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The First Step Is Admitting You Have a Problem
Regarding President Trump, there are currently several divisions on the Right. While not including everybody, these probably cover most:
- Trump was my guy all along. MAGA!
- I voted for someone else in the primary but with serious reservations and crossed fingers, I voted Trump to prevent Hillary. Policy-wise, I’m pleased.
- I didn’t vote for Trump, but the economy, courts, and geopolitics seem pretty, pretty good.
- Never Trump. Ever. Never eva!!!
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles (and cigar-group friend) penned “Can We All Finally Admit Trump Is A Good President?“
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
The Iran Deal in tatters, three American hostages safely returned from North Korea, which now offers to denuclearize and end the Korean War after 68 years, five top ISIS leaders captured — and that’s just this week. On the domestic front, in just a year-and-a-half, landmark tax reform has made the U.S. more competitive, fewer illegal aliens are entering our country than at any time in the past 17 years, and dozens of federal judges have taken the bench to defend the rule of law and our constitutional system. According to a poll from CNN of all outlets, more Americans today think the country is headed in the right direction than at any time in over a decade.
The Left unsurprisingly remains steadfast in their opposition to President Trump. What’s disappointing is that a handful of “Never Trump” Republicans remain equally unwilling to admit the obvious: Donald Trump is a good president. Indeed, the remaining anti-Trump voices on the Right seem more desperate than ever to take down the president, if only to prove that, actually, they were right all along.
Michael Knowles is no dummy. Yale-educated, podcast host at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and author of the best blank book ever written, Michael posits some truths that many on both the Left and Right could use a good dose of: reality.
We understand the interminable Never Trump anger. After all, Trump traded five extremely dangerous and hardened terrorists for one Army deserter while adjoined by the deserters suspicious looking parents in the White House Rose Garden. Oh, wait … that was the last guy. Today, ISIS has been reduced to a handful of knife-wielding basement-dwelling neckbeards stabbing randoms on the streets of North Mecca (Paris).
But there was this: Trump used State Dept. funds to interfere with and fail to prevent the re-election of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Oh, that was also the last guy. Today we see Israelis dancing in the streets as America had the audacity to recognize Jerusalem as their capital (something every former President campaigned for but never had the guts to acknowledge officially). Meanwhile, Iranian-sponsored Hamas uses the poor Palestinian people as cannon fodder while the White House Press Pool clutches pearls 6,000 miles away.
The list can go on: North Korea, Syria, Tax Reform, etc. It’s not necessary to present the impressive number of achievements in Trump’s first 16 months, but even intellectually honest liberal friends whisper that Hillary probably couldn’t have gotten this done, even if those policies were liberal.
Granted, we are not there yet, anything can happen, but from a conservative perspective, we’re quickly heading in the right direction.
Where are the Never Trumpers on these stunning seismic geopolitical events? You can find some remaining “neocons” on MSNBC or CNN as contributors whose talking points are similar to the liberals they are supposedly countering. They second guess or downplay every achievement, while incessantly cheerleading any and all unsubstantiated leaks on the Mueller investigation or who said what in the White House.
Who needs Fire and Fury from a leftist partisan hack when you get the same breathless narrative from these people on the “right.” While Trump is working to peacefully end the 60-year-old Korean Conflict, they are nattering about porn stars while spending their days trolling Twitter arguing with strangers. This is their life now. #Sad.
The worst part is, they present themselves as the moral arbiters of Conservative, Inc. In their mind, it’s still their show. Complain, and you’re a “Trump Snowflake.” Disagree and you’re a [expletive] Neanderthal, probably uneducated and seeking sponsors for your bowling league.
People correctly tell them this is the reason Trump won, except the NYC/DC/LA elites were usually on the left. But now, their smug, condescending act has become tiresome and boring. So, like millions, we have tuned them out.
We used to like respect these people. We bought their books, watched their interviews and even went on their rip-roaring cruises.
Right after the election, in an interview on my show, one said, “we hope Trump succeeds.”
“Magnanimous,” I replied. After all, it was. They fought tooth and nail against him. “If Trump succeeds, we all succeed,” I’d say.
Then the less than enthusiastic “Yeah… Well, we’ll see.” They were still smarting from their loss.
