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VDH and Bul****
I have a great deal of respect for Victor Davis Hanson. I’ve read and listened to him extensively, and he has always impressed me with his thoughtfulness, decency, humility, breadth of knowledge, and quiet sanity.
The Bulwark, this new anti-Trump publication staffed by Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, and other people whose narrow-minded smug superiority I find impossible to stomach, has placed Hanson on its list of sell-outs, dupes, and traitors to the conservative cause, and set its sights on discrediting him and others who hold his, to me, quite sensible views.
It has long been true that I would like Trump a lot less if I liked his enemies more. Folks like those at the Bulwark are much of the reason I refrain from criticizing the President more than I do. I’m not much of a joiner, but I’d rather have Hanson on my team than any number of these others.
[Update: I wrote this post not knowing that Victor Davis Hanson has a new book coming out. The Case for Trump will be released this week.]
Published in Politics
@pettyboozswha Do you ever wonder how we got to this point?
Be sure to vote.
A-freakin’-men!
The people on the Right who would hand us over to the totalitarian Left rather than admit Trump is doing things conservatives (are supposed to) want? Trump has neither done nor said anything nearly as repugnant as that!
Yes, I question their morality, not just their judgment. Trump hate has driven them to become moral monsters. Their attempt to discredit VDH is further proof of how very far they’ve fallen. Shame!
Rufus, thanks for reminding me of that comment.
Candidate Trump campaigned precisely on this point of deregulating the Obama economy. He then delivered, and delivered beautifully. Whether or not another Republican might have, we can speculate. But Trump did. I think he deserves a great deal of credit for this.
Heh. Good one. Almost makes me wish I was a
coffeecovfefe and beer drinker so I could use it.These kind of statements are exactly why the coalition can never be rebuilt. While Trump offers his critics plenty of opportunity to train their fire on him, like clockwork the mechanism swings back at the voters. I have never seen a group of people so hellbent in alienating the wider public. At some level I guess it’s a white flag of surrender. “I’m never going to convince you on the strength of my arguments so let me tell you how stupid I think you are, you freakin’ cultist.”
Blessed by his enemies, indeed.
See, Petty’s comments illustrate the divide. The only “values” being corrupted by Trump are those that exist purely of the mind of the beholder – mostly being “nice”, and not saying mean things. Sure, @pettyboozswha would say it differently, but that’s what really characterizes all the “values” that Trump detractors would defend. If I’m wrong, then point to something not of the mind but of reality, and tell us how that’s “corruption.”
Those of us who support Trump and the agenda he campaigned on are focused on getting real conservative things done in the real world. That is not corruption, in any world other than the hothouse liberal mind.
I agree at this point you guys win and I lose; there is no plausible prospect of replacing Trump today. I think things could change by the end of the summer. If we are torn apart about how to handle Venezuela, if my long suspected repudiation of Trump by his former “guardrails” come out, if the economy tanks, we might be facing a different scenario. At this point GHW Bush was over 90% in the polls.
I still think VDH and the other Trump explainers are honest and good men, I just strongly disagree.
I thank you all for a respectful conversation on my views. I have other obligations so won’t be back today, but I appreciate your perspectives.
Somewhat off-topic, but I think this sentiment is very telling of the contemporary conservative mentality, and of why conservatives nearly always lose of late: it’s because they let their opinions be defined by those whom they actually oppose.
By placing so much importance on the views of your opponents that you’ll change your own views not for any meritorious reasons but simply because of your hatred of someone else, you place your own political goals on a subordinate level. This may sound like mumbo-jumbo, but it played out in practice with George W Bush’s Iraq War: lots of Republican voters had doubts or qualms about its wisdom, but they ended up supporting it (and Bush) 110% simply because Democrats were so opposed to it. Flash forward 13 years later and many of those same voters who rallied behind Bush were now cheering Trump when he proclaimed “Bush lied, Americans died”.
This isn’t a pro/anti-Trump argument, it’s a call for people to have enough faith in their own instincts that they can stand by them even in the face of criticism from people they find loathsome.
Wut
What is this specifically about? Policy? Future elections?
He lacks civic executive experience. We voted for that. You can blame the GOPe and the fact that the RNC didn’t know how to do a 17 man primary.
Well, no (colloquialism). When the gas runs out on all of this Fed easy money, whoever is in office is (colloquialism). That isn’t his fault.
Why isn’t that the accurate way to think about it?
Henry, please allow me to differ on the fringes, whilst we still agree on the big picture.
First, the dummies have lurched farther Left to socialism than 2016 (poster child AOC who makes Bernie look moderate). Second, let us dispense with any relativism as it relates to this current democratic party. There is no “likely”. These are full on socialists bent on the destruction of everything that we hold dear.
Um … Trump … and America … did win.
I guess I must have missed that headline about Obamacare being repealed and a wall being built then.
But your comment illustrates my point: Republican voters view winning and losing much more from a person-based perspective than a policy-based perspective. They consider it a victory if the “right” guy gets elected (with the “right” guy often being defined as “the guy who pisses off the left/the media/the conservative establishment the most”), and blithely assume that electing that person will automatically herald the policy gains they’ve asked for.
