I’d also note that Ross Douthat is off his rocker too.

The fact that he was himself a college dropout, leaving college early to found Turning Point USA, was almost the perfect touch: There is nothing more normally American than choosing a really good entrepreneurial opportunity over the full undergraduate four years.

Dropping out of school to start your own business is “normally American”? Really?

And what he argued for, in general, was not some extreme or esoteric form of right-wing politics. He wasn’t a school of one, a would-be philosopher of nationalism or a prophet of post-liberalism. He belonged to and maneuvered within the Trump-era conservatism mainstream, which meant he could be combative and pugilistic and say extreme things (this is 2025, after all) while remaining closer to a normal Republican voter than to the very-online vanguard.

Sure. Charlie had a lot more in common with the rural farmer than the nuts on X. And of course he was part of the “very-online vanguard”.

whether his particular persona, and especially his evolution from college bro to Christian dad, was modeling a more fundamentally normal future for the right than some of the later-Trump-era alternatives.

The guy that thought someone should bail out the nut that attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer? The guy who lied about fraud in the 2020 election and lied about the COVID vaccine? That’s the guy you think might be modelling the “normal future” for the right?

We are in a really weird place right now.