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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
Oh Philo, nothing has changed. Nothing at all. You are not covering yourself in glory here. Meet me on the battlefield of ideas, not making sly insinuations.
It would be seriously educational to hear the top half dozen “French watchers” talk about this.
He’s not intellectually curious about civics and government.
I think you are cherry picking a couple of policies.
I would like you to write about how I should like the GOPe or how the GOPe is misunderstood.
If you want to stop Socialism and populism I would say this is a pretty good vector.
Williamson’s mistake–which is the same one all fanatics make–is that, when it comes to Trump, he cannot let go of his obsession for an instant, and so he equates any praise of Trump with “retroactively sanctify[ing] Trump and Trumpism.” In so doing, and again like all fanatics, he’s become what he professes to despise. He’s a member of a cult, in his case, the Cult of Anti-Trump.**
This prevents him from saying anything rational about Trump. And requires him to defame, belittle and insult not only Trump, but everyone who has ever said anything positive about Trump, at the same time as he dismisses actual facts in favor of puerile taunts. Such as these:
This is just before he talks about the “rage-monkeys” of Twitter and talk radio, and shortly after he talks about “goddamned jackass[es].” (For some reason, simian and equine metaphors seem to loom large and repetitiously in Williamson’s head, as he once again becomes that which he professes to despise.)
Williamson concludes:
So: Chile and Spain were lucky to have had Pinochet and Franco (the murdering, corrupt, fascistic, thugs) because they actually got stuff done.
But any stuff that actually got done while Donald Trump (let’s equate him with Pinochet and Franco on the one hand, because we all know he’s a corrupt and authoritarian dictator at heart) was President was nothing to do with him (an odd argument when it comes to corrupt and authoritarian dictators). He was merely an opportunistic bystander pretending to be in charge, while really being a puppet of establishment conservatism. And anyone who voted for this puppet of establishment conservatism, actually believing that Trump would govern as a conservative, is a fool. (Daft as it seems, I think that’s the point that Williamson is trying to make, when he can get out from under paragraph after paragraph of frothing bile.)
And, in a nutshell, there it is. The green-eyed monster. Williamson knows that much conservative good eventuated during Trump’s four years in office. But he simply cannot bring himself to give Trump credit for any of it. He cannot stand the fact that it was Trump–Donald (expletive) Trump–and not someone from the approved list, who saw the open door in 2016, walked through it, and got it done. So anything good that happened during Trump’s presidency must be attributed to others.
And this shows itself nowhere better than in Williamson’s graceless refusal to give Trump credit for his Supreme Court nominees. Conflating Trump’s obvious and effective role in putting three Justices on the Supreme Court who comprised 50% of the majority opinion in Dobbs, and 60% of those overturning Roe with “retroactively sanctify[ing] Trump and Trumpism” is just absurd. It’s entirely possible to give Trump credit for the one action, while still decrying others; and, in fact, many on this thread have done so.
Because, when it comes right down to it, anyone “who knows how to read” who thinks that–had Hillary Clinton, the only other person on the ballot with a shot at the job, been elected in 2016–we’d be looking at the overturning of Roe v Wade today is (to borrow Williamson’s parlance), either a monkey, a jackass, or a fool. And those “thousands of people who spent five decades undertaking hard and thankless work to get that done” would still be toiling away.
**It’s a sad state for a writer I once admired. Like most obsessives, if he can get off his hobby-horse for a bit, he’s still capable of writing eloquently, informatively, and rationally on other subjects, even those on which I disagree with him.
Yes. It’s a dispassionate recounting of the facts, leading to the inevitable conclusions that of course Donald Trump played a substantial role in the matter. No other conclusion is rationally possible.
Threatening NATO is good policy.
If the Fed is constantly creating inflation and asset bubbles, what good is this?
We have done every single thing wrong in the face of wage deflation and job destruction from trade and globalized labor. I don’t believe in simple GOPe mantras about free trade. We needed to get very serious about having a libertarian economy after the Soviet union fell and we didn’t. Now things are as messy as they could possibly be.
I have tried to get this out of your head with actual facts. It is hopeless.
Well said, She. I like it so much, I am using Thachter privilege to quote the whole thing again.
I really don’t have sufficient cause to criticize She’s prose. Unlike the naysayers who flung retorts and taunts at me, She has fairly met me on the battlefield of ideas on the issue of if Kevin Williamson has been too harsh to Trump. Good job by She.
And good job Bryan for noting it also.
I generally enjoy reading Williamson, and I’m not at all fond of Donald Trump. But maybe in this case it would have been preferable for him to just be gracious and say, “You know, I cannot stand Donald Trump, but this is tremendous news and I’m grateful for whatever part he may have played in bringing it about.”
It is possible that this is the first time “Williamson” and “gracious” appeared in the same paragraph.
While I wouldn’t go that far, it is clear on its face that Trump had a significant role, second, only to McConnell, to Roe being overruled now instead of in the future. For that he deserves credit.
I have a bunch of other reservations, but to raise them right now would be churlish.
I’m glad I lived long enough to see that!
He has not one gracious bone in his body.
There are that many?
In one of my SPA sessions years ago, my department manager brought up the “ReadAct” evaluation method. It was just one metric in the evaluation. They called it that because it measured one’s ability to “read” a situation and his ability to “act” on his assessment of the situation. Maybe the GOPe rated highly on the “R” and very low on the “A”. Such people don’t get much done even if they know exactly what the situation requires. In sum, they needed a guy like Trump who, in my estimation, was moderate on “R” and yuuuuugggge on “A”.
Probably just a misunderstanding. The status quo will reassert itself momentarily.
Not if you limit the count to the ones that are still sane.
There is a whole industry that won’t let him get away with anything. Dozens if not hundreds of people.
i.e.
That tweet didn’t age well…
French is a vortex of grief on Twitter.
I guess he does pretty good as a lawyer, but he just creates a disaster zone everywhere he goes when he just offers opinions about stuff.
He makes so many people mad and they are so motivated to watch his rhetoric, I don’t think there’s anything like it anywhere.
Ha!
Some people know when to quit. French is into Black Knight territory now.
Lol
That is a great line. You sir, are to be applauded!
Hear hear!
I don’t get why the Dispatch hired him. Maybe they get more paying customers out of it.
There are so many smart people that are absolutely rabid to debate him. I don’t think it’s ever happened.
I don’t see him responding a lot to criticism for some reason.
He and Jonah and Steve Hayes started the Dispatch after Goldberg and French left NR and Hayes (along with Kristol) destroyed the Weekly Standard. What I’ve always wondered about Golberg and French is “did they jump or were they pushed?”
But in the internet age, it’s probably really easy to set up something like The Dispatch. Especially when you have already built up a readership. Need some cashflow? Just call up Omidyar and say “We’d like some money to stab conservatism in the back. Can you set us up?”
I’d try it, but I’m not a fake.
(What’s interesting is that French has now built up a readership of Democrats/lefty Christians, so when he says anything remotely conservative, they attack. Neither side likes him. He probably thinks this makes him special.)
They need someone
Guess he won’t do it
Fear?