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The Trump Spectrum
Inspired by this comment from @jameslileks.
- Never Trump: They truly believe he is so awful that even the chaos that would ensue after removing him from office does not outweigh the benefits of said removal. Examples: Bill Kristol.
- Anti-Trump: They too believe he is awful, but recognize that we are stuck with him. They may occasionally admit that he has done some good things, but usually only grudgingly. Examples: Mona Charen, John Podhoretz.
- Trump Skeptics: They don’t like him, they don’t trust him, but they are trying to keep an open mind. They criticize him frequently but try to keep it constructive. They probably didn’t vote for him but are trying to be gracious losers. Some of them may even concede that the good outweighs the bad but insist that the bad still needs to be addressed. Examples: Ben Shapiro, Most of NRO, I place myself here as well.
- Reluctant Trump: They don’t particularly like him, but they think we should give him the benefit of a doubt. They will generally cite Hillary Clinton as their primary (if not their only) motivation for voting for him. Examples: Andrew Klavan, Peter Robinson(?).
- Trump Defenders: They admit he’s made mistakes but either think the good outweighs the bad to such a degree as to make the mistakes not worth discussing, or they believe the forces aligned against him are so great that spending too much time on the mistakes is “piling on.” Examples: Victor Davis Hanson, Dennis Prager.
- Trump Apologists: The only thing he’s done wrong is not play by The Rules. Everything wrong with the administration is entirely the fault of his enemies. All critics are either pearl-clutching elitists and/or open borders globalists. Example: Sean Hannity.
Resolved: Groups 4-6 have a vested interest in believing that Group 1 is far larger than it really is and that Group 6 is a strawman. Groups 1-3 have a vested interest in the reverse, and I myself am far from innocent in this. As with many questions of this nature, reality is far closer to a bell curve. For both sides to accept this is the first step towards reconciliation.
Published in General
Am I the only one who is going to admit to being a 1 without any asterisks or caveats?
Also:
To those who complain that Ricochet is overrun and dominated by pro-Trump or anti-Trump comment, this thread should serve as evidence that
But most of us knew that already.
Quite possibly. You have to admit that you do have one of the most extremely negative opinions of Trump out of anyone here.
I doubt you’re alone though. There was that other guy who tried to argue that Trump was the worst President in history earlier this week.
I don’t think lack of a spectrum was ever the problem. Rather, a tendency away from self-awareness and monumental overreaction remain the biggest causes of discord (not to mention genuinely differing values, apparently). If a solid 1 or 7 insists that they are merely a 3 or 4 then we’re no better off. The same applies for less clear divergences between perception and reality.
Yeah, one of my friends on the left, who I haven’t actually spoken to since the election, was enjoying Trump during the primaries for exactly this reason. I told him to be careful what he wished for, that a lot of traditional non-ideological democratic voters seemed to be attracted to Trump. We exchanged some mutual trash talk prior to the election. Then nothing.
I freely do so.
In the last few minutes I’ve been rethinking my use of the word “admit.” Because admission typically includes reluctance. And I’m not reluctant to say it.
I’m somewhere between 3 and 4. As I said to a number of my pals, some of whom are ardent Trump fans, regardless of his missteps, ” I hope for success; I expect failure.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: No political movement ever became successful by making itself smaller.
The next problem is how one views “our side” or “our team”.
This isn’t just a semantic or taxonomy issue.
Read some Sean Trende. You’ll also see that by trying to attract some, you repel others. I would never want to be part of a movement with Mona Charen or Bill Kristol. Never was. Never will be.
I am mostly a 4 – 4.5, but I applaud Victor Davis Hanson’s pointing out that we must look past Trump’s means, bearing, MO etc. He points out regularly that Obama was as smooth as silk in his means and mien, but his ends were anti-constitutional and deceitful to nearing diabolical. After 8 years of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, we may have to like and work with the mutt we have rather than the pure bred sheep dog we might long for.
No, I’m a 1 as well. My view of Trump is that he is Charybdis.
I don’t know how someone of the right can really believe this when there has been actual movement on issues that matter to us. Gorsuch matters. The reduction in federal regulations matters. None of that changes the fact that Trump is an awful human being with a lot of really terrible ideas that need to be criticized (protectionism, nativism, etc.). But conservatives and libertarians have made peace with flawed men before so long as they get something out of it. Politics is transactional. I did not, and as of right now would not, vote for Trump – but that doesn’t mean we can’t use him.
