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A Petulant Kevin Williamson: Trump Deserves No Credit for the Dobbs Decision
Hoo-Boy. Roe v. Wade was overturned last week in no small part due to Trump-appointed Justices Comey-Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch. If Hillary had prevailed in 2016 (as Never Trumpers would have preferred*), all three of those justices would have been replaced with ideological clones of Ruth Bader “Populations We Don’t Want to Have Too Many Of” Ginsberg. (Which, incidentally, means the gun rights and religious schools cases would have gone the other way as well). The Babylon Bee brilliantly as usual captured the spirit of the thing.
“As Nominee, Donald Trump Would Do Incalculable Damage to the Pro-Life Cause,” wrote French in 2016. “Get ready for a slow-motion pro-life train wreck if Trump’s the nominee.”
Never Trumpers have been a bit stung by the criticism they’ve gotten. “Well, we did like his supreme court picks but any other Republicans would have chosen the same type.” This ignores the salient point that there wasn’t another Republican on the presidential ballot to vote for in 2016, and they were really pulling for Trump’s defeat.
Anyway, Kevin D. Williamson isn’t going to take this lying down. He has produced one of his trademark screeds saying that Trump deserves no credit, and Never Trump deserves no blame, for the outcome of the Dobbs decision.
“A lucky or unlikely outcome, no matter how pleasing it is when it happens, does not retroactively redeem stupid and irresponsible decisions. The fact that something dumb worked out in a fortunate way does not mean that the thinking that went into it wasn’t stupid and irresponsible.” – Kevin D. Williamson (It’s behind the Wall of Shame, so Twitchy provides an excerpt.)
So, no, the Dobbs decision does not make me regret opposing Donald Trump in 2016. If anything, it highlights exactly how shallow and dishonest Trumpist criticism of the conservative movement often has been.
Donald Trump was, until he decided he wanted the Republican presidential nomination, an across-the-board social progressive: not only pro-abortion but “very pro-choice” in his own words, a supporter of gay marriage, a supporter of left-wing gun-control proposals, etc.
…
Donald Trump is still a ridiculous buffoon, and those who supported him in 2016 were still fools to do so.
To be honest, this is a big reason I prefer Trumpism to Bush-Republicanism. The Bushies viewed elective office as a mandate to pursue their personal policy preferences even when they were at odds with what their voters wanted. George W. Bush’s focus on passing an amnesty for illegal immigrants is no doubt the premier example. Whereas Trump evidently pushed policies on gun rights, anti-abortion, and religious freedom that were at odds with his personal beliefs, because, unlike Bush, understood that he was obliged to represent the will of his voters in office and not his personal beliefs.
*Never mind their silly, desperate schemes to throw the election to the House of Representatives. Four years later, they declared that disputing the results of a presidential election was tantamount to sedition.
Published in General
Well, I have been drinking more….
Because we don’t get a U-Haul and move to where he thinks we should live.
Yeah. Switzerland. Hello, John Walker. (TBC, a favorite member.) I have much to vent here myself. But I gotta go deal with a farm issue. See you.
It’s kind of ironic that he’d disparage the working class for not packing up a U-Haul to move to a different state while he . . . moves to Switzerland.
Or even while he DOESN’T move to Switzerland…
I might have been partially listening at the time and missed the nuance that it was a venting “I’m moving to Switzerland!” and not a serious “I’ve decided to relocate to Switzerland.” I think it disappeared off the Superfeed around that time and it took me a while to discover the feed was broke and that NR shows hadn’t stopped. So I didn’t hear any updates if there were any. Did search out the Bookmonger feed.
I like most of Kevin’s writings, but his characterization of everyone who voted for Trump is sub-sophomoric. It’s laughable. It’s the stupid crap Rachel Maddow says.
He eats well on his disdain of people.
Kevin’s a writer. He writes about what other people do.
Which is easy as pie. It’s the doing that’s hard.
French is correct in that I’m not ready to embrace him.
Again, caricaturing tens of millions of people is often considered to be racist. Perhaps The Men of Straw are ones that should be discarded by thoughtful editors, at minimum, crinkled up and thrown back in the face of the writer who deigned to spend roughly 38 minutes typing.
I hope the NR editors don’t wonder why people stopped reading them.
Byron York does a good job covering the topic of Trump and Roe on his show today. He references Williamson’s article unfavorably.
Good!
I think that it is churlish to condemn someone without them having an opportunity to defend themselves. The title of this post is “A Petulant Kevin Williamson: Trump Deserves No Credit for the Dobbs Decision.”
Therefore, I think that it would be fair to let Kevin speak for himself. Since there is kvetching that Kevin’s piece is behind the NR paywall, I will provide a portion of it, commenting on it as I go to address both copyright and Ricochet’s Code of Conduct. The article is located at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/this-is-not-donald-trumps-victory/.
This Is Not Donald Trump’s Victory; Trump is an opportunist who got out in front of the parade.
