Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
To Trump or Not to Trump: A Response
As all of Ricochet will be shocked to learn I disagreed strongly with EJHill’s recent post regarding what he sees as the binary choice before us this cycle. I don’t have much to add here that I didn’t already express in the comments of that post, but I would like to point everyone to a piece by Ricochet alumna Rachel Lu:
So here’s the situation as I understand it. We have a lot of deeply alienated conservative voters who, strangely enough, actually supported conservative principles that now seem to have been carelessly jettisoned. Some are sufficiently upset that they’ve left the party or at least declared they won’t vote for Trump. Those people could make the difference in the election.
What are we doing to win them back? Heaping on the blistering scorn! It’s a pretty great strategy. Hurled insults rarely fail to appease disgruntled voters.
I lied when I said I didn’t understand. I do. What we’re seeing is a lot of poison-pen personal therapy. Everyone is angry, and ranting in public is a great stress reliever in times of political turmoil.
Nevertheless, if you want to win this presidential election, I recommend investing in a stress ball, and dialing back the printed scorn. Maybe Trump supporters aren’t the only voters in America who like feeling respected? Here are some suggestions from a Never Trump conservative for talking more constructively with conservative voters who truly loathe our nominee.
Rachel proceeds to lay out five techniques that would assist Trump supporters in their efforts to win back disaffected conservatives, but it is number 2 that I find the most valuable:
2. Don’t Try to Nice Up Donald Trump
Aggressive efforts to rehabilitate Trump may have helped him make headway with less-engaged voters. It’s not going to work on Never Trumps. They tend to feel the rehabilitation effort has already deeply compromised the conservative movement.
Consider how this might look to a person who truly loathes Trump. He watches as friends or favorite writers dip their toes gingerly into the Trump tank (because he’s better than Hillary!). A week later the same person decides Trump isn’t really so bad at all. Six weeks later he might be crowing about Trump’s Ciceronian statesmanship and heartfelt love of the common man.
We’ve seen many sad and desperate attempts to project wildly unrealistic visions onto the mogul. Everyone’s clutching at the thinnest straws to prove Trump is what they want him to be. Never Trumps aren’t buying it. This is a man who has spent most of his life selling people out and taking people in (not in a hospitable way). To say he is untrustworthy and of established bad character is something of a comical understatement.
Have our conservative allies forgotten that, or do they just not care? It’s excruciating to see people you respect become so deeply deluded. (Whenever I say something even mildly sympathetic to Trump, I get messages from alarmed readers effectively begging me not to go to the Dark Side. I understand how they feel.)
Even if you don’t agree with Never Trumpers’ evaluation of Trump (and Trumpism), you should at least be able to appreciate there are many non-ridiculous reason for distrusting both. Such an acknowledgement will earn you some credibility; downplaying the awful will not.
It is the slow creeping way that I have seen many of my former allies move from rejection, to acceptance to cheerleader that has been the most disheartening element of this particular cycle and I think Rachel hits the nail squarely on the head here.
The one thing to keep in mind is that despite its unfortunate moniker very few people are actually #NeverTrump. Human beings are persuadable on almost every issue, the problem is that we have just given up trying. I can attest that even I can be persuaded off strongly held positions. After an immensely enjoyable two days in San Francisco with @JamesofEngland (#MiniRicoMeetup, Hi @peterrobinson!!), I have been thoroughly convinced not to vote for Gary Johnson – who I previously held as the only ethically un-compromised candidate in the election. This was accomplished through patience, relevant facts about the candidate in question and mutual respect. I learned a lot of lessons over the last two days – the primary being that patience is more persuasive than righteousness. A lesson I should have learned long ago – thank you Ricochet!
Published in General
So you have NTs telling you that Hillary is not an effective tactic to convince us and yet you insist it is your best weapon.
That’s the thing – we don’t put them in Trumps column.
But one of the things we keep complaining about is that we want to be sold on Trump, not to be told what we already know. The reason we don’t want to hear about Hillary is because we already know that she’ll be horrible. We hold out because we’ve yet to be convinced that Trump will not be horrible. That is something the Reulctants aren’t even trying to do (admittedly it’s something some of them might concede they can’t do.)