The reason we all waste so much time on this is that it is important to figure out what can and cannot be reconciled. Who belongs in the big tent and who doesn’t. There is some complexity and everyone brings a little different point of view so a lot of iterations are required. I think the OP brings us a lot closer. I think 2-5 can probably get along: 1 and 6 may have some decisions to make.
I would also add that Robert McReynolds’s post and the subsequent discussion have also had a big clarifying effect. At least for me.
Put me down as a 1.375
I am NeverTrump in that I didn’t vote for him and never will. However, we are stuck with him and he stumbled into Gorsuch (in contrast to conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court alone, however, was never reason enough by itself to believe that voting for him was worth it…a concept that would be an interesting topic for one of the feeds but is tangential to this particular comment).
He’ll be responsible for us all to have to endure Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi again after the 2018 mid-terms and will also provide the dream scenario for Democrats in the Senate who, in a potentially disastrous year in which they have to defend 25 of the 33 seats up for re-election, will at least tread water because of his historic unpopularity and will set themselves up to regain the Senate in 2020.
I think the problem here is that when Trump drops certain conservative like goals like free trade and entitlement reform from the Republican agenda those developments are assigned a weight of zero when they should be weighed negatively. This is after all the Trump spectrum not the Trump admin spectrum (if it were the latter my score would be noticeably higher). Trump’s impact on the culture and on the shape of the GOP matter to the fate of the country. In this context they probably matter more than the nuts and bolts of policy given that few if any of the positive developments in that arena would be jeopardized by his removal from office.
I agree with all of that – it’s why I’m so critical of him. It’s also why I identify as further down the spectrum – we need to encourage when he does good and discourage when he does bad. Writing him off completely means he can ignore us.
I think I was a weird NeverTrump’r. Trump’s morality and personality traits were never my issue, it was that I thought he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing (i.e. he would preside to the left but conservatives would get blamed for it). All of his actions in office have convinced me that he is going to preside mostly as a conservative, with some deviations mostly in trade, etc.
Am I the only one that sees the chaos in Washington DC a feature rather than a bug?
The chaos is doing more to restore the rule by law than by man because, when the governing class are infighting then they must resort to rule of law rather than rule by men.
Thanks for the clarifying post. I find it clarifying because I must rate myself as a solid 5.
I originally gravitated to 4.5, probably because I still have lingering doubts and do not support all of the President’s priorities. But the first words of #4 is: “They don’t particularly like him.” Well, at this point, I do particularly like him.
I found this surprising. I do not forget how offended I was by some of the things he said in the primaries, like the dismissal of McCain’s heroism as a POW and the unfounded accusation against Cruz’s father. But I kept an open mind, and I find that I really like the guy now. He’s somewhere in the “crazy uncle” category, occasionally saying something totally offensive or outrageous, but usually quite funny and with a heart in the right place.
I’ve been very supportive of the President’s policy decisions and appointments thus far. He’s been relatively inactive in thee areas about which I expect to disagree most (trade and homosexuality).
I am a proud 1. Period. Full stop.
Trump was the relentless promoter of the Big Lie of birtherism, even after Obama released his birth certificate.
Trump is a bully. See John McCain and Megyn Kelly at first, followed by Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted, and Liddle Marco. (Criticizing Rubio for being short was especially repugnant.)
Trump is mentally ill as shown by the canard that Ted Cruz’s father helped kill Kennedy.
Trump demands blind alliegence in his cult of personality.
Trump has never had to answer to anyone. He is the only President who never served in government where he had to report to others. The last person who could set any limits on Trump was his father who died of Altzheimer’s disease.
Trump is a clever racist, who on the eve of southern primaries issued a dog whistle of not denouncing David Duke and the Klan, and then claimed that his hearing was defective.
Trump is a con man and a crook. He never released his taxes. He cheats people.
Trump appears to be more than a 71 year old stubborn man, it appears that he has neurological deficits and is following his Father into Altzheimer’s Disease.
i believe that Trump is a clear and present danger not only to the Republican Party, but to the United States. I am irrevocably opposed to him. If removing Trump by impeachment, or the 25th Amendment, or by a cluster of independent counsel, anti-nepotism, financial disenvestment and anti-emolument statutes destroys the Republican Party, but saves the United States, that is a price I am willing to pay because I love my country more than I love my party.
in valuing baseball players, one helpful tool is called “VORP” or value or replacement player. Name one quality or policy position where Trump is better than Pence, or Rubio, or Kasich, or any other Replacement Republican. Any Republican would have nominated Neil Gorsuch; the person deserves the credit for Justice Gorsuch is Mitch McConnell, not Trump.
