Times like these call for clarity. It’s important to know exactly where the well-coiffed denizens of our chattering class stand. With democracy hanging in the balance, these so-called talking heads play a critical role in bringing the forgotten voices of people with personal drivers into the discourse. It’s in that spirit I’d like to formally endorse Ana Navarro as the new host of “The View.”
Few pundits could dream of matching Navarro’s consistency as a clueless flack for the political establishment. When Mitt Romney lost in 2012, there was Navarro, haunting Harvard’s hallowed halls with prescient pre-Trump musings like, “I think you’re going to see voices in the Republican Party become more vocal, louder talking about inclusion, talking about diversity.” Fresh off a stint with Jon Huntsman, Navarro took on the human form of the RNC autopsy, nudging conservatives to moderate for the sake of political expediency.
Come, swim in the gentle waters of cosmopolitan privilege, she beckoned, where the rosé flows as freely as the pablum, where nothing matters but book parties and superficial virtue. So long as you say something about civility or “inclusion” or “diversity,” you can casually promote the interests of corporatists who are bulldozing the country for profit. And you can do it with a blowout!
“The View” is now as accurate a name as ever, signaling the show’s intent to present only the View, the one view that unites purported Republicans like Navarro and full-blown liberals: Civility necessitates cultural leftism and dissenters are bigots. This is the conservatism Disney-ABC wants viewers to find acceptable, social liberalism with a dash of fiscal conservatism when it serves corporate interests, someone who will eagerly join the chorus in condemning every facet of actual conservatism as deplorable bigotry rather than risk an awkward moment backstage.
The problem, of course, is that pundits who let power become their ideology are often very wrong. They are very indignant but very wrong. Navarro spent the years after Romney’s loss arguing he fell to Barack Obama for “going very far right” on immigration. She blamed Republicans for “ma[king] gays believe we want to neuter them” and “ma[king] young girls in college think we’re going to make it very hard for them to have sex.” She waxed optimistic about a Jeb Bush candidacy, predicting he would be a “tremendous game-changer” based on his success with Hispanic voters. (Donald Trump would nearly match his margins with Florida Hispanics in 2020.)
Implicitly and explicitly, Navarro tarred conservatives as racist homophobes, using her platform to amplify those charges and advocate for policy shifts that would better align the GOP with elite values than voters’ values. She read the electorate wrong in the interest of her own corporate centrism. And that’s exactly why she’s best suited to be “The View’s” token conservative.
So in the spirit of dispensing with pretenses, Navarro is the perfect choice for the empty seat. Get on with it already! Make it official. In this era of “The View,” where sanctimonious agreement is prized over debate and confirming elite priors is prized over accuracy, no pundit could better enhance the show’s mission than Ana Navarro.