Jamie, you miss my point – if you have already declared yourself beyond any convincing, even by what we view as the strongest argument, then why do you engage at all? To continue to do so is to continue to either engage under a false pretense (arguing as if you still could be convinced), or to engage merely to tell others how wrong they are.
You have made your choice and ask we respect that and stop trying to convince you- well then respect that we have made ours too.
Yeah, I’m completely baffled. Rachel is an excellent writer, yet this paragraph is a mystery to me. I don’t think Jamie has an explanation either. Fortunately, Rachel commented a little while ago, so maybe she’ll clarify her meaning for us.
Umbra, you are presenting a different take – that you are really looking to be convinced. Quite a few are clearly not, and it is to them I have directed my criticism.
Skip – you may have noticed that this post is a “response”. We are not the ones that start these arguments anymore. That argument was given to us the in the post by EJHill – we are telling you it’s not convincing to us and that’s somehow our fault?
None of them? SCOTUS? Energy? Internet Freedom?
From the opposite perspective, I will offer what I have concluded regarding an unpersuadable NeverTrumper. If a NeverTrumper speaks of Trump entirely in a vacuum, I have concluded they are beyond persuasion, at least by me (because of my low regard for and trust in Trump), and I suspect by anyone. If there is not the recognition that the choice is Hillary vs. Trump, and not Trump vs. not-Trump, then there’s better places to spend time and energy.
Unfortunately, a substantial percentage of the podcasters on Ricochet appear to fit snugly in the unpersuadable category.
Ironically, the author of this post couldn’t be bothered about two hours ago, engaged with me in the comments on another post, to provide a link to his Hillary vs. Trump arguments, which he claims to have posted here, which I have no reason to doubt.
Pointing somebody to your arguments who is seeking them out would seem like a good thing to do if you want considered engagement.
Yeah, agreed.
That’s the problem with your analysis, as I see it. You’re looking through a very narrow lens: Trump vs. Clinton. But the president isn’t everything. The other two branches matter. Do we tie the hands of Conservatives in Congress or empower them to produce positive, constructive legislation that a Republican president will sign into law? Do we move the Supreme court (as well as federal courts) to the right or do we stand by and watch it go fullLeftist?
You might have a case for Energy but I don’t know the details of Trump’s energy plan well enough to speculate. Your strongest argument might be corporate taxes, but he weds it to a massive shift in the tax burden to the wealthy and basically wipes out all the good will he bought.
Is it a response? You seem to be suggesting here that you’re just posing. Don’t you see how this gives credence to the “moral posturing” criticism? Isn’t that going to make the aftermath of all this more problematic?
I seem to remember a post from a couple of weeks or more ago in which someone did a side-by-side comparison of Trump and Hillary on many issues. I can’t remember who it was.
How on earth am I suggesting that I’m just posing?
How do we know Trump won’t drag Congress with him? Most of the people saying, “But Congress…” are the same people who insist that McConnell and Ryan have no principles.
The other argument I find convincing is one @tkc1101 often uses: that Trump will surround himself with good people in cabinet positions. This at one point very nearly persuaded me but it failed for three reasons not really related to the argument but rather the candidate: 1) Until very recently Trump seemed almost uncontrollable so why would we expect his cabinet to control him 2) The people he chose to run his campaign have, until Conway, done a rather poor job of building a functioning state by state campaign operation and 3) the people he’s chosen so far are not really up my alley in terms of their stances on a lot of important issues.
I can’t sell you on Trump, himself; I was strongly opposed to him during the primaries. But this election is not only about Trump. I agree that he is unqualified by any historical/traditional (and possibly any at all) measure. Clinton brings with her a political machine like that of Chicago (or most ‘blue’ cities) writ very, very large. These machines have been very successful at looting their constituent populations. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, and the big blue machine will assiduously pursue its transfer to themselves and their allies. I am not sure that it is not too late already, but if Clinton gets her own SCOTUS to declare everything left good and proper, everything libertarian/conservative beyond the pale, I see no path to recovery. Even if I knew that she would resign for health reasons soon enough after inauguration to beat WH Harrison’s record, the machine would still continue to grow.
It is that political structure that I oppose, even to the point of voting for Trump, whom I do not trust at all.
I have the luxury of living in a state where 2/3 of the population resides in one nearly contiguous leftist swamp determined to prove San Francisco rational by comparison, so I don’t have to vote for Trump to stop Clinton. Were it actually down to me I still don’t know what I would do. I still believe conservatism is the only thing which can save this nation from itself. I still believe both Clinton and Trump destructive to conservatism and cannot determine which is worst in that regard. If I determined that I had to take such a course of action I would do so through tears and possibly to the accompaniment of the sounds of vomiting.
It really depends on what one believes he is buying whether or not he can afford the cost.
Are these conversations being driven by such active requests? Or are they just trying to goad you. Just as you realize that Hillary is the Trumpers trump card, NeverTrumpers understand the paradox. They’ve just reconciled themselves according to a different set of logic.
I’d say both factions are actively engaging in your “bad faith” arguments, and they’re not really engaged in bad faith. They’re just arguments.
Tearing down and demonstrating intractability is what internet debating is all about, whether governed by a CoC or not.
That our debates are actually relatively civil is because our fight is between and amongst the Ricochetti and fought according to Ricochet’s rules. Perhaps its that CoC that is keeping online friendships from completely going off the rails.
But civil or not, its still a civil war.
Excuse me while I faint. Will wonders never cease?
Do you think Trump has coattails? Do you think Republican Congressmen will simply cede power to Trump because he’s Trump. What is your assessment of how McConnell and Ryan would deal with Trump? Do you think they will easily forego the legislation they’re trying to pass so they can follow Trump?
Yes, but the problem really is somewhere else.
What you almost never see is people trying to make sure that Ricochet isn’t as bad as other GOP / conservative venues. I’ve stayed away from the political debates, but I’ll bet a few dollars there’s not a lot of ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt’ or ‘You know what, you probably are an ok guy’ or some other such.
Instead, they bring quarrels from other places to make the quarrels here seem more dignified or self-important. It seems people are saying, there’s lots to be angry about, so let’s have as much anger as we can!
Isn’t one of the arguments for Trump the fecklessness of GOP congresscritters? Are they suddenly going to be chock full of feck simply because the president is of their own party?
I take comfort in a similar position at the other end of the spectrum, living in a state known for its redness. Trump will carry it easily (although in this weird year, I tremble making such a bold prediction). So, the fate of the world as we know it does not depend on me.
This is the only cheering thought I can muster. I admit to being very discouraged about the state of conservatism, and might be tempted to be too busy to bother on Election Day. I think I’ll immerse myself in Clinton/leftist bilge in the run-up to give me the necessary indignation to go vote for down-ballot Republicans.
Well, I find this constructive and encouraging because if you’re seriously analyzing this, you’ll eventually conclude that a Trump administration and a Hillary administration wouldn’t be exactly equally bad in terms of their impact on the country.
Here’s another problem with Ricochet that people amplify: At this point, it’s not clear to me there’s any evil of which Mrs. Clinton does not stand accused or which people might declare implausible, impossible, or offensive. I’m not sure anyone ever says anything good about her–though, surely, most people do not believe she’s all evil, at least so far as public life is concerned.
From the point of view of our judgments about the upcoming election, that as much as guarantees that we have no idea why she might win.
From the point of view of our judgments about the task of conservatism, that as much as guarantees the reduction of politics to hail marys…
There was a San Francisco Bay Area meetup that you were at recently? Dang.
I worry that partisanship will overpower ideology for a critical mass of the caucus, yes.
Ryan might take a stand on something big like entitlement reform, but he’s made it clear that party unity is important to him. It doesn’t help that they’re both from fairly blue collar areas which means the issue where Trump worries me the most, protectionism, is one on which I think they might be most likely to cave.
I was going to make a post about how the remake of The Magnificent Seven doesn’t match up to the Seven Samurai, which it’s based off of, but now I think I’m going to have to sit down and write out a #NeverTrump post.