A virtue of this profile of
Elise Stefanik by Nick Confessore is that it doesn't describe an ideological conversion.
Rather, Stefanik had no strong beliefs to begin with. Her rise is a simpler tale of ambition— and an emptiness inside. The profile is of the party's direction, as much as the person who went with it.
"Friends going back to Ms. Stefanik’s Harvard days struggled to identify any of her deeply held political beliefs at all."
@jayrosen_nyu I have a somewhat different take, which is that the absence of principles is itself a signal of certain beliefs, which have now been revealed by the willingness to completely embrace the authoritarianism. I think it’s a mistake to chalk this all up to the obvious hyper-ambition. Even most hyper-ambitious Harvard students have ethical/democratic lines they will not cross, & we should believe people when they show us who they are:
Jay Rosen
Mark Copelovitch