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Why We Push Back
Peggy Noonan had a good write up on WSJ a couple days ago…
The Trump Wars of the past 18 months do not now go away. Now it becomes the Trump Civil War, every day, with Democrats trying to get rid of him and half the country pushing back. To reduce it to the essentials: As long as Mr. Trump’s party holds the House, it will be a standoff. If the Democrats take the House, they will move to oust him.
Because we are divided. We are two nations, maybe more.
Normally a new president has someone backing him up, someone publicly behind him. Mr. Obama had the mainstream media—the big broadcast networks, big newspapers, activists and intellectuals, pundits and columnists of the left—the whole shebang. He had a unified, passionate party. Mr. Trump in comparison has almost nothing. The mainstream legacy media oppose him, even hate him, and will not let up. The columnists, thinkers and magazines of the right were mostly NeverTrump; some came reluctantly to support him. His party is split or splitting. The new president has gradations of sympathy, respect or support from exactly one cable news channel, and some websites.
It should be understood on Ricochet that the readers here aren’t the typical, everyday, go with the flow Conservatives. We are thinkers and nerds, challengers and questioners. It should go without saying that when one of our political leaders strays, either from the vision he set forth in his campaign or from our Constitution, that we will be critical. This has been our Modus andOperi since I was in college and has been used against us by liberal media for at least just as long.
And yet, in the face of Trump, all of those things have become uncertain, when they really aren’t uncertain. It has become necessary to ostensibly declare “I WILL criticize when he does something I don’t like.” Of course you will. We all will. Its what we do on Ricochet, after all. Even the ones who are EverTrump will criticize if he turns away from his promises.
But the Reluctant and Pro-Trump knows something that the anti-Trump doesn’t — that to declare your intent like this weakens your alliance. You have declared yourself a weak point, ripe for turning. We are on tentative ground with a common opposition — those rioters aren’t just unhappy with Trump, they are unhappy with all of us. They wish to use the government against us.
To the world, we should be presenting a unified face. Even if it isn’t for Trump, he is the one leading and positioned against the illiberal Left, so for now, he is an ally to all conservatives, even those who were NeverTrump.
Published in General
“As long as Republicans control the House it will be a stand off.” Not at all. As long as Trump charges forward he will control the narrative and as long as his changes produce prosperity, better schools, foreign victories he will win this battle. Victory against the left, like victories over evil, are never permanent, but they have to be fought more often and more successfully than we’ve done over the last 30 years or we lose the war.
Respectfully, I’m still not buying any of this, but that’s likely due to the fact of where I am in my political life these days. I haven’t been a Republican for around two decades now and I suspect that will never change. I was only periodically calling myself a conservative prior to this last campaign cycle and now I’m officially done with the label in the Trump era. I don’t know what it means anymore. If Trumpism is conservative, I’m clearly using the wrong label. I’ll just run with “classically liberal” since it’s appropriately vague and confusing to non-political nerds.
It’s sort of a weird period in my political life. I feel just zero ownership of Trump, the GOP, or modern day conservatism. I’m just so off in the margins of American political and cultural thought that I’m basically just an observer because the political and popular culture passed me by.
I’m neutral towards Trump and the modern day GOP. I hope they make the right decisions, but I’m just not fit for purpose when it comes to being part of that team and I likely haven’t been for quite some time.
I wasn’t exactly NeverTrump but was never favorably impressed with Mr. Trump until his nominations began to be something that couldn’t be ignored by Conservatarians. I’m now waiting to see what actions follow. If he reverses the worst of Obama’s Statist edicts and frees the economy of the most egregious restraints from the EPA et al I will be the first to say I was wrong about what kind of President he can be. I do hope to be proven wrong but we shall see.
That aside, if he does take enough shackles off the economy for us to see a booming economy and if he does anything at all to improve conditions in the ME and/or with Russia/China, he will be reelected in a landslide. Nothing else will much matter to the electorate however much it matters to folks like me. And the great majority of voters don’t much care what the pundits have to say either, witness the fact that most do not bother to listen to or read them.
Peggy Noonan makes a great point but she’s wrong that Trump doesn’t have support. Obama had the traditional media and leftist elites creating a false sense of dominance on the culture. During this election the left really thought they dominated the minds of most Americans and in some ways they have but the people have still rejected leftist policies. We see the evidence of this in the huge loss of democrats in political positions throughout the country. So many folks like Ms Noonan are looking at traditional modes of information which are crumbling. The media has lost credibility, Hollywood has lost its glamour, the elites in Washington have lost the concent of the governed. I think this is a new day. The post WWII federal dominance is waning and the people want to reduce the size of the federal government. I think what is happening was inevitable that eventually those in their bubble of ideas and theories would be faced with those whom their ideas and theories effect first hand and they don’t like.
