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The First Step Is Admitting You Have a Problem
Regarding President Trump, there are currently several divisions on the Right. While not including everybody, these probably cover most:
- Trump was my guy all along. MAGA!
- I voted for someone else in the primary but with serious reservations and crossed fingers, I voted Trump to prevent Hillary. Policy-wise, I’m pleased.
- I didn’t vote for Trump, but the economy, courts, and geopolitics seem pretty, pretty good.
- Never Trump. Ever. Never eva!!!
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles (and cigar-group friend) penned “Can We All Finally Admit Trump Is A Good President?“
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
The Iran Deal in tatters, three American hostages safely returned from North Korea, which now offers to denuclearize and end the Korean War after 68 years, five top ISIS leaders captured — and that’s just this week. On the domestic front, in just a year-and-a-half, landmark tax reform has made the U.S. more competitive, fewer illegal aliens are entering our country than at any time in the past 17 years, and dozens of federal judges have taken the bench to defend the rule of law and our constitutional system. According to a poll from CNN of all outlets, more Americans today think the country is headed in the right direction than at any time in over a decade.
The Left unsurprisingly remains steadfast in their opposition to President Trump. What’s disappointing is that a handful of “Never Trump” Republicans remain equally unwilling to admit the obvious: Donald Trump is a good president. Indeed, the remaining anti-Trump voices on the Right seem more desperate than ever to take down the president, if only to prove that, actually, they were right all along.
Michael Knowles is no dummy. Yale-educated, podcast host at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and author of the best blank book ever written, Michael posits some truths that many on both the Left and Right could use a good dose of: reality.
We understand the interminable Never Trump anger. After all, Trump traded five extremely dangerous and hardened terrorists for one Army deserter while adjoined by the deserters suspicious looking parents in the White House Rose Garden. Oh, wait … that was the last guy. Today, ISIS has been reduced to a handful of knife-wielding basement-dwelling neckbeards stabbing randoms on the streets of North Mecca (Paris).
But there was this: Trump used State Dept. funds to interfere with and fail to prevent the re-election of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Oh, that was also the last guy. Today we see Israelis dancing in the streets as America had the audacity to recognize Jerusalem as their capital (something every former President campaigned for but never had the guts to acknowledge officially). Meanwhile, Iranian-sponsored Hamas uses the poor Palestinian people as cannon fodder while the White House Press Pool clutches pearls 6,000 miles away.
The list can go on: North Korea, Syria, Tax Reform, etc. It’s not necessary to present the impressive number of achievements in Trump’s first 16 months, but even intellectually honest liberal friends whisper that Hillary probably couldn’t have gotten this done, even if those policies were liberal.
Granted, we are not there yet, anything can happen, but from a conservative perspective, we’re quickly heading in the right direction.
Where are the Never Trumpers on these stunning seismic geopolitical events? You can find some remaining “neocons” on MSNBC or CNN as contributors whose talking points are similar to the liberals they are supposedly countering. They second guess or downplay every achievement, while incessantly cheerleading any and all unsubstantiated leaks on the Mueller investigation or who said what in the White House.
Who needs Fire and Fury from a leftist partisan hack when you get the same breathless narrative from these people on the “right.” While Trump is working to peacefully end the 60-year-old Korean Conflict, they are nattering about porn stars while spending their days trolling Twitter arguing with strangers. This is their life now. #Sad.
The worst part is, they present themselves as the moral arbiters of Conservative, Inc. In their mind, it’s still their show. Complain, and you’re a “Trump Snowflake.” Disagree and you’re a [expletive] Neanderthal, probably uneducated and seeking sponsors for your bowling league.
People correctly tell them this is the reason Trump won, except the NYC/DC/LA elites were usually on the left. But now, their smug, condescending act has become tiresome and boring. So, like millions, we have tuned them out.
We used to like respect these people. We bought their books, watched their interviews and even went on their rip-roaring cruises.
Right after the election, in an interview on my show, one said, “we hope Trump succeeds.”
“Magnanimous,” I replied. After all, it was. They fought tooth and nail against him. “If Trump succeeds, we all succeed,” I’d say.
Then the less than enthusiastic “Yeah… Well, we’ll see.” They were still smarting from their loss.
But it’s almost a year and a half later. Ego is helluva drug and the Id doesn’t easily crack. I didn’t complete my Ph.D. in psychology but I learned enough to know denial when I see it. In psychoanalytic theory, we learned denial is a defense mechanism used to minimize our anxiety. To not admit truths allows us to refuse to accept those facts while remaining adamantly married to our own rigid ideas. In other words, a drone.
Intransigence from those who can’t admit success by this President where there clearly are successes is one such example, and that denial is forever changing the conservative landscape. One can argue Trump changed the landscape, and that’s a valid point. But his policies and appointments are most certainly as conservative as we have seen from any traditional Republican President, and would otherwise be supported by most everyone who values national security, smaller government, and economic policy. We can argue over his process but, so far, the results are unmistakable.
