Thomas Massie’s fall shows what really destroys principled US conservatism: not the left, but obedience to the Israeli lobby
As an inveterate leftie with an irrepressible intuitive sympathy for genuine, decent conservatives – that term excludes, obviously, gutless mainstream centrists – I am always looking for exemplars of this old and venerable political species. For one thing, they are much more fun to talk to than woked-out liberals, washed-out social-democrats, or hysterical warmongers of the German variety of (camouflage) Green.
Genuine, decent conservatives tend to have much to say – about, for instance, such vital things as religion, culture, and the family – that is well worth listening to, whether you agree or not. And unlike dour, doctrinaire, and frequently neurotic centrists, genuine conservatives often have the calm self-confidence that comes from being authentic, and thus they can afford tolerance and a sense of humor, even humility.
Alas, it seems that, in the West, such decent conservatives are if not on the verge of extinction, then at least seriously endangered. And, ironically, their worst enemies are not my sort of people, the often all-too-toothless left.
What decent conservatives have to fear the most are their own fellow conservatives, but of the indecent kind. In the US – and not only – that indecency takes a specific form, namely spineless, profoundly unpatriotic submission to the interests of a foreign, and, as it happens, genocidal state and its powerful lobby, Israel.
Case in point: Thomas Massie, a prominent and influential US congressman from Kentucky. Massie has just been defeated by, in essence, his own political tribe. After serving seven consecutive terms in Congress for the Republican Party since 2012 and usually “cruis[ing] to victory” in primaries – pre-elections that decide who will represent the party – he has now lost his latest primary and thus, in effect, his seat in Congress.
Read more Trump-backed challenger defeats Thomas Massie in KentuckyPrimaries are frequent, but this one attracted much special interest. And rightly so. It clearly was of great national significance, as US President Donald Trump himself went out of his way to launch and support the challenge to Massie, turning the humble local vote in a fairly remote district in a not-so-prominent state into a personal loyalty test. All who are with me – Trump in effect said – kiss my ring, and do not dare vote for Massie the rebel!
In that sense, Massie’s defeat by the largely unknown and politically inchoate newcomer Ed Gallrein is a victory for Trump. Once again, the man who made and betrayed MAGA has proven that he can stop – or at least, disrupt – the political careers of Republicans who oppose him. After a long, acrimonious relationship, Trump has won the divorce: Even during his first term he had called for, in effect, purging Massie from the Republican Party. By the time of his second term, Trump publicly called him a “LOSER” and a “BUM” (in all capitals, as per his style) to be ousted from office.
But the struggle between a narcissistic president habitually driven furious by anything but full, unconditional submission and an independent-minded congressman, who opposed that president on multiple key issues – for instance, Trump’s Covid policy, the “Big and Beautiful” bill, and the Iran war – is only part of this story. And not the most important one.
What really cost Massie his seat is, in one word, Israel. Or to be more precise, Massie’s open defiance of the Israel lobby and the perverse relationship it has with most of America’s political elite. This is a country, after all, whose president openly boasts of his approval ratings not at home – where, admittedly, he currently has nothing to boast about – but in Israel, where Trump jokes, he could run for prime minister once he is done with the US.
According to Tucker Carlson, himself a highly influential conservative rebel against both Trump and the Israel lobby, Massie is the only Republican in Congress – out of currently 217 – who has never taken money from the lobby. According to Massie, not for want of offers: the lobby, he reports, has attempted to buy him for years. Consistently saying no has made him a target for removal instead. For now, unfortunately, with success.
Read more Epstein weaponized in US midterm battlesAnd the Israel lobby really made it rain this time. Megyn Kelly, like Massie and Trump an American conservative (by now) in opposition to Trump, has also dedicated a long segment of her very popular show to Massie’s defeat. With its total cost of over $32 million, this was the most expensive congressional primary in US history. According to Kelly, of that obscene total – a new local record in America’s long tradition of the worst-democracy-money-can-buy – $9 million came from AIPAC, that is, the institutional core of the Israel lobby (at least in public) and another $7 million from an especially established Super PAC – in essence, an election-buying-and-manipulation machine – that channeled the brazen intervention of billionaires, such as Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer, who are also Israel lobby mainstays.
What has Massie done to deserve such hostile largesse? Massie is, of course, not an “anti-Semite,” although that smear has predictably been used against him. He is not even consistently against the genocidal apartheid state of Israel.
Massie’s real sins are breathtakingly simple: Massie has fought, with some if limited success, for transparency in the case of the convicted sex criminal, massively Israel-connected agent of influence, and certainly not suicide victim, Jeffrey Epstein. And he has argued that America is in such horrendous debt that it should stop supporting other countries, including the single greatest and strategically counter-productive drain on its resources, Israel.
That is enough in today’s America: to insist that Americans have a right to know about a hyper-connected criminal who was busy buying and blackmailing US elites and that Americans have no obligation to sacrifice their taxes to Israel. To insist, in other words, on American national interests.
Read more Trump vs Massie in Kentucky: Is Israel breaking MAGA?That Massie then consistently also opposed Trump’s policy to waste US lives, wealth, and international standing (a very depleted resource anyhow) by obeying Israel’s order to attack Iran only strengthened his enemies’ resolve to destroy him at least politically.
This need not be the end of the story. Massie, for one, has already promised that he will use his remaining time in Congress to expose more individuals who were involved with Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes. He has also not ruled out a run for president in 2028. Neither has Tucker Carlson, as it happens.
For now, Trump, and through him the Israel lobby, are maintaining their devastating grip on US politics. Before it finally loosens, Americans lack not only genuine democracy but even elementary sovereignty. The key question facing their nation is simple: Will the shameless manipulation of their politics by the lobby of a foreign country continue to escalate or will it, at long last, provoke a backlash that, as a minimum, would restore US independence? And perhaps the possibility to survive as a decent conservative in American mainstream politics.
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