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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 think that might very well work in the short-term. But in the long term it is bad for the country — because sooner or later these people, or their successors, will be back in power again.
Everyone vote your conscience and applaud Truth and Justice, whomever brings it to the forefront.
CM, are you basically saying that you want conservatives to want Trump to succeed, and to convey that — rather than a desire for his failure — in their words, whether they support or criticize?
Yes.
Well, now, to me that’s a different question, to which a lot more of us might reply with enthusiastic yes!
To be fair, some #NeverTrump commentators in the media give the impression that — having predicted that Trump would be a disaster — they’re now invested in seeing that disaster come true. And that leads to distrust of even those who don’t feel that way.
This is a misquote. I’m not the author of the quote. I’ve been noticing it more lately. Coincidence, or bug?
Indeed. The OP sounded like yet another admonition to stop criticizing him. Leigh’s restatement is much more reasonable.
But, Mike, it’s also important for the many years of incompetence to precede Trump’s rise. These people might do things accidentally but the things they want are not within their grasp. They are the great Incompetents.
I think who is exactly “incompetent” is open for debate. Even if NeverTrump people turn out to be wrong about how Trump will govern, they still had extremely good reasons to believe what they did.
They perhaps had good reasons to believe that Trump would not be reliably conservative. They did not have good reasons to think he would govern to the left of Hillary.
He’s to the left of Hillary on trade. He’s what pushed her to reject TPP.
Yes, they pretended that they weren’t helping Hillary get elected.
Sorry I haven’t been more active. Real life stuff is pounding on my door.
binary
Why do you persist in using an argument you know doesn’t work to win a debate that ended six weeks ago?
Sad.
That’s not necessarily a left-right issue, nor has it ever been.
I put up a silly and childish provocation in response to silly childishness in the comments.
The result was even more silly childishness.
Better than high dudgeon and Editorial lightning bolts.
Maybe.