@blatham,
I consider WH staff to be government employees. I feel certain that US tax dollars are used to pay their salaries.
There are leaks that fit the traditional definition of "whistle blowing" and then there are those done for political ends, spite and, I'm guessing, ego. Those that truly fit the traditional definition are rare.
Leaking details of the Manchester Bombing investigation could not possibly be called whistle blowing. Those that did it were either paid in cash or the attention and flattery of media hounds.
Yes, I did miss comments from Limbaugh and Ingraham. I'd point out though that neither are GOP politicians nor leaders of the conservative movement. Obviously Limbaugh is a very influential conservative as respects the opinions of millions of Americans who classify themselves as conservative (Ingraham far less so), but they are no more leaders of the conservative movement than Rachel Maddow and Jonathan Stewart are leaders of the liberal movement.
Unless the facts of the particular incident are very much different from what I've heard or read, Gianforte's behavior was inexcusable, in my mind, and I don't find it appropriate to condone it in any way simply because so many reporters are obnoxious twits. They don't have violence coming to them. Anyone making a joke about it is in a grey area for me. He doesn't seem to have been seriously injured so it would be hard to say any such jokes were as insensitive and in horrid taste as those that have been made about Sarah Palin's children, but I doubt that, unlike with the Palin jokes, any late night comics addressing the incident cast the innocent party as the butt of the joke.
In any case, assertions that the incident is evidence that a) Donald Trump has corrupted American society, the GOP or the conservative movement or b) The conservative movement is corrupted are entirely overblown and people like Charen (who I often agree with) and Gershon (who I rarely agree with) are using it for the convenience of their obvious distaste for Trump. Charen though is no hypocrite. For years she has reliably spoken out against acts and words of incivility and if she reserved her criticism only for that which comes from the left, I would be disappointed.
In both cases, we see pundits who are not at all happy with the fact that Trump is president, but I think that each has come to that point along different paths. The writers at National Review all like to consider themselves intellectuals and for the most part they all are, but regardless of what policies Trump had campaigned on, they were never going to fully embrace him. Intellectuals of any stripe tend to be elitists and a crude populist is rarely going to be a personal favorite. I've no problem with that since I was never going to fully embrace him and I still haven't. The difference though is that many of the writers can't resist highlighting any and all incidents that can be used in defense of "I told you so!" In this case, Charen couldn't resist using an incident that is entirely besides the point. No one at National Review, to my knowledge, predicted that if Trump was elected, GOP candidates would resort to violence in dealing with obnoxious reporters.
As far as Gershon goes, while I dislike use of the term RINO, it seems to suit him well.
That a man with Trump's obvious personality flaws is our president is a symptom, not the cause, of the ever coarsening American culture and I would argue that liberals are far more responsible for that unfortunate arc than conservatives. Regardless, it is a pre-existing condition that can't be blamed on any one person or event.