But it’s almost a year and a half later. Ego is helluva drug and the Id doesn’t easily crack. I didn’t complete my Ph.D. in psychology but I learned enough to know denial when I see it. In psychoanalytic theory, we learned denial is a defense mechanism used to minimize our anxiety. To not admit truths allows us to refuse to accept those facts while remaining adamantly married to our own rigid ideas. In other words, a drone.
Intransigence from those who can’t admit success by this President where there clearly are successes is one such example, and that denial is forever changing the conservative landscape. One can argue Trump changed the landscape, and that’s a valid point. But his policies and appointments are most certainly as conservative as we have seen from any traditional Republican President, and would otherwise be supported by most everyone who values national security, smaller government, and economic policy. We can argue over his process but, so far, the results are unmistakable.
Those once highly respected “thinkers” have all but a few original fans left, while their new followers seep from the same free-speech-fearing, big-government-advocating corners who want the demise of the conservative movement. These people have been relegated to be used as weapons against the President by the antiquated news media and hysterical left (but I repeat myself), only to be eventually disposed of if and when the left regains total power.
To what ends? Maybe the obstinacy stems from a fleeting hope when an impeached President Trump waves his fingers in V formation from Marine One as he’s escorted from the White House, they will be given a token post in a 2020 Kamala Harris administration.
Hate to think they put themselves above country so maybe it’s just appearances. Remaining virtuous and just, and being right, means you can preen across social and print media. Some of these people are brilliant, well-read academics, historians, and their opinions used to matter. We would anticipate their every word (even if we couldn’t understand some of them) as we felt smarter for the time we invested.
No longer. They have joined with the hyperbolic shrill left who aren’t dissimilar to emotionally unstable 13-year-old girls. There are fewer tantrums in a Judy Blume book.
Refusing to even acknowledge this President has beaten the odds and is becoming what may be one of the most pivotal presidents in modern times isn’t a right or left thing, it’s history. And for many of us, we see this group along with the unhinged left desperately attempt to rewrite history as it happens, all so they end up on the correct side.
If President Trump continues on his trajectory, over the next two/six and a half years the credibility factor of many of our former conservative icons will continue to diminish. Or, they can admit things aren’t Armageddon by simply saying “Hey, I may still not like him personally, but he’s achieving many of the same results I would have wanted of any Conservative President. Now let’s work together on the things we all agree on.”
Why is that so hard?
Published in General
The Trump Haters’ day is coming. We’re in a GOSPLANed Truman Show, and the movie is about to end.
I think Jamie made that point quite well, but I’ll add that some of this is just their personality. I wouldn’t have guaranteed that Prager or Hewitt would become Trump supporters, but I wouldn’t have ruled it out. They’re principled guys, but they always recognized that reality is ugly and that we must sometimes yield to practical considerations. I would have bet that Will and Kristol would never support the President. They’re political academics of a sort, and for academics it’s more important to be right than to be practical.
That’s a pretty low bar.
We elected a boorish inflationist with zero experience, with no civic knowledge except government and real estate, and he’s more conservative. How did it come to this?
Our socialist destiny was sealed decades ago, that’s how.
I thought you were going to link to Marx. Guess I should get out more.
By the criteria I use, it is very true. You of course, can use different criteria to tally up all the amazing wins of the Right in the past 70+ years. I mean, who am I to say the movement of the nation has been towards socialism for that time period?
I highly recommend people read the following pieces:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/gop-generation-gap-young-conservatives-break-with-elders/
https://www.weeklystandard.com/kristen-soltis-anderson/how-conservatives-can-find-a-way-to-appeal-to-millennials
https://www.weeklystandard.com/shapiro-win-back-young-americans
That may give you insight into what many of us are worried about.
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
The second step is blaming @arahant.
I’m not entirely sure if your comment was intended as a refutation of my comment or a vigorous affirmation.
This makes it somewhat challenging to respond.
Given your avatar, how come you don’t call yourself A-Cubed?
Apparently you did not read my post “Any Republican Would Have Won In 2016.” In eight elections since the adoption of the 22nd Amendment, the American People have refused to allow any party three terms in a row, with the sole exception that in 1988, the American People elected H.W. to what was essentially the third term of the Greatest President of the Twentieth Century, Ronald Reagan.
Obama was no Reagan. The Democrats were a spent force, and the American people were primed to throw the bums out. Any Republican would have won in 2016, and Trump did so just barely.
