WHAT RALPH PETERS TELLS US ABOUT CONSERVATISM

While we wait for more information on the now-deceased Austin bombing suspect, I'd like to comment briefly on Ralph Peters, who says he'll no longer be a Fox News commentator.

A retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News contributor quit Tuesday and denounced the network and President Donald Trump in an email to colleagues.

"Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration," wrote Ralph Peters, a Fox News "strategic analyst."

"Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed," he wrote.

Roy Edroso has the details on the man he calls "Blood 'n' Guts," particularly on his incessant cheerleading for the Iraq War and his insistence that the media and liberals were on the side of America's enemies in that war. I question Roy's assertion that Peters was less fevered after Obama's election (with the exception of the time he called Obama a "total pussy") -- the Peters archives at Media Matters include items such as "Fox's Ralph Peters: 'Lincoln Freed The Slaves, Obama Freed The Terrorists"'; "Fox's Ralph Peters: Obama Won’t Say 'Radical Islam' Because Of “His Experience With Islam Was As A Child ... He Romanticizes Islam'"; and "Fox's Ralph Peters: I'm Waiting For Obama To Bring Eric Holder Out Of Retirement 'To Lead A New Movement, Jihadi Lives Matter.'"

It's being argued that we shouldn't regard Peters as enlightened because he's the same guy who expressed these opinions in the past. He is -- but that tells us something about conservatism in the Fox News era.

It often seems as if the conservative ideology rigidly follows Cleek's Law: Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily. That's mostly true. But Peters reminds us that there's a non-Cleek conservatism -- and it's completely nuts. The career of Ralph Peters reminds us that conservatism won't be polite and reasonable once President Trump is out of office -- it will still be extreme, and unwilling to make any compromise with liberals, or even moderates, on any subject it's passionate about.

So don't expect a return to political comity once we're rid of Trump -- expect Ralph Peters and conservatives like him.