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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
I think your list above is correct. One of the unfortunate reasons so many people think this way is lack of understanding of how money works and how the world works. I’ve heard so many people say they’re “conservative fiscally but liberal on social causes,” with no comprehension that with most issues, you can’t be both.
I made it clear that it’s only one factor.
IMO this a much bigger problem than the way you are stating it. They want centralized power to work for various reasons including ignorance and anti-liberty notions they don’t want to cop to.
True, but filling a gap in leadership isn’t going to change these much. It may make us better able to nibble away at the margins, which could push over us the edge on a issue or two, but it won’t change the fundamental problem. Constitutional limits on governmental power are the only thing that can keep these impulses in check. If we can’t restore a more conservative interpretation of the Constitution, nothing else we do in party politics will reverse the slide. We can only hope to slow it down.
FWIW, I don’t think this means we’re doomed. The more out of control government gets the more people will resent and resist it, so the slide will stop somewhere. Unfortunately, it will be somewhere well left of where we are today. Put another way, we may become Sweden, but we won’t become Stalinist Russia.
So we’re on board Flight 93 after all. Only we can’t do anything about it except perhaps to ease the crash angle?
I don’t see how we are disagreeing much.
IMO, the big thing is the dollar keeps getting supported so nothing will give us the interest rates we actually deserve, thus breaking the government, for a long time.
Here’s a prime example of what we are talking about:
The GOP is never going to get creative or whatever about fixing this stuff.
Because their electorate doesn’t want them to.
Everyone is just trying to make a living, or steal as much as they can from their fellow citizens. What’s wrong with that?
The other thing I would add is, Keynesianism and centralized government appropriates wealth from the middle class and the poor and gives it to government and the already wealthy. Then the indigent try to take it back with government. Great system.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I just like to hear myself talk.
I resemble that remark.
Honestly, Ricochet has massively increased my understanding of this stuff by doing that. Same with twitter.
Excellent NR article you linked to. And then there is this as well:
More “R” voters identify as being Trump voters than as “R”s
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/09/22/voters-identify-trump-supporters-rather-republicans/
An NBC/WSJ poll released Thursday reveals that more Republican voters consider themselves a “supporter of Donald Trump” rather than a “supporter of the Republican Party.” A whopping 58 percent of respondents indicated they considered themselves Trump supporters, while only 38 percent indicated they considered themselves supporters of the Republican party. 2 percent see themselves as both, while 1 percent said they were neither.
________________________________________________________________________________________
At end of article:
So the people voting Republican all over America these last few years have very little in common with the Republicans in Washington and the latter group is almost completely unaware of that. They better get a grip on that soon.
The party has driven away a lot of small-government conservatives like me in recent years, especially those of us who were heavily involved in the Tea Party movement. We practically handed them two huge midterm victories, only to have the Beltway establishment Republicans do nothing but complain about conservatives.
Again, the fact that Democrats are so lost these days means that the only voices being heard from them are coming from the progressive fringe. Until McCain handed the other party two victories, the Democrats’ flailing had allowed Washington Republicans into deluding themselves.
Self-delusion is common in Washington, but it is reaching epidemic levels among Republicans lately. They better figure out how to do something with all of this power soon while there are still people outside of the Beltway who are willing to call themselves Republicans.
I read all of this and I was going to say something, but really the discussion yesterday covered it. Conservatism and libertarianism will never get any traction because there’s no way to stop practicing Keynesianism instead of capitalism.
There are some guys in the House including Steve Scalise that are poised to fix this, but it’s not easy.
The other thing is, the Left keeps the ground they take with Critical Theory and all of that. The media is 90% in the pocket of the Democrats, which makes all of this work even better.
This is a brilliant diagram. It will take you 20 seconds to get it.
That is exactly what I have been saying for, forever. Act accordingly.
That’s correct. It’s not an establishment. It’s all just a bunch of individuals, pursuing their own ends, which sometimes coincide and sometimes don’t. I wish there was an establishment. Someone with some clout who could set a strategic direction for the Party and impose some discipline. But, with the current primary system, no such luck.
I’ve heard an explanation of this, but I don’t remember it very well. It has something to do with the 527’s grabbing so much power. Something like that.
This is worthy of an entire thread of discussion! Make it so!
Which reminds me, the Republican Establishment still hasn’t made a public apology for trying to foist the likes of Jeb Bush on us, nor has it promised never to try it again.
I forget all the details, but Jeb Bush was on the board of an insurance company for several years. He sucked $2 million out of it. I’m not sure how it was structured. Shortly after he quit the board, that company went all in on getting the ACA passed.
The last people to recognize that they are part of an establishment are the members of the establishment, whether it’s on a national scale or the good ol’ boys network in a small town in Indiana that thinks they are just a bunch of individuals pursuing their own ends. This while they make things work out for each other and the local government while using the same mechanisms to make it difficult for outsiders to crack the system.
I think it had a lot to do with the primary system replacing the closed caucus system for selecting candidates. But making fundraising for primary challenges easy is also part of it, and 527’s contribute to that. Also, the Party leadership in Congress has a lot less clout than it used to. If some idiot like John McCain wants to vote against the Party (voting not to repeal Obamacare, for example) there isn’t too much that the leadership can do to punish him.