Kevin starts out with a thought experiment of a guy who isn’t that smart who repeatedly says that instead of saving for his retirement plans on winning the lottery. When that person actually does win the lottery, were you wrong in saying that “planning on winning the lottery” was not a responsible way to plan for your retirement? Of course not. Williamson writes:
“A lucky or unlikely outcome, no matter how pleasing it is when it happens, does not retroactively redeem stupid and irresponsible decisions. The fact that something dumb worked out in a fortunate way does not mean that the thinking that went into it wasn’t stupid and irresponsible.”
I think that this is obvious on its face.
Williamson then addresses who Trump was until just before he decided to run. He notes that Trump was not only “pro-abortion” but “very pro-choice.” Trump supported a “National Wealth Tax.” Trump suggested that the type of justice he would appoint would be his sister.
Williamson then writes:
“It was movement conservatism — the institutions derided as “Conservative Inc.” by the rage-monkeys of Twitter and talk radio — that kept the Trump presidency from being a disaster for the Right. Trump signed Paul Ryan’s tax bill, he took up the Club for Growth’s deregulatory agenda, hired a couple of National Review editors for economic-policy advice (he should have listened to them more than he did), and, critically, delegated his judicial selections to the Federalist Society — because he did not really have any choice as a matter of political reality. You can’t be a Republican presidential candidate without backing — or at least saying you back — an originalist approach to the federal judiciary.”
I think that this is absolutely true. Trump succeeded in that he adopted the hard work that the oft-defamed GOPe had done for years.
The money quote:
“The author of the Dobbs decision was appointed by George W. Bush, not by Donald Trump. The most important originalist on the Court, Clarence Thomas, was appointed by George H. W. Bush. Donald Trump is not a trailblazing champion of constitutionalism — he is a guy who got out in front of a parade and pretended to be leading it.
“Am I glad to see Roe gone? Absolutely. Do I think that Trump’s role in this could have been performed by a reasonably well-trained monkey? Absolutely. Does this somehow retroactively sanctify Trump and Trumpism?
“Absolutely not.”
You have to admit, Kevin Williamson does know how to turn a phrase or two. Alito, appointed by George W. Bush wrote the Dobbs decision. And the foremost conservative members of the Court in the last 30 years were Scalia, appointed by Ronald Reagan and Clarence Thomas, appointed by George H.W. Bush.
If anyone should receive credit for the Dobbs decision, it would be Mitch McConnell, who single-handedly kept the Scalia seat open for over a year, in an amazing show of chutzpah.
Because it would have gone just as well with President Hillary, or President Biden for that matter, and Trump DIDN’T nominate 3 of the 6 justices in the majority? And fight for their confirmation when history shows it likely that HW or W would have folded? And if not for Alito out of the six writing the decision, it wouldn’t have been made?
I am thrilled to have won this on June 24, 2022. If Hillary had won, Cocaine Mitch would have let the Garland Nomination through, and RBG would have retired, so we wouldn’t have ACB. However, Anthony Kennedy still is quite healthy and would have been replaced by now by the Republican President.
With the new Justice replacing Kennedy, we would have won 5-4 with Mississippi’s 15 weeks being affirmed.
With another justice being confirmed later, we would have swept away Roe and Casey.
Let me put it this way. Gary, if Trump is elected, Roe and Casey will be overruled, however the price you will pay is that a President Trump will refuse to admit that he lost in 2020, and would attempt a coup on January 6, 2021. That President Trump could also do his best to build a Cult of Personality around himself, and would threaten NATO, and free trade. Is it worth it to almost lose the Republic and the Reagan Republican Party to have Roe be overturned, instead of the 15 week limit of Mississippi being upheld?
My answer would be no.
Assuming facts not in evidence, particularly that Hillary would have served only one term.
The last time one party stayed in power for 12 years was when George H.W. Bush served what was the third Reagan term. Before that we have to go back to Harry Truman who won in 1948, before I was born.
Churlish is not giving credit to Trump
Much, much more credit goes to Cocaine Mitch. And I am glad that Trump moved from “Very Pro Choice” before he declared for office.
I guess you are not much of a Byron York guy.
When you were born has nothing to do with anything. That’s still twice within less than 100 years, or more than 25% of that time. It’s not like 2.5%.
Ah, that explains it.
There hasn’t been a fourth term for a party for over 70 years. There has been a third term for a party only once in the last 70 years..
Seems he has bought and paid for the uninhibited, conspicuous threadjacking privilege many times over. The site is his…
Did you recently re-read “How To Lie With Statistics,” about stuff like choosing your end points for maximum advantage? Or maybe you’ve just been studying the “climate change” fanatics? If you go back just a LITTTLE farther, the numbers double.
You previously mentioned 1948, which is what I addressed. That would be two times of 3 terms for a party, in about 80 years. Three terms is 12 years, two of those is 24 years, which is more than 25% of 80 years.
Yorks take down was great.
Please go away.
No, he’s somewhere in Texas.
Have you ever noticed that that dismissive retort is the least effective statement to make? The post had a point of view. I rebutted it. You just don’t want to hear anything that disturbs your comfortable point of view, so you resort to dismissive and ineffective tactics. Perhaps you might consider engaging in the battlefield of ideas.
Are you aware that the reason that Kevin was fired at The Atlantic was that some of their woke employees said that they felt threatened by a colleague who was Pro-Life. What snowflakes!