I’m optimistic but cautiously so
Comments so far seem to be ignoring this key new point, and are instead rehashing the old ones. Unless I’m too dense to have noticed, which is always a possibility.
I’d say I was #NeverTrump until I pulled the lever on Election Day. That was the day I became #NeverHillary.
Now, we’ve got what we’ve got and need to make the best of it.
He clearly stated he wants to give the government back to the people. I think that gives all of us ownership. Whether we voted for him or not, we should hold him to it.
We should support him where his actions show wisdom, and reduce our government footprint. And call him out when he’s stupid on important things.
He can continue to be stupid on unimportant things.
The biggest challenge will be muting the wailing of the lib-media and sore losers.
The good thing is he’s got some good people on his team.
We can’t live in the past: we have to look ahead, and move forward.
And why does no one ever realize our increasing government footprint is so much more life threatening our carbon footprint?
I wonder if to actually get at the heart of my post, we might have to resort to fictional scenarios where all names have been changed so as to get past the Trump bias and actually discuss the concepts of unity, leadership, the role of criticism and its consequences, etc.
I wonder if this over-the-top, sack-cloth-and-ashes routine of the Left might not actually be a help to Trump. Their behavior is so childish and annoying that they may be drawing negative attention away from Trump and to themselves. Whether they know it or not, they are firing up Trump’s support – even from people like me, who voted for the man with great (and I do mean great) hesitation.
Oh poor lonely Trump. Look at him, old, sick, hunchback, swiming the Potomac with his wooden leg on fire. He and the unhindged left deserve each other. I will defend his policies when I like them. But, I see no point in defending the man himself. At least not until he apologizes for his own obscene lies and statements about others.
i was thinking during the inauguration that a sincere apology for his general misuse of words and tone would be valuable. But it would be a game changer to so few people that it isn’t strong political currency.
He’s better off using his energy to control his mouth going forward. I do hope someone counsels him in that regard. The past is the past. Move forward with renewed focus on the goal of repairing this nation.
Now personal and private apologies: that is a spiritually healing act, not a political tool.
Unfortunately, I no longer believe this. That aside, how familiar are you with the pickup-artist scene, @cm? Now, I’ve had some good words to say about pickup artists in my time, but there’s nonetheless reasons why they – and used car salesmen – have the reputation they do. Not all of us react well to the emotionally-manipulative hard sell. I don’t.
Most Trump supporters on Ricochet are reasonable and congenial. But unfortunately, I’ve seen enough hard-sell, brow-beating, bullying, and manipulative behavior ostensibly morally justified in service of America in order to cajole others into supporting Trump that, while I’m not making promises to criticize Trump whenever he’s wrong, I’m definitely not making promises to refrain from criticizing Trump to appease the hard-sell crowd, either.
The path of appeasing the hard sellers is the path to perdition, no matter the benefits of what the hard sellers are selling. Maybe the hard sellers should have thought that through more before deploying so much hard sell for political gamesmanship.
This sounds as if you have already determined that many of your fellow Members should not be given the benefit of the doubt. Hmm.
I have seen almost no evidence of this. Can you point me to some?
The entire premise of this is false. It rests on the idea that Trump is aligned with those of us that are pushing back against him. His inaugural speech was a representation of almost everything I’m against – protectionism, populism, demagoguery. The nightmarish hellscape he envisions America as is completely ad odds with the reality of the richest, most powerful and freest nation in history.
Sure, some of his cabinet appointments have been pretty good so we can wait and see in some areas. But almost all of his economic appointees are inveterate protectionists and crony capitalists. Jeff Sessions for all his positives believes that marijuana is one of the biggest threats to America society and believes civil asset forfeiture is an invaluable tool to fight our ever failing war on drugs. Even Rick Perry at energy, an appointment I initially liked, spoke at his hearing about how wrong he was to seek to eliminate the Department of Energy and now sees its invaluable mission – cause for concern for those of us who want to shrink government.
It’s impossible for us to present a “united front” against the left because on many issues Trump stands with the left.
I think this conversation pairs well with a recent one from @docjay …
You nailed the error in her article. I go hot and cold on Peggy, but usually read her. This article was mostly insightful and correct, but the bit about Trump’s headwind was off target. What he has that is indispensable is the support of the citizenry, in an active sense. The press are thoroughly delegitimized, the opposition party is in angry tatters, Twitter has given Trump fireside chat access 24/7, and Trump has the pen now.
I’m very optimistic and always a bit cautious, even though I am a firm supporter of Trump.
This was a really good post, but I’m deeply skeptical about this point. Is it that people want to reduce the size of the federal government or do they want it picking different winners and losers?
Amity Schlaes in her book The Forgotten Man described a fascinating phenomenon that had eluded most historians previously: in FDR’s early years, the worse things got for the American people, the more popular he became.
