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What Is the End-Game for NeverTrumpers?
This question has been growing in my mind as the cacophony of from the hysterical Left (sorry for the redundancy) rises to a crescendo. As I follow people like Jonah Goldberg, David French, and Mona Charen — to name the few who seem to be tenaciously critical of Trump but whom I respect tremendously — I really want to ask them a few questions. I won’t get their replies here so maybe others of a like mind can answer for this perspective.
What is it that you are trying to accomplish at this point? I get, first of all, why you didn’t want Trump to be the nominee. I did not want that either. I supported almost anyone else in the field over him except for, maybe, Jeb! and, later, Kasich. I really did not want him. But once it happened, the choice became overwhelmingly obvious. Everyone gets that. What I don’t understand is why, at this point in time, do you seem to take an active anti-Trump stance? Do you think that we will somehow come out in good shape if the Left brings down this administration? So you think that the distraction will be out of the way and we can go back to being respected by the Media? Do you see Pence taking over and then the Leftist mob will have their bloodthirst slaked?
Furthermore, didn’t Trump represent an unexpected opportunity? Wasn’t it possible that, blemishes and all, Trump was a blunt instrument that represented an opening for moving the ball downfield in a way that a more traditional politician never could? I hate that I am speaking in the past tense but I am starting to feel that we have let an opportunity slip through our fingers. By not closing ranks behind him, I fear that we are letting him get surrounded by the barbarian horde while we watch “safely” from the ramparts. After he is vanquished, the siege will commence and what will we do then?
Published in General
I think this is a good analysis, but I see a small problem with it: the assumption that these two groups really do have common goals.
I mean, the reason why the most oft repeated phrase at the GOP convention was “Lock Her Up” is because that was the only thing that all of the attendees could agree upon.
As far as conspiracy-theorizing goes, it seems to be a human trait, shared by people of all political stripes*, that’s hardest to hold in check during periods of frustration or perceived powerlessness. I have not noticed unusual amounts of conspiracy-theorizing from Ricochetians who’ve self-identified as “never Trump” conservatives at some point. What have you noticed that has you believing this group is more conspiracy-theory minded than other groups, such as Trump supporters?
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* See, for example, this resource, which, while not unbiased, is reasonably informative, and includes this graph:
This resource is put out by the same group of skeptics @pseudodionysius and @thereticulator have mentioned in recent OPs.
I agree not all “disruptists” and “principlists” do share common goals. I think “disruptists” and “principlists” who also have Ricochet memberships are far more likely than not to have broad goals in common, though. Admittedly, that’s quite a provincial perspective on these two sides, but it is the perspective most relevant to any mutual frustrations among Ricochet members.
Reading through this discussion I seem to discern a couple of different perspectives
Is that fair? My thinking is that the second view doesn’t necessarily contradict the first but the perception of the circumstances is very different. If you don’t see a mob delivering a beat-down then it sounds absurd and annoying to have someone tell you to ease up on the criticism and lend a hand in the fight. I would too, I guess. My question now is: am I wrong to view the situation as getting scary? Perhaps I am getting too caught up in the hype and need to chill out for a while.
Ahh. Yes, that’s an important distinction. I agree there’s more overlap there.
My understanding is that there was a pretty specific, actionable intelligence element that Trump chose deliberately to share with the Russians. This may be considered a gambit that is intended to save innocent lives and to foster further cooperation in our mutual fight against Islamic extremists in ISIS and related groups. I find that to be a defensible use of our intelligence resources.
Contrast that with Hillary, who was not discerning about anything to share; she was simply reckless in the extreme. Every bit of classified intelligence that came to her in the form of e-mail was handled in a way that was vulnerable to bad guys, and was done in a way that violated both the law and State Department regulations.
I hear the Left making this false equivalence. It annoys me even more when I hear Nevers echo this false equivalence.
I think it’s reasonable. I’d point out, though, that it’s not necessary to be disgusted with Trump to believe Trump’s not a mugging victim and can probably take care of himself.
No question, the modern news cycle is brutal. It takes a weird person to even run for office these days, knowing how brutal it is. No question that a certain faction of American culture is ticked off at Trump beyond all reason. Are they mugging him, though? Trump was elected as a scrappy, hard-hitting, guy who fights back. If he’s a scrappy fighter, a guy who can “mug the media back”, are we really watching a “mugging”, or something more mutual, political brawling that – heck – Trump might even be enjoying?
“Mugging” frames Trump as so very passive, as if he doesn’t have the agency and power that he, as POTUS, probably does have, even if he’s finding the learning curve on being POTUS a bit steep. Trump boosters often say, “Let Trump be Trump”: well, almost everyone here in the Ricoverse is an ordinary American without the clout to stop Trump from being Trump even if we tried. I think it’s reasonable for most Americans to worry more about the effect their opinions on Trump might have on their loved ones and acquaintances than it is to worry about the effect their opinions might have on Trump himself.