Those once highly respected “thinkers” have all but a few original fans left, while their new followers seep from the same free-speech-fearing, big-government-advocating corners who want the demise of the conservative movement. These people have been relegated to be used as weapons against the President by the antiquated news media and hysterical left (but I repeat myself), only to be eventually disposed of if and when the left regains total power.
To what ends? Maybe the obstinacy stems from a fleeting hope when an impeached President Trump waves his fingers in V formation from Marine One as he’s escorted from the White House, they will be given a token post in a 2020 Kamala Harris administration.
Hate to think they put themselves above country so maybe it’s just appearances. Remaining virtuous and just, and being right, means you can preen across social and print media. Some of these people are brilliant, well-read academics, historians, and their opinions used to matter. We would anticipate their every word (even if we couldn’t understand some of them) as we felt smarter for the time we invested.
No longer. They have joined with the hyperbolic shrill left who aren’t dissimilar to emotionally unstable 13-year-old girls. There are fewer tantrums in a Judy Blume book.
Refusing to even acknowledge this President has beaten the odds and is becoming what may be one of the most pivotal presidents in modern times isn’t a right or left thing, it’s history. And for many of us, we see this group along with the unhinged left desperately attempt to rewrite history as it happens, all so they end up on the correct side.
If President Trump continues on his trajectory, over the next two/six and a half years the credibility factor of many of our former conservative icons will continue to diminish. Or, they can admit things aren’t Armageddon by simply saying “Hey, I may still not like him personally, but he’s achieving many of the same results I would have wanted of any Conservative President. Now let’s work together on the things we all agree on.”
Why is that so hard?
Published in General
46% of American voters.
Unless you mean current support. Then it’s 43%
This is where I am too, the problem is that being a 3 in certain places still earns you disdain and nothing turns me off the President more than his most ardent supporters, Michael Knowles is a perfect example of this. Everything is perfect and MAGA all the time. Ben Shapiro in his cautious transactional approach to POTUS has done more to convince me that anything written by cheerleaders (that and the actual real world successes in policy).
Because, for them, that is not enough. Not enough to restore to them the mantle of “Trusted Conservative Oracle” they used to flounce around in. As noted by philo, they’ve suffered a permanent loss of credibility. Admitting they were wrong about Trump, and admitting that they should have voted for him, could have restored some if not all of their lost credibility. If done in a reasonable length of time. I think that grace period ended around the time the tax reform bill was signed.
Right, Trump’s opponents make me want to vote for Trump. Trump’s supporters make me want to stay home.
Rinse. repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over until this message soaks in.
(From a definitive #2 on your list.)
For himself. People usually write for themselves, merely expressing what bubbles in their own minds. And that’s generally fine because it represents the universal human instinct to connect and share with others.
It’s like stepping outside one’s home to enter a public place for the opportunity of interaction; with no person particularly in mind. That is, it is for oneself, but for oneself in community with others.
As for perpetual shock and horror at President Trump, though granted reasonable misgivings, it is like one’s general state of happiness or lack thereof. An optimist and pessimist can share an experience but focus on different aspects. Neither is blind nor all-seeing, but they focus and linger on different elements and frame events in different context.
The perpetual disdain in the writing of some commentators is offputting and even cruel. Their perspectives would be useful if they would just practice a little charity in argument.
Trump doesn’t get to argue for charity in discourse. And honestly, his supporters that excused it from him don’t get to argue for it and be taken seriously.
Dude, your projection is showing.
Trump isn’t party to this conversation, and doesn’t seem the type to argue for charity, either. This is about the vast universe of well-read conservatives who are utterly disgusted with Will, Kristol, et al. (OK, maybe not a vast universe. Maybe not even a crowd. Large niche, perhaps.)
^This. The anti-NeverTrumpers’ obsession with the unending horror of NeverTrumpers In Our Midst should put Mueller to shame, with his piddly-squat obsession about Russian collusion. Never have so many been so incensed by such an insignificant few.
Please look up the definition of projection, and then try to formulate an argument that it’s what I’m doing using my discourse on the site. I’ll wait.
Smile Frank, we love you too.
Let me say up front that I’m definitely not in the NT camp. I voted for him in the general, and I liked some of his agenda in the primaries even as I was disenchanted with the total package. I continue to hope for the best, but I’m not yet prepared to call him a good President. Here are my concerns:
I’m mostly on-board from a policy perspective, but I’m still dubious about the tariff proposals.
I’ll readily admit that Trump foreign policy hasn’t been the train wreck I expected it to be, but as well as things are going they haven’t really played out yet. He’s made a lot of unconventional calls is short order. I support most of them, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. Everybody knows I’m an idiot. We’ll need some time to determine if these will ultimately be successful strategies or they’re just so unexpected that our adversaries haven’t figured out how to turn them on us yet.
