The Rehabilitation of Charlie Kirk

I am going to make a prediction. But first some background.

Some years ago, perhaps on the occasion of Gerald Ford's passing, I made this observation:

There is none so beloved of Democrats than a dead Republican.

I am reasonably certain that, were I to dig through their archives, I could find expressed in MSM sources some variants of the following:

• Trump (or Bush '43), you're no Ronald Reagan!

• Reagan, you're no Barry Goldwater!

• Goldwater, you're no Robert Taft!

• Etc.

It's easy to see why. Once safely dead, older Republicans can serve as those against whom younger Republicans can be compared unfavorably. My prediction is that within the next three years, the NYT will be putting the recently late Charlie Kirk to exactly this end, probably against JD Vance.

I regard this as a non-trivial prediction under the present circumstances. As we have seen (cite: the growing database of anti-social reactions, publicly and under their own names, of prominent if not 1st tier Democrat-aligned personalities and even Democrat office-holders), Kirk's assassination has been an occasion for unrestrained glee throughout the Cathedral. As of this writing, this approach is in the process of backfiring hard, not just on the people getting fired, but on the Left brand generally. When an organization as gay and retarded as the NFL finds it expedient to conduct pre-game Charlie Kirk tributes, Dems, you're not winning the culture war.

A fact not lost on tier-one Democrats. I predict that in three years time they will have reasserted control of the narrative and memory-holed the current ugliness. They will instead be trying a new tack: Charlie Kirk was ever so much better than whichever figure on the right most threatens them then.

First of all, it's hard to keep hating a dead guy.

Second, Charlie will have given them much to work with. He was exemplary in his personal grace and magnanimity, an expression of his Christianity. Further, he throughout his career was never more than a few steps away from normie Republican. I hasten to add that "normie Republican" has evolved over the last decade, and Charlie evolved with it. But when I first became aware of Turning Point back then, it struck me as yet more of the Bush-era "conservatism" that no longer interested me; it was only after his passing that I caught up to how important he had become. My point is that when the time comes, the NYT will produce Kirk-isms to use against the 2028 Republican presidential candidate.