wingnut welfare

Assistance, in the form of a public forum, granted to a washed-up, discredited, or deranged conservative figure. Typically provided by right-wing media outlets, but often provided by mainstream media outlets for the sake of appearing to be "balanced".

Popularized by the blog Sadly, No, the term "Wingnut Welfare Queen" refers not to a poor person, but to a low-talent, self-appointed pundit of the right, male or female, of the type who have become prominent in large patches of media, Washington D.C. think tanks and the Republican Party, and who depend on some mix of right-wing money, praise or contacts to boost and further their careers. Putting the "wingnut" in Wingnut Welfare Queen means the media figure will be not just predictably or reliably conservative or ultra-conservative, but doggedly and irrationally so.

Many Wingnut Welfare Queens style themselves "Populists"; nonetheless, some some appear to take relish in the abrasiveness and ad hominem quality of their attacks on individuals they perceive as not necessarily contrary in ideology, but lacking in fervor.

A Wingnut Welfare Queen's natural adversaries inhabit the best-recompensed strata of left-wing academia and the leftmost edge of the Democratic Party, with some holdouts on the op-ed pages of liberal metropolitan daily newspapers; they are the upper-tier of the class called Poverty Pimp (q.v.), code-word "Progressive."