One important role of a President is to focus his party’s legislators on the task at hand, and provide political cover for them when that task is hard. He’s been totally ineffective in that regard. As a result, his policy wins are mostly based on executive power. Like Obama’s agenda, these will ultimately be ephemeral if they aren’t follow-up by some supporting legislation. Unfortunately, the opportunity for legislative wins has been squandered. Congress is not going to do anything controversial this year, and while I’m not convinced we’ve lost the house yet, I have to admit that it seems likely. Either way, unless Trump gets better at managing the legislature we shouldn’t expect any better down the road.
Finally, even if this presidency is a resounding success from a policy perspective, I fear that the Republican party is in a shambles from which it won’t soon recover. I suspect that post-Trump Republican electoral prospects will be very poor, and the only thing preventing a decade or more of Democratic domination is the political ineptitude of progressive activists. If the Dems can find a leader to corral the activists and advance a moderately liberal agenda, we conservatives have little to look forward to. While that’s easier said than done, I’m convinced our fate is in their hands rather than ours.
So if all it takes to call a Trump presidency successful is “Not Hillary”, then sure, he’s a good president. I think it’s too soon to say.
Quiet, Chuck. You are ruining the feelz.
Four years is a long time to keep a hissy-fit going.
True, but even if the charity is extended to Trump it’s the writer and the reader who are better for it.
I wasn’t arguing for Trump. He is certainly not charitable in debate. And I will never forget the depths to which he sank during the primaries. One doesn’t have to like or trust him to think his presidency has been good or okay overall.
But my point was that Trump-hating perspectives could be useful if not overwhelmed by that hatred and balanced with charitable interest in supporters’ arguments. Someone can believe his presidency is harmful overall and still make productive statements if one can set aside complaints for only a moment. Again, it’s like a pessimist offering something more than just doomsaying.
Even then they will continue to hate him, because he caused loss of employment and/or loss of caste for many of them. “Are you now or have you ever been…”
Oh, stay home then, fergodsake! The people sitting on the fence can stay there as far as I’m concerned ….and they make me hope it’s a very spiky fence. Actually, it is, because if the people fighting for freedom versus leftists lose, they will lose too.
It’s okay. There are three parties now.
Prude-ublican, practical conservative, and Democrat. But there are only two choices for voting purposes. And freedom is at stake.
What has been exposed is the fraudulent nature of previously influential elements on the right. These people obviously don’t respect our Constitution since they show zero concern for the will of the voters (playing games in Utah with McMullin) and the implications of this unbelievable witch-hunt.
If you care more about how your party appears than results, you’re fired as a thought-leader of the conservative movement. I never knew we were supposed to win hearts and minds by electing perfect specimens of humanity to role-model voters and make committed leftists feel guilty being mean. But now it makes more sense. Bush, Bush, McCain, Romney, Jeb Bush… I see the pattern. All ‘good’ men, none of them actually serious about fighting the left.
Besides, no one’s making these people cannonize Trump as a saint.
This is the current state of Ricochet. It’s amazing to behold.
It is astonishing to me that they won’t just stop. No, Trump is not a “nice” person. But he is proving to be a heck-of-a capable president! GO HIM!! He seems to be effective against the leaders who have been bullying the world for the last 8-10 years, so I’m pleased.
^ Bingo!
There does seem to be an element of “I’ll never be satisfied until all the witches have been burned” in some of the anti-Nevers. Combined with an unwillingness to acknowledge that most of us former Nevers (not all, but most) have been very happy to acknowledge Trump’s successes, and to root for them, even if we’re not necessarily willing to consequently completely overlook his shortcomings (which are pretty readily apparent too).
I might not have worded things the way Franco did, but I think you need to look in the mirror a little.. You show disdain for Trump supporters and then complain when they return the favor?
Just wait for when the whole lot of Dem operatives funding Avenatti is disclosed.
We know. I think that’s part of Dave’s point. It’s about people just as much as it’s about President Trump. That’s why I’ve been talking about alliance and loyalty since 2016. Cautious and transactional doesn’t exactly mark one as an ally. Mercenary, perhaps. And that’s ok to do, nothing inherently immoral in it. Only once we’re on that path it’s difficult to get back on the same path if that’s even possible. Like a timeline plot from Back To The Future.
Actuually, I think conservatism believes in both individual and state. We’re not progressives for sure, but we’re also not libertarians. Federalism and subsidiarity don’t boil down to individualism alone; IMO these ideas are best-practice strategies for maintaining an appropriate balance and are not ends in themselves.
Cato-
I don’t understand how anti-nevers attacking or mocking people like Will, Kristol McCain, Flake, and many more…
Orquestioning the effect and wisdom of those who stand on the sidelines calling “balls and strikes” in this precarious political environment as though this is some parlor game is taken so personally.
There is not ONE Trump supporter who is requiring those ostensibly on “our” side to praise Trump’s personality. Maybe we can’t wrap our heads around how commingled many people have their own virtues and manners with Trump’s making it apparently necessary to go to great lengths to disassociate themselves from him and by extension us supporters.
I used to utter more disclaimers before expressing support for Trump, now I find it tedious and unnecessary, like saying “ I’m not a racist” before saying something that could be construed as negative regarding some minority. – It’s a form of bullying