Trump hasn’t been a bad president, but his presidency has been conspicuously absent of victories on the biggest policy “asks” of his voting base – specifically the wall and Obamacare repeal. And yet he’s enjoying great popularity among that same base, because they put the personal conflicts above policy battles.
My favourite bookshop here in the UK is G. David’s in Cambridge. I have purchased three different Victor Davis Hanson books there, usually I have to order or download titles from the US but VDH is well enough respected to sell in one of our top two university towns.
This is bad. it really is. I blame the GOP elite for the former, and Trump for the latter. To be clear, I am not an expert on this type of thing.
Do the names Gorsuch and Kavanaugh mean anything to you? They will outlast President Trump … for the good of America.
Not long ago @hankrhody initiated a post on the sneakiest bastards of all. I suggest there be a minor league, wherein the above-mentioned players could ply their trade.
Here’s a question – is it ever possible to change your mind honestly?
I changed my mind on Trump. I moved from not supporting him and despising him as a conman. (though I admit I would have held my nose and voted for him in a swing state because I absolutely despise Hillary) I saw his policies, and changed my mind. If I need a surgeon, I want a good one even if he is a jerk.
@pettyboozswha – 99% of the people I work with despise Trump and Trump voters. My mother and father both ran me through the wringer over politics at Christmas – Mom is a democrat, Dad is NT, both avidly watch CNN. Being a liberal NT fanatic would make my life a hell of a lot easier. There are a lot more people after Trump fans than Trump opponents.
Umm . . . reality, maybe? That the results of Trump’s Presidency have been generally positive, especially on the economy and border control? That the alternative to Trump is handing the country over to socialism? (And remember you can vote yourself into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out of it.)
Look I understand that some people have a visceral reaction to Trump and that with some that reaction is so visceral they blind themselves to the good Trump does (or at least to what the results of bringing him down will be). I get that. My reaction to Trump in the spring of 2016 was that he was an illusion whose time has come. He has changed my opinion of his capability to deliver conservative results. I understand that he may not be your kind, but to dismiss those who appreciate his benefits as sellouts or selling out is really intellectual laziness. It the type of thing someone attempta to close down an argument when they are losing the argument based on the facts.
This week I heard that someone busted Trump on being in favor of a wealth tax 20 years ago. Asset seizure. We all get together and vote on seizing assets.
The reason people even think about this is because everyone is an inflationist. The whole GOP is. They just want to get past the next election. Trump isn’t that bad.
Well said.
No one ever cared about spending or being actually conservative. None of that has any aggregate political power. But they were nice, and they were civil, and they were well behaved.
So here we are.
The deficit will be over $1T this year. Don’t pretend the Trumpers actually care about spending.
The constant deflection to all the conservatives so called failures of yesteryear in order to elevate Trump is probably what I hate about Trumpism more than anything.
What do you recommend? You have to spend and inflate to hold power.
With unemployment this low, We should be running with a surplus and then the Fed should be raising rates like crazy. What are you think happens next? Seriously.
Entitlement should’ve been overhauled 30 years ago. Same with the Fed.
No one in the GOP cares.
Okay, now I’ll put my Trump-critic hat on for a moment. The “values” people talk about include, among others: fidelity to one’s spouse; not paying off porn stars; not routinely saying things that are simply untrue, even if it’s simply a matter of being an innate promoter engaged in sales speech all the time; and not lowering the dignity of the office by sniping at people — not the press, but regular people — who are critical of you.
It isn’t simply that he isn’t “nice.” I have no problem with not being “nice.” But one can be “not nice” while still being decent, and sometimes he falls short of that.
I don’t think conservatives “nearly always lose of late.” We went through an awful time during the Obama years, but I think we’re finding that they weren’t good for the left, either. I’ll wait for this to play out a little longer before I try to tally the score.
One interesting thing is that we are having very different conversations now than we did a few years ago. In particular, the press is now widely and deservedly distrusted by a majority of practically every demographic. Whether or not President Trump deserves credit for that (and I think he deserves quite a bit), the fact of President Trump certainly does.
This is exactly the correct response to the poster whose comment I will not repeat in whole or part. These people aren’t traitors to me. They are traitors to themselves and everything they had previously spent most of their lives espousing. It’s like convincing people to support Hitler over Churchill because you believe drinking alcohol is sinful.
They care. But Trumpism is anti-fiscal conservatism. The deficit is up 50% in the 2 years since Trump took over. Thats not the GOP of yesteryears fault. Thats Trump’s impact on a GOP that used to actually do a decent job on deficits.
As opposed to what? Democrat-ism? Republicanism? This just made me giggle.
I wish I shared your confidence. The pre-Trump (establishment, Rockefeller, call it what you want) GOP was a diseased husk. It’s always been the biggest obstacle to restoration and the lowest hurdle to the left. It’s hurt, but nowhere near dead enough.
I suppose you are suggesting that Trump shut down the government until he got a spending bill that was in balance. What I hate about NT’s is their belief that Trump is the source of all that is wrong with our country.