And a history of the American People denying either party a third term 7 out of 8 times since the 22nd Amendment was passed in 1951.
I was disputing the idea that there are any long term benefits to the GOP strategy of the past 70 years. Soon(tm) seems to really mean “Never”.
You are missing the point. All of the rest of the 17 (with the possible exception of Jim Gilmore) would have beat Hillary. 7 out of the last 8 times, the American People refused to give either party three terms in the White House, the only exception being in 1988, when H.W. won Reagan’s Third Term.
Gary, The People almost elected Al Gore. It was close enough to be within the margin of error. It was a tie! So in reality, there was almost a third “Clinton” term. Do you not remember 2000?
There is no grand system here.
Unlikely.
Gary, you cling to your system like it is numerology.
The GOPe Smoke Filled Room Ruling Class has to go to a two-step national primary when there are too many candidates.
They would also be wise to understand why people are so fed up they want Trump. They won’t.
My name pre-dated my avatar. Back on Rico 1.0, my bio had a brief diatribe as to why that was my avatar and how it exemplified my politics, but it was lost in the great fire of Rico 2.0.
Huh. I was talking about conservatives, not the GOP.
What I find interesting is that everyone wants to talk about how phenomenally conservative Trump’s first year in office was without acknowledging the extent to which the Republican Party pulled Trump in a conservative direction.
Reagan was really good because he pulled the Republican Party in a conservative direction. Trump has been really good in his first year because the Republican Party pulled him a conservative direction (and yet many, if not most, Trump enthusiasts on here will attack any conservative GOP office holder who won’t step in line and follow Trump’s bidding to the letter.) Reagan was not immune criticism and neither is Trump. You saying he is does not make it so.
The only reason Trump outsourced his court appointments to the Federalist society is because he caught so much criticism from conservatives for talking about nominating his pro-abortion sister to the Supreme Court. And yet Trump supporters point to Gorsuch as a reason why we should not criticize Trump when he does something stupid. Which gets Gorsuch 180 degrees wrong.
If you want Trump to continue to be a good President, conservatives need to be willing to criticize when he does something stupid. If you are not willing to do so, at least stop telling conservatives to stop criticizing Trump when he does something stupid.
As I’ve said a couple of times, an unwillingness to criticize Trump is just as close-minded as unwillingness to praise Trump is.
Close doesn’t count. By the same argument, Nixon beat Kennedy in 1960.
So refute it.
There is a good refutation in Clifford A. Brown’s OP titled “Don’t bet your house…” filed today, on May 17, 2018.
Outsourcing judges to the Federalist Society was Trump’s wisest decision.
It is important to praise Trump when he is right.
Admittedly, I did not. For blood pressure reasons haha. I see what your thesis is, but I still think you’re living in some kind of fever dream you’ve made for yourself, where you try with all your might to explain things with known methods. I wish all of you would get it through your heads that Donald Trump was, in some ways, a black swan. The polling didn’t predict it, the media was taken by surprise, it was just not a normal event. You can no more say with a certainty that your formula would have worked than sprout wings and fly to Venus.
While neither of us can prove the negative, I can’t see any way a single other Republican could have pulled this off, because they were all just more of the same. This election required someone unique who could capture the imagination. Any of the others would have resulted in Republicans staying home.
Trump is the people’s thumb in the eye to the Establishment of both parties. They aren’t listening, though.
OK, so my comments were directed at the GOP.
I am not sure why you launched into a generalized attack on Trump supporters at Ricochet as part of your response. If that was not directed at me, then it would have been better in another post, I think. If it was directed at me, I reject your characterization.
Are all Trump supporters unwilling to criticize Trump? I wouldn’t say that.
Wow, you managed to reference three mythical, non-existent entities in just half a sentence. Of the three, I think smoke filled rooms are the least implausible, because even though they don’t exist it is at least theoretically possible to find a room and fill it with smoke (if you don’t mind going to jail).
How has the Republican Party pulled President Trump in any direction let alone a conservative one?
Mitch McConnell cleared the decks for judicial appointments, the Federalist Society promptly supplied them, Trump appointed them and then Mitch got them confirmed in record time.
Tax Reform
Those are just two examples.
Right, because you’re privy to that decision making process. So of course you just know that criticism over Trump’s throwaway line about his sister is the only reason he went the complete opposite direction on his actual pick.