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 finally remember what this reminds me of. It's the Jane Mayer piece on McConnell in TNY from 2020:
"For months, I searched for the larger principles or sense of purpose that animates McConnell ... Finally, someone who knows him very well told me, “Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn't there. I wish I could tell you that there is some secret thing that he really believes in, but he doesn't.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/20/how-mitch-mcconnell-became-trumps-enabler-in-chief
Jay Rosen
Kim Scheinberg
Jonah Stein