Who will win the battle for ‘based’?

Earlier this week, a pair of right-libertarian journalists announced the launch of their new site, BASEDPolitics. All hell promptly broke loose on right-wing Twitter. In the first editorial for their new site, co-founders Brad Polumbo and Hannah Cox define ‘based’ as ‘upfront, on point, or rooted in true principles.’ That fits pretty well with my understanding of the term, but it leaves something out.

That ‘something’ accounts for the pushback they received from the post-liberal, national conservative crowd. According to them, libertarians like Polumbo and Cox are nothing more than Koch-funded shills who fight for tax cuts and weaker antitrust laws while drag queens read to our children. They are not ‘based’ and have no right to refer to themselves as such.

‘Our culture is not your costume,’ one popular right-wing Twitter personality quipped. Sohrab Ahmari, an American Conservative editor who advocates for ‘political Catholicism,’ tweeted ‘I’m never using ‘based’ again, now that these corporate schmucks have appropriated it.