Believing Rudy Giuliani requires pledging 'allegiance to insanity': Conservative National Review writer

National Review author Michael Brendan Dougherty on Friday drew a line in the sand with his fellow conservatives and said he would not buy into Rudy Giuliani's crazed conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Dougherty explained in his latest column that he'd been accused by a friend of being akin to a Nazi collaborator because he said he felt embarrassed by Giuliani's already-infamous press conference in which he and fellow Trump attorney Sidney Powell alleged Trump had been deprived of an election win by a conspiracy involving George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

"The two of them launched a series of fantastical accusations of election fraud," Dougherty writes. "Powell focused particularly on an international conspiracy. Some of what they alleged in that press conference has already been denied by Trump’s legal team when operating under oath in Pennsylvania’s courts. Powell has been promising to release a 'Kraken' for quite a while now. I don’t think she has it."

Dougherty said he understood why conservatives at the moment are feeling afraid of President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration, but he said that gives them no excuse for burrowing down conspiratorial rabbit holes.

"Allegiance to a plain insanity is a good test of loyalty, like being beat-in during a gang initiation," he concludes. "It marks you in a way that makes you less suitable as an object for the Left’s blandishments. It demonstrates 'commitment' or heart. Shared insanity can make people loyal to each other, sure. But it does so by rendering them useless or repulsive to the normal and decent people who need champions."