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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
I suspect that it will get easier pretty quickly once Trump starts moving on his agenda and shows everyone what his administration is going to be focused on during this next congress. You get to deal with two congressional sessions each presidential term so that’s “only” four for your entire eight year span if you last that long. It’s that first congress right after you are elected that first time where Presidents are the most successful getting their agenda through so it’s the time you hit the stuff you really want done hard.
I still have this sneaking suspicion that those of us who were varying degrees of Trump skeptical will end up liking him much more around four years from now than those who saw him as a messianic figure, but that could very well be wishful thinking on my part.
OK!
Thanks for the laugh, Publius! I hear where you’re coming from.
Christians all over the world are under assault. Here too, but at least we’re not getting beheaded. If Trump acts as he has indicated he will, I think folks like the Little Sisters of the Poor will enjoy their religious autonomy again. Maybe it isn’t so much about specific policies that will help Christians as much as it will be a general increase in personal freedom.
This part stuck out to me as well, and I’m with you going forward, perhaps more favorably disposed toward Trump since my primary objection was that I simply could not trust him to act on my priorities based on his history and rhetoric during the campaign. He’s got some good appointments so far, and with a Republican House for the next couple years, a Republican Senate for at least the next four barring disaster, and at least one Supreme Court appointment, he has every opportunity to establish a track record capable of evaluation, no matter what CNN, the Daily Show diaspora, and the hysterical crybullies on my facebook feed have to say about it.
If any future criticism of mine targeting Trump for being insufficiently conservative encourages Keith Ellison et al. to devote some resources to trying to get the likes of me to flip to Elizabeth Warren or Kanye West or George Clooney or whoever else they’re running in 2020, I don’t see how that would help the Dems.
What does “deserve” have to do with it?
Should I support my children only when they deserve it?
Should I support my country only when it deserves it?
Trump is neither my child nor my country. A ridiculous analogy.
Those still believing free trade helps less-wealthy Americans more than it harms them are aware that “globalist”, while sometimes used as a shorthand for being pro-free-trade, even across national borders, also has a meaning to do with transnational government. Indeed, that’s what is so frustrating about the term for them, since many conservatives who have no use for “globalism” in the one-world or trans-national government sense, but who nonetheless do believe Americans benefit from freeing up trade across national borders (subject to minimal customs constraints and so forth), really hate being lumped in with the one-world government people, and worry that the term “globalist” accomplishes exactly that, however unintentionally.
Now, I’m aware of arguments asserting that there isn’t a way to free up trade across national borders without also having transnational governing bodies, that some anti-globalists really do see free trade as a stalking-horse for international government. But whether it is such a stalking-horse is still very much in dispute, and it’s no wonder that free-trade folks who are otherwise anti-globalist get frustrated by the possible conflation.
Which is why I’ll defend Trump from attacks from the Left, and continue to attack Trump from the Right whenever it is warranted.
A Party is a coalition, and can only be unified if every major faction feels secure that their priorities will be advanced, something that simply isn’t the case with Trump as President. Already, foreign policy conservatives in favor of a Reaganite foreign policy, fiscal conservatives (budget hawks and entitlement reformers) and economic conservatives (opponents of protectionism) know that their priorities will not be addressed, and in some cases actively opposed. Other factions (like Constitutional conservatives) know that an administration that has already broken with other, more sizable elements of the coalition cannot be trusted to advance their priority interests (though I do believe he will feel it politically necessary to appoint conservative Justices, especially for Scalia’s seat. That’s why I voted for him).
Basically, the Republican coalition itself is in flux, which means conflict is inevitable, and unity impossible. Opposition like McMullins is outright anti-conservative, but vigilant skepticism like Shapiro’s or Levin’s is necessary to protect conservatism from populism.
I suspect this has very little to do with what you think about Trump.
So? What point are you trying to make? What hold does Trump have on my loyalty?
Note:
Personal attack.My point (in part) is that it doesn’t have anything to do with loyalty to Trump. I certainly don’t feel any loyalty to Trump, though in some venues I will keep my criticisms of him to myself. [Redacted]
I object. You did wrong. You should not have redacted. It was not a personal attack. I would say the same about anyone, to get to the the same point. I was not attacking Trump, and I was not attacking Mr. Lockett.
If you did anything, you should have deleted my entire comment, because one part of it doesn’t stand without the other. That would have been wrong, too, but less offensive.
