Conservatives Take Bill Maher Seriously – Do Democrats?

Bill Maher slammed NPR for its far-Left extremism in a recent interview.

He called out the Democratic Party at large for its Trump Derangement Syndrome, increasing support for Hamas sympathizers, and general intolerance of dissent.

It’s one thing to take shots at the “fringes on both sides” and localize criticism only to unpopular figures. That takes neither courage nor maturity — it’s just words. But Maher’s willingness to challenge NPR, one of the most revered outlets by the mainstream Left, for its extremism speaks to an important truth: conservatives take Maher seriously; do Democrats?

Just a couple of weeks ago, he told JD Vance, “If this is where [the Democrats] are going, my vote is in play.” He quickly conditioned this statement with a series of objections he has to the modern Right.

Maher has long been known for these kinds of criticisms. But if we take a look at what he’s actually saying, most of it is pretty hard to argue with. But Democrats, in their vociferous refusal to be receptive to anything pushing their ideology back to the realm of “normal” get hung up here.

One of the primary concerns he’s expressed with Trump has been his unwillingness to accept the results of elections that don’t go his way. He has been highly critical of Trump for his actions on January 6. He said that if he’s going to consider voting Republican, “that sh*t has to stop.” He’s not wrong. There was nothing conservative or American about Trump’s behavior. It was disgraceful.

Of both Elon Musk’s DOGE and the Iran war, Maher said they were good ideas with poor execution. He’s absolutely right on both accounts. If the price of winning his vote is distancing ourselves from Trump’s failures, sign me up.

But a key difference between Maher and a lot of other pundits is that he doesn’t allow his disdain for Trump to dominate his entire political consciousness. And here is also where conservatives and progressives differ on their acceptance of Maher.

“When they say Trump is Hitler, that’s such a dumb thing to say. First of all, counterproductive. Also, he’s not Hitler. But this Fuentes kid, that’s Hitler,” Maher said. Right on, Bill.

The difference is that the DSA and other mainstream Left-wingers are a lot closer to the Hasan Piker camp than Trump is to the Nick Fuentes camp. Conservatives widely support Trump not because he’s a bastion of conservatism, but because he’s the lesser of two evils by a great degree.

If we’re going to survive, we need to start making that case to the people who are willing to listen. Conservatives are more willing to do this — and confront the radical views on their side — than the Left. Broadly so.

In 2024, Maher told CNN that he holds the same positions he’s had since the 1990s and that “the Left has changed.” This is not an uncommon journey of former leftists who now find themselves on the Right, or at least right of center. Ronald Reagan himself once said that he never left the Democratic Party — “They left me.”

Frankly, the administrations of John F. Kennedy and even Bill Clinton share quite a bit more ideology with much of the modern Republican base than they do with the increasingly radical Democratic Party.

But to the Left, it’s never a them problem.

Bill Maher is never going to be a conservative. But the unfortunate reality is that much of the Republican Party is more receptive to his frank analysis than the Democrats. They’re more obsessed with chasing the radicals of their side farther Left and silencing dissent among its ranks.

If hardline libertarians like Rand Paul can share a party with New Deal populists like JD Vance, then there’s room for Bill Maher under the tent too. We’ve all got bigger fish to fry than each other.

As always with big-tent logic, one must be careful not to bring in the crazies just because we share a common enemy. But the fight for Western civilization against barbarity is the most important.

Bill Maher is not, and never was, an enemy of Western civilization. Maybe there was a time when our greatest ideological adversaries were the likes of him, but that time has long since passed.

Let’s examine his record: Maher has unequivocally condemned socialism, the radical Left, and the DSA. He’s vocally pro-Israel. He opposes ridiculous wealth taxes, advocates for parental rights against transgender ideology, supports voter ID and common-sense immigration restrictions, consistently supports law enforcement, and is consistently pro-police. Sounds like a halfway decent ally to me.

We spend a lot of time on the Right pining for the golden days of the Republican Party. It’s easy to forget that those days were largely born of compromise and teamwork, not unequivocal triumph. It required the constant integration of a great many groups, many of whom had long been fighting one another. The Left is taking the opposite view, instituting ideological purity tests and making it a race to the Left, ignoring commonsense policies and public opinion — even when they are on the wrong side of polling, on such issues as voter ID and transgenderism.

Bill Maher’s vote is in play. We need to win it even as the Democrats dismiss it.