apologies) from the usual suspects.  Interestingly though, not everyone in the media is following the Clinton line.  There’s still a bit of common sense on offer if you look hard enough which is why I’m able to offer an extra credit question.  See if you can figure out who said the following and where:

“Having been to Trump rallies, I find it difficult to believe half the crowd feels that way. Certainly there are quite a few Americans I talked to who suppressed the opposite of these sentiments. The alt-right movement, while it has been very noisy and many have said they do support Donald Trump, it is not necessarily a group that’s large enough to give you close to 50 percent in some of these national polls.”

So who said this? Full credit if you get just the outlet.

It was Kasie Hunt of MSNBC.  Fair and balanced.  That’s how far we’ve come during this election: It’s MSNBC giving Republican voters a more or less fair shake, while the conservative media indicts them with more vehemence even than Hillary Clinton.