Despite media fixation, GOP establishment elite McMullin set for dismal third place finish in Utah
by Edmund Kozak
The neoconservative wing of the #NeverTrump movement died an inglorious death in Utah on Tuesday, as it seems that their last and less than inspiring hope, independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, placed third.
Although only 19 percent of precincts have reported, Fox News has already called the Beehive State for Trump, who at the time of writing has 57 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton is in solid second place with around 22 percent of the vote. McMullin is polling at only 19 percent.
McMullin’s third-place finish is proof that the American electorate has had enough of the destructive neoconservative agenda of wasteful foreign wars and continued globalization.
Indeed, McMullin himself was the perfect symbol for neoconservatism, a candidate who claimed in October that “I’m the only conservative, sadly, in this race now … I stand for limited government and for individual liberty,” yet spent over ten years as an active CIA agent followed by a lucrative career at Goldman Sachs.
Utah was supposed to be the one place where McMullin could prove not just his relevance and popularity, but the relevance and popularity of the nefarious neoconservative agenda he represents. At least that’s what Bill Kristol and company had convinced themselves.
But out of the 16 polls taken in Utah leading up to the election, McMullin only polled first place in one of them. Trump polled first with leads of over ten points in 14 of those polls.
Clearly, McMullin’s campaign was a fool’s errand from the start, and it serves as a shining example of the hubris of the neoconservative Establishment elite.
But for those neoconservatives who were either so out of touch or so proud that they couldn’t see the inevitable, McMullin’s spectacularly doomed campaign and its crushing loss should finally get them to accept the new political reality.