Joe Walsh, a right-wing talk-radio host and former Tea Party congressman, has announced he's challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. I gather he doesn't think he has a chance of winning but it's kinda nice to see someone who can't be dismissed as a "libtard" saying that Trump is a child, Trump is a disaster, Trump is destroying the economy, Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, etc. The problem is that Joe Walsh has long had all those qualities apart from the ones that require presidential power.
I've seen three or four interviews with him and he keeps saying he needs to look back on his old tweets and statements and "own" them. In the parlance of today, I take that to mean you have to admit you made them and to say you wish you hadn't…and that's about it. You don't have to, for example, retract them or apologize to those who may have been harmed. You certainly don't have to admit that you engaged in the kind of thing that you now call blatant lies when Donald Trump says them.
There has long been money to be made by bashing Trump. It's why people put out anti-Trump shirts, tell anti-Trump jokes on talk shows, publish anti-Trump books, etc. I'm not saying those efforts aren't also sincere and political and totally protected by any reasonable definition of Free Speech. It's just that when there's dough to be made off those t-shirts and such, they're more likely to be sold. In the past though, the market for them was people who never liked Trump, never voted for him, never had any respect for the guy.
While I may doubt Mr. Walsh's sincerity, what I think we're seeing now is people trying to get in on the expected bandwagon of former Trump-supporters who are looking likely to abandon him. It may not be most of his backers but it may be enough that there will be advantages to getting in on the ground floor. Anthony Scaramucci has now apparently figured out there's no place for him in the pro-Trump world, whereas he gets welcomed on talk shows and gets book deals by turning on Donald. Joe Walsh wouldn't be on all those interview shows if he was still solidly behind Trump.
His conversion may be genuine but it may also be because he's anticipating a growing trend in talk radio and punditry, which are really the only things he does these days. I hope for his sake and the country's, it will turn out to be a wise business decision. Because I suspect that's all it is.