Trump and his dwindling band of Trumpkins must be forced out of power. If they cannot be purged from the Republican Party, then the Republican Party needs to join the Whigs on the ash heap of history.
I don’t know if I agree with you, but this argument does make some sense. I think it depends on what the final product of all of this chaos will be.
Right. You’re talking about fiddling at the margins. There are far larger things at stake. The nation we live in is the fruit of the greatest experiment in human history: a republic built on the ideas of classical liberalism.
Donald Trump stands opposed to that (or would if he stood for anything).
My concern (and I’m not the only one) is that he will take this successful classical liberal project and drive it into the ditch. That in his quest for political power and survival, he will exploit the age-old forces of resentment and fear and racism and protectionism tribalism and, without understanding what he is even doing, permanently damage the nation.
And the longer he lasts, the more damage he’ll do. The more the cancer will spread. Unless he is swiftly and thoroughly repudiated, he will spawn a thousand imitators.
So Gorsuch is nice, minor deregulation is cute, but they’re not worth the havoc he’ll have wrought.
@blueyeti If someone can make a Ricochet poll out of this scale, that would be a wonderful thing.
Classical liberalism was rejected by both right and left 100 years ago.
Fred, I’m a 5, and I share your concerns.
In your view, has Trump wrought any significant havoc thus far? I concede the possibility, but I don’t think that it’s happened yet.
I think that you lean more Libertarian than I, though I have some pretty strong Libertarian tendencies myself. I don’t recall where you stood during the primaries, but my guess is that you would have preferred Cruz, as did I. (I originally favored Rubio over Cruz for electability reasons, while preferring Cruz on policy.)
I think that there remains a good chance that the Trump Presidency will turn out pretty well. It’s not going to give either far-right Conservatives (like me) or Libertarians everything that they want. But it may shrink government somewhat, reverse some of the abuses of the Obama years, and give us a solidly Conservative SCOTUS.
I like the football field analogy in our politics. I’m with Cruz (and probably you too, Fred), somewhere around the 5 or 10 yard line on the Conservative side. The game is typically played between the 40-yard-lines. At his peak, Obama probably drove the ball to around the Leftist 35.
I’d be pretty happy with Trump if he drove it back to around the Conservative 45, and I think he’s on track to do so. He might do a bit better. Or, sure, he might fumble and leave us back in something like the Obama days.
So well said. I agree that Trump is a cancer on America and the Republican Party. (I had cancer four years ago). The quicker this cancer is killed by surgery (impeachment), radiation (25th Amendment) or chemotherapy (independent counsel, anti-nepotism, financial disenvestment, tax return disclosure and anti-emolument statutes), the better. For me, I suggest an “all of the above” approach. I hope that the Republican Party survives the removal of the Trump cancer. But I place country over party.
I can’t ATM, but please make sure I address this comment.
This site makes me google too much (starts looking up Charybdis……)
First, let me self-identify as a 2.5 (more on that in a bit). I think that Trump is wreaking havoc, but that we get so caught up in the details it gets overlooked. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone here at Ricochet follows politics pretty closely. The thing is, we’re abnormal. Most people don’t know who the White House chief of staff is or that Trump is on his second one already. If you said “Scaramucci” to a regular person they’d think you were talking about a line in a Queen song. Even so, the chaos of the administration is getting through and leading to the general impression that Trump is doing a bad job. He’s not going to be getting credit for things that get better, but will certainly be blamed for everything going wrong. The danger is that for most people Trump will be the face of the GOP for the foreseeable future. Every crazy or stupid or dishonest thing that Trump says or does, the GOP will own for a long time. Every good idea and reasonable policy that conservatives have will be tainted by association with Trump in the minds of regular voters. The failures of Congress only make the problem worse. Havoc is probably the wrong word, because it’s not something that will be obvious right away. But it is happening, and it’s only getting worse.
I said I was a 2.5, but I think that most of the time what group we’re in is a reaction to other people. When I’m talking to progressive friends about what is going on, I may sound more like a 4 in praising some of Trump’s cabinet picks and nominations. Every time I see a friend retweeting Trump favorably, I cringe and want to say things that put me in the 1 camp. But I think overall I’ve been pretty consistent. I will easily admit he’s done some things right (if not always for the right reason), but on the whole I don’t know that it will outweigh the damage he’s doing to the conservative movement.