THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS.

Erick Erickson was once a Trump skeptic, but when Trump won he began almost immediately to turn:

Take Erick Erickson, the former CNN pundit who for months denounced Trump in nearly apocalyptic terms — e.g. “With the rise of an authoritarian menace to our republic, it is important to go on record now, while he can be stopped, that we will play no part in his rise.” 

After the election, Erickson was conciliatory — not toward voters who had tried to stop Trump, but toward Trump himself. “Perhaps,” he mooned, “as only Nixon could go to China, maybe only Trump can reunite the country.”

Last month Erickson declared himself all-in for the big win:

This week in 2016, I declared I would be “Never Trump.” A friend suggested I use a hashtag that had started circulating on Twitter, i.e #NeverTrump. The piece exploded and pushed me into a whirlwind of coverage. Despite lots of pressure, protestors literally on my front porch, and harassment directed towards my family, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. I voted third party.

Some of my concerns about President Trump remain. I still struggle on the character issue and I understand Christian friends who would rather sit it out than get involved. But I also recognize that we cannot have the Trump Administration policies without President Trump and there is much to like...

In the rest of that column Erickson mainly complained about the Democrats' abortionism and environmentalism -- complaints he had already made many times, pre- and post-Trump -- but closed, "I will vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. And, to be clear, it will not be just because of what the other side offers, but also because of what the Trump-Pence team has done. They’ve earned my vote."

Yet Erick Erickson, proud Trump voter, just can't quit the contrarian shtick. Here's Erickson recently talking about "Jeremiah 29 Conservatives" who "have given up on national politics. It has become too ugly, too compromising, too unaligned with their values" and who believe "Republicans and conservative institutions in Washington have made too many compromises to be effective"; such Jeremiahs have "retreated from national politics because they could not stomach the character flaws of the President or the direction of the Republican party..." In response to their withdrawal, Erickson says, "Conservatives in Washington and the conservative donor class need to reconsider how to engage on the local level with those more worried about their children’s education than a border wall."

In other words, the big-time conservatives like Erick Erickson have fucked up, and the lost lambs of the movement should take the advice of small-town conservatives like Erick Erickson.

In the long con that is modern conservatism, the advantage of beating the base in the head with bullshit for so many years on end is that it renders them too dazed to recognize that the guy they paid going into the funhouse is the same guy taking their money as they come out.