I don’t care.
Here is what I have learned with this election. My understanding of human nature and political action is the equal of all the lifetime pundits on the left and right. They certainly have stewed in that world in more detail than I have, but I have the experience of living across this country, international living, and working/observing the human condition in my work. I am done with “experts”. George Will, Jay Nordlinger, Jonah Goldberg, etc. etc. can continue to write books. But I won’t be their reader. They have nothing new to say to me.
The silliest were the ones like Bill Maher who actually said, “I admit that I was lying then, and that’s why you should believe me now.”
Your argument makes no sense to me. Either Trump does good things and we praise it or he does bad things and we criticize. What is out of line with that?
I quote this because I can only like it once.
Jamie, I am really curious about that snappy comeback. What might you mean by “fold” ?
I cannot think of what that would look like, either here at Ricochet, or in the public arena, or in politics.
In this context, it means I’m not going to support a politician when I disagree with him just because he’s a Republican. I’m throwing these cards back and waiting for a hand that works for me.
It’s hard to explain when my explanation has been redacted. But it’s not either or. It depends.
Suppose my kid has a bad habit of short cutting across the neighborhood bully’s lawn. The bully brings out his pellet gun and shoots at the ground to chase my kid off. My kid did wrong, but should I go over to the bully and complain about it? Or should I complain elsewhere?
You and I might not handle the situation the same way, and we might each have good ways. But I would tend to place a high priority on calling the cops on the bully, and would save my complaints about shortcuts for a different venue.
This was my approach to George W. Bush. I still defended him against leftwing stupidity, of which there was a lot. Most of my attacks on GWB were attacks on the left. One internet leftist complained that I never said anything bad about Bush without saying something worse about leftists. He was right, of course. He wanted me to say something bad about Bush just once without bringing leftwing misdeeds into it. I refused. If you want to describe wrongdoing, how can you do that effectively without comparing it to the worsedoing all around us.
There were Republicans on that forum who were greatly annoyed with me. Too bad. I ignored them.
Has he formally introduced policies to criticize?
He has put forward cabinet secretaries ripe for criticism, he has stated his objective to renegotiate NAFTA as early as next week. Yes there are things I find open to criticism.
Already? Is there ever a point where this determination can be made?
Has anyone considered that NeverTrump was a necessary part of getting Trump elected? If there are no elites to rally against, how to you persuade people to passionately rally against the elites? Having some of those very people in the same party almost seems to have been a stronger rallying cry than trying to oust Hillary.
Maybe they could be thanked for doing Trump a service rather than browbeaten after already losing. If they stop and get in line, it could have the counter-intuitive effect of deflating Trump’s balloon somewhat, and we know there’s not much room for support loss.
I like the way you think about this. But if you are right, it was not only important to have NeverTrump elitists, but it was important for people to rail against them. If Trump and his supporters said no more than a thank you, it would have diminished the effect.
I think this can be accomplished by attacking the NeverTrump ideas and avoid attacking the people as stupid and morally abhorrent. “Thank you for being wrong about this so that enough people are persuaded to get the right result.”
Editors: please note that this was the root of the tension that developed later in this thread. I doubt if I’d care to have my well-intentioned and rather innocuous comment called ridiculous. This was what I referred to yesterday as a snowball packed with gravel. Yet it’s the recipient who gets redacted?
Just mentioning this in the proper place; this is not a response to Jamie. I’ve become more interested in how the rules work here in our playground.
And like me, who did not vote for him. Frankly, the left is already people alright…toward Trump.
I’ve never considered whether conservative anti-Trumpers helped him win the presidency. (I do think it’s pretty clear they kept down some votes, and really I think that is likely to make him a better president.)
But I think the reluctant Trump supporters — especially Paul Ryan — were much more important in this particular election than many people realized. What I think a lot of people missed is that Ryan’s criticisms didn’t really hurt Trump and weren’t intended to. When he criticized Trump he was, on the one hand, saying “stop it” just as it appeared. But he’s also saying — to all the ordinary people who didn’t like whatever Trump had said or done — “I hear you. Don’t like it either. But we still have to do this.”
Basically, while Democrats were throwing the kitchen sink at Trump while pretending Clinton was a perfectly normal acceptable candidate, Ryan et al were acknowledging that this wasn’t a normal election and validating people’s concerns while making a legitimate case that Trump was the right choice anyway. I think that resonated with a segment of the electorate.