I think we are seeing a similar effect with President Obama and the Great Recession.
In his campaign travels around the country, Trump became more and more concerned about how Americans were faring under Obama and the Democrats. He encountered Americans’ anxiety and a loss of hope for the future. Just as Reagan’s tour of America with the General Electric Theater brought the misery being caused by Democratic Party policies to light for Ronald Reagan, so did Trump’s campaign bring to light for Trump the present misery around the country. Thus he said in his inaugural, which according to CNN Trump wrote himself:
We are seeing these riots because the American people are hurting, and they think Obama was helping them. Obama has made them afraid of everyone but him.
And they accuse Trump of demagoguery.
Another good post on this thread. Keep ’em coming!
I’m wondering the same thing also. They’ve bestooged themselves so much in the past by shrieking “Wolf!” when it came to Dole, Romney, Bush (both of them), McCain and, of course, Ronald Reagan that they had minimal credibility when Trump came around.
What is their response after screaming “Wolf!” over and over this time and having it fail? They put on a bunch of silly pink hats and shrieked “Wolf!” as loudly as possible as publicly as possible.
Maybe the “More Cowbell” strategy will work for them with Trump, but I doubt it.
Jamie, maybe the point of this post is that we should present a coherent unified face to the deranged opposition, not that we all need to swear fealty to Trump, and that we will benefit from unity and comity in battling these crazies. The primaries ended with a strong candidate in place, the general election was decisive and ended with a strong president in place, the opposition is saddled with ridiculous arguments, the mainstream press is exposed as a registered tool of the Democrat party, the inaugural speech was terrifying to those beltway bandits of both parties who were assembled near Trump, and the future is bright.
The opposition party is in deranged tatters because Obama was political poison, and now even more so because Trump audaciously severed the thread of Progressive fascism that has had a successful and uninterrupted run from Wilson’s extreme admiration of fascism in Europe and his importation of their ideas , to Obama’s “victory” with Obamacare. Breaking this thread has cast those who have only been taught/indoctrinated the tenets of liberal fascism into the madness of indigestible cognitive dissonance.
You can certainly reprise all the arguments opposing Trump that were offered during the primaries, but I see little value in that. I don’t intend to speak for any particular segment of the Ricochetti, but the sense I take from this post and others that attempt to reclaim a new and powerful sense of community here is that we should look forward, keep our eyes open, and help make this unique and astounding opportunity in governance a success. HDAHA
No. Not many at all. And even those who are difficult to trust because of their hard-sell tactics will still get a healthy benefit of the doubt, just not an unhealthy one, is all.
MFR, maybe if you redefine “hard-sell tactics” into “displays of passion, patriotism, and clear-eyed views of reality”, then it would be easier to communicate effectively.
The military, LEO’s, and intelligence services ( after the purges) will have Trump’s back.
Nice article. It is a civil war of sorts and our side better realize it.
Did he arguments against Trumps bad policies cease to be valid just because he won?
I kept thinking last night of Lincoln with a twist: this country cannot survive half Democrat, half Republican. :)
Of course, federalism is a major source of the unrest we are seeing. States need to reclaim their sovereignty.
Great post. Thanks. I wish I had more time.
(People, please don’t feed the trolls. )
You have a good point in that. I’ve come to the conclusion that most people don’t think broadly. There is a sense I think anyway, that there is something wrong with all the laws regulations, with too many departments of this or that and would like them elimiated but want to keep the big government stuff they like. Most people want what’s in their best interest and since for the majority of people what is in their best interest to take power away from the elites and bring some of that power back to the people. In practice I think you’ll see more delegated to the states or the private sector, just because it is more practical but the motive may be to take away from the elite types. This will be a rough adjustment for everyone, but it was inevitable. Modernity eventually catches up to those who have prospered in the old ways of doing things.
No. And now you can show me the full extent of all the policies published or implemented since 1-20-17.
This thread is not intended to be a reprise of the tired arguments we’ve endured here for months. Forward, and not in the progressive sense, please.
I can complain about the appointments I don’t like then. I’m sorry but a call for unity only works if we are actually unified. The bad things about Trump didn’t cease to be at noon on January 20th. When he actually does something good I’ll stand with him, till then…
Trump didn’t have much of a campaign in any meaningful sense of the word and it certainly didn’t have a message this coherent beyond “Make American Great Again”. This was an interesting scenario where it was, in gross terms, a campaign without a candidate going up against a candidate without a campaign.
This isn’t to say you aren’t keying in on an aspect of why Trump won and pealed off enough Democratic voters to win the thing. You’re making a fine point overall, but I don’t attribute the success to the campaign os much as it was a success of the candidates and that’s something I haven’t seen in my lifetime.