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The Goldberg Rationalizations
“It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”
This is the last paragraph of Jonah Goldberg’s latest, edifying us with his crack understanding of history, wholly out-of-context. You can read it here. Most of it is written to advance his rationale for why Republicans are supporting Trump.
He deftly (he is a professional) inserts the idea that Trump is a wartime President, only the enemy this time is Blue America. Why is his popularity so high he asks? It’s because he’s a wartime President! See? You have to read the whole thing to understand, but it makes sense – as long as you don’t think about it too much.
There’s not one mention of the media’s hostile obsessions, their disingenuous – often wholly false – reporting, which is unprecedented in modern history, or Obama/Bush embeds in our intelligence agencies and Department of Justice who have been proven to be liars, leakers, framers, and rank partisans without a smidgeon of professional ethics. Very likely some of these people may be traitors. Certainly, they have worked to undermine the will of the American people. I think that qualifies. All of which predated Trump even taking office. If there’s some kind of war happening, as Jonah asserts, it might be important to mention who started it. (Some FBI agents did something?)
Almost as noteworthy, Goldberg makes no mention of Trump’s accomplishments on behalf of his voting bloc as possible reasons for the strong support, nor is there any reference to likely alternatives which might be animating Trump’s support, all of whom are somewhere on the socialism spectrum.
He’s a wartime President. That’s it.
According to Mr. Goldberg’s account, Trump started this “war” he speaks of. And he never really explains how Trump is warring against “Blue America” or who or what this Blue America is.
Taking issue with Jonah’s conclusion, I would say that Trump is the price the GOP paid for being weak, for being fraudulent, for being the party of perpetual war and globalism, and for misunderstanding and/or taking advantage of their base.
Mr. Goldberg is fantasizing that someday the ardor of his “troops” will better understand how wrong they were. On the contrary. The game Jonah, et al., have been playing is over for good. There will be no going back. It may well get a lot worse for the Nevers after Trump is gone. They will have to take refuge with Democrats. Some already have.
Now, for some real genius, edification and a palate-cleanser, I offer this:
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Published in General
A couple of comments:
I think we have a tremendous bench for 2024 and beyond. Unlike most NeverTrumpers, I advocated strict enforcement of immigration, skeptical review of trade and foreign entanglements, etc. long before Trump did. I think we have a lot of folks that could articulate what you guys consider Trumpism without his blemishes – Cotton, Hawley, Haley, Ducey and many more. Just as I never understood why Democrats invested so much passion in supporting Clinton when Al Gore would have been much more effective in advancing their goals, I’ve never understood what it is about Trump that makes you folks think he’s the only one that could accomplish what we’ve wanted done.
I think Jonah is right that if the Dems do not self-destruct, nominate Biden or a Biden-like “moderate” and beat Trump in 35 states next year there is going to be a lot of soul searching about why we refused to see his flaws/problems the way most voters did. I think Trump’s support is strong, but very brittle. If we have an economic downturn or some other crisis I see that support shattering very easily.
Could anyone point me to where Jonah has been disrespectful of Trump supporters? I know he dislikes folks like Bill Bennett or Jerry Falwell, Jr. or others that he considers pharisees, but where has he ever said anything negative about the average Trump supporter?
I don’t think our bench is that strong. I think we have a lot people *we* like. I don’t think we have a lot of people voters will like. If you (the communal you) think personal responsibility wins vs. “The rich guys have money that’s yours, and I’ll cancel your debt” you have unrealistic expectations. I thought Bobby Jindal was formidable and a Jack McBrayer impression ruined him. Remember the garbage Nikki Haley went through just to be a UN Ambassador (she’s a whore who slept with Trump, say feminists). Hell I liked Sarah Palin a whole lot, thought her story was one of America, and they’re still tap dancing on that grave with any personal setback and cheering the death of rich libertarians.
We don’t need to tame a crass culture, but we have to accept it’s a reality.
Most run of the mill Republicans are good people, a bit squishy on at least one issue for which their bonafides will be questioned to dampen spirits, perhaps even the Democrat will run to the right of them. They’re going to be mocked by comedians, lampooned on television, and they shouldn’t take it in good fun, they should snark back.
They’re going to be Hitler, no matter how minded a campaign they think they can be run. Don’t come out and say “we’re going to battle about ideas” come out and say “Democrats suck and are their politicians are bad people” and you will get people to rally for you. When the media say “you’re being mean, and that’s not very Christian” you tell them you’re a flawed child of God, their channel carries water for the Democrats and to go suck an egg.
This is a party that has plenty of moral leadership but are far too reliant on our fellow citizens accepting the hard way vs. the easy way in a national fight for ideological supremacy. The party that can best boil it down to good guy vs. bad guy has the advantage. The Democrats have an institutional advantage and Hillary’s “deplorables” comment like Romney’s 47 percent comment is what solidified the narrative.
Well, what I’m referring to is things like this, from earlier on Thursday. Here’s Jim Treacher’s post over at PJ Media basically mocking Hillary Clinton for being in the Nora Desmond phase of her life, being over in Italy at an exhibit, pretending to be president. Pretty tame stuff.
But here’s the link to the comments section to the piece linked to by Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, where — because Treacher remains a Trump skeptic, a significant number of the comments here basically want to write him out of having the ability to comment on anything, to the point one miffed poster put up and image that would violate the Ricochet terms of service agreement, and was taken down later.
The same posters also hate Ed Driscoll for not being all-in for Trump three years ago. For those people, anyone who wasn’t in at the inception and showed any skepticism of Trump should be deplatformed, just in the way hardcore people on the left demand deplatforming even of fellow liberals, if they’re in any way not totally in with the narrative.
I’ve posted this several times before, but here goes again — Donald Trump’s public persona was not created by Donald Trump. He didn’t become a public figure until 1977. Trump’s persona was crafted by Rupert Murdoch and his team in the year after Murdoch bought the New York Post, and it was done by basically taking the persona of New York Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner off the paper’s back sports page and giving it to Trump for Page 1.
The Post wanted a public figure to be the front page person talking about the corruption and ineptness of New York City government, in the same way they were talking about it in the columns and on the op-ed page, and in the same tone as Steinbrenner talked about Billy Martin of any of his players who blew a game — even Trump’s “You’re Fired!” tag line was borrowed from Steinbrenner (and was famous enough to make it into Miller Lite commercials in the late 1970s).
Trump was slotted into a role, and it was one he has enjoyed playing for the past 42 years. So his anger can be real, or it can be situational, if he believes the majority of people he’s trying to appeal to want him to be angry.
I never heard of Jim Treacher and I can’t say that I’ve ever been to Instapundