I'm not sure they were really doing much other than writing "give me reasons to feel smug about my political opinions" slop.

I assume there's good money in that, whether you're peddling your slop to leftoids or to rightoids. But maybe they weren't writing quite the right kind of slop? Or there was too much competition from other slop writers?

Shame if anyone loses a livelihood as a result, however. I may not agree with their politics, but I think that everyone should have a good livelihood.