One of Trump’s assets is that he’s not supposed to be naive about political wheeling-dealing, but versed in how that stuff works thanks to his experience in real-estate. Trump is supposed to be cunning in this respect.
Could the learning curve of POTUS be so steep that even the cunning, scrappy guy Trump is supposed to be could be wrong-footed and brought down before his time in his first few months in office? I suppose. But I would think that the more you trust Trump to be Trump, the less you’d have to worry about in that respect.
Yeah and Amen.
This is my main criticism of the NT’ers.
All we get is condescension, arrogance, and mocking of folks like VDH. It is boring and not worth my time to digest.
This is where I put the disclaimer I neither voted for Trump (I left it blank) or supported him at any time of the primary race.
Tell me what this means.
During the 1st Republican presidential debate in 2015, Donald Trump pointed to the other Republican candidates on the stage and said, “These guys will cut your Social Security and Medicare. I won’t. I won’t raise the age of eligibility for those programs.”
So, for a Trump supporter to accuse the McConnell/Ryan GOP of being uninterested in limited government is an example of the pot calling the kettle black. Paul Ryan proposed reforms in Medicare. Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump oppose entitlement reform.
Generic Wisconsin Republican US Senator Ron Johnson received more votes in his 2016 US Senate race than did Donald Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton.
Generic Pennsylvania Republican US Senator Pat Toomey received more votes in his 2016 US Senate race than did Donald Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton.
Florida isn’t the upper mid west, but generic Florida Republican US Senator Marco Rubio received more votes in his 2016 US Senate race than did Donald Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton.
Trump came within 100,000 votes in three states (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) of losing the Hillary Clinton. Trump lost the popular vote. Republican candidates for US House of Representatives won the popular vote against their Democrat opponents. Trump was a drag on the GOP ticket in 2016. Trump remains a drag on the GOP today.
Conservatives have a choice. We can let Trump enact the Ivanka Trump agenda of mandatory family paid leave, an agenda that would please Bernie Sander by making America more like Sweden or we can get rid of Trump, elevate Pence to the top job and let Pence-McConnell-Ryan enact the conservative agenda.
Unfortunately, in a close race, predicting that the horse who did win wouldn’t win isn’t so radically wrong. Many who at first believed Trump would lose “bigly” revised their expectations fairly rationally as the race went on, although of course there were also holdouts.
As Dominic Cummings, crucial to the Brexit campaign, observed,
Anyone heading into election day with the apprehension, “Wow, I think this race could be close,” has little to apologize for, prediction-wise, as far as I can tell.
I regret that I have but one like to give to this comment.
Deserved.
I see. So, Donald Trump dragging down the GOP, helping the Democrats, is somehow good for the country?
Are the Democrats thinking they’ve been helped by Trump since his election? They sure are acting strange if that’s true.
Of course, there were those who criticized Trump’s campaign strategy and didn’t believe it was going to be close.
Trump’s endorsement of mandatory paid family leave during his speech to a joint session of Congress was music to the ears of people like Bernie Sanders, who think that the United States should become more like Sweden.
Trump’s endorsement of single payer health care also had Bernie Sanders in agreement with Trump and conservatives disagreeing with both Trump and Sanders.
So, if you are a conservative, a Trump resignation and a Pence elevation to the Presidency would be a net benefit.
Conservatives don’t need to reflexively defend Trump’s stupidity.
Well, here’s an example that might help.
Suppose you’re the one Trump detractor in a family of 12, over Thanksgiving dinner. In the recesses of your heart, you seethe at the guy, and you believe it’s vital for the American interest for Trump to be brought down.
Now, exactly how would expressing that seething unfiltered, at a family dinner where 11 of 12 members are Trump supporters, help? What’s more likely, that your apoplectic rage at Trump over family dinner would actually hurt Trump in any way, or that it would hurt your family members (and quite possibly in return, yourself) through alienation? Maybe the “mission” of bringing down Trump is just less important than the mission of getting along with your family.
Similar logic applies to other combinations of supporters and detractors, in any situation where they’re less likely to affect Trump than they are to affect each other by how they get along. Even when all are eager for debate, filtering self-expression through consideration of who we’re talking to is a valuable skill, though perhaps it’s a skill we often do so instinctively that we might underestimate its importance, especially considering plain-spokenness (which isn’t the opposite of consideration, but which can seem like it) is a famed American virtue.
Well, for Republicans.
Neither of your cites means much to me and Democrats surely know they are not going anywhere. I’m not aware of any actual moves forward on these points, just talk. If that’s the foundation for your idea of getting rid of Trump for Pence, it’s very weak, not to mention how bad the idea itself is. People need to stop focusing on what Trump talks about on various occasions and pay attention to things that are actually happening. When Trump pushes something that I don’t support, you’ll hear from me. Staying away from Social Security and Medicare is good strategy for now.
I notice, in calling me a “Trump supporter”, you forgot to note the bottom of my post which noted that I am not, was not, and will not be one. So ballyhoo to you.
Your notation of the vote totals and the GOP Senators who ran ahead of Trump does not deal with the actual voters who voted for Trump and that voted for those GOP Senators or who they ran against in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. If the Dems get out of their own way and run Fetterman against Toomey, he loses. The Ohio DNC is dead right now.
In what way would McConnell/Ryan push for a “conservative” agenda of note? Ryan’s budget/AHCA are managerial examples of non-conservative economics and health insurance.
As an aside, this idea that both NT’ers and Democrats play with, that unless your attacks on Trump are full-throated without simulation or nuance you are therefore somehow a “secret” or “unaware” Trump supporter.
This particular wrinkle to our contemporary political discourse is quite tiresome.
Perhaps that happens off Ricochet. I hadn’t noticed that much on Ricochet, though, a place where even those considered “NT’ers” by “T’ers” are likely to consider some attacks on Trump just plain ridiculous.
I agree, it must be tiresome when it happens.
I was a hardcore Never Trumper. I didn’t vote for him, ever, and of course I didn’t vote for Hillary. And I had a vague sense that Hillary winning would be marginally “better,” because it was so likely that she would die in office fairly soon. But when Trump won, I was astonished at how insanely happy I was that Hillary lost.
Now it makes no difference what I was, in terms of electoral politics, because the election is over. With some notable exceptions, President Trump has been an embarrassment and a disaster, and is more or less proving what I thought was he true reason for running: to destroy the Republican party so that he could make more crony capitalist deals with President Hillary. (Except he surprised everyone, most definitely including himself, by winning.)
But. The notion that conservatives should “get rid of Trump,” as espoused by @spiral9399 and others on this thread, is crazy counter-revolutionary nonsense. (Referring to the Revolution of 1789, of course.) In this country, we don’t remove people from office and air-brush out their official photos because of their politics. We wait two, four, or six years and vote them out of office, if we put up sufficiently good candidates who run sufficiently good campaigns that appeal to a sufficient number of voters.
Of course, the situation would be different if Nixon-level or Clinton-level misconduct appeared. (It wasn’t the sex, people, it was lying not only in the presence of a federal judge, but lying to her face.) In the now-unlikely event that bona fide high Crimes and Misdemeanors appear in the Oval Office today, I will become pro-impeachment–but not because I would prefer to have Pence rather than Trump as my president.
This is a false premise. We neither wish for Trump to fail, nor assume his success is necessarily good for America. It all depends on what policy you’re talking about.
The end game for Never Trumper’s was a Hillary victory. Not one has had the courage to tell their audience that they preferred Hillary to President Trump. They skate and wiggle when confronted with their lack of support for Trump, but are never truly honest. They wanted Hillary. They could then recede to their “whoa is me” position of how the Left is ruining this country. Snobs and elitists.
Yes to all of that.
Wrong.
I think you have that backwards. Anything less than “full-throated” support for everything Trump does means you’re in favor of impeachment, from what I’m reading.
@polyphemus I think the key difference is calling what is happening to Trump as a “mugging”. As far as I can tell people are pushing back on Trump as he pushes back on them. He makes mistakes that his enemies exploit but why would his enemies not exploit his mistakes? Trump is not the only politician to discover that he can’t govern the same way you campaign and that some tactics that work really well on campaign are a major problem when you want to govern. Also Trump’s business deals had a discrete beginning and end when things would “reset”. Grudges were not a major part of Trump’s business dealings. Politics don’t work like a marketing and real estate business and Trump is learning that now.
So for me what I see is that my friend, a guy I am in some sense responsible for, goes out at night and gets drunk. When he is drunk he does stupid things likes gropes a biker’s girlfriend, or runs his mouth at the wrong guys. Each and every day he gets into a fight. Some of us that are his friends accept that about him and jump in on his side when he is outnumber and fights at his side. Others try and help our friend not to get drunk in the first place, try and stop him from groping the Biker’s girlfriend, and ask him not to run his mouth so much. When he stays sober, keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t grope anyone but gets jumped anyway look to see him throwing punches right beside him.
But I think both methods of helping our “friend” are valid don’t you? It would be better for Trump not to start so many stupid fights and at the same time in certain situations he deserves to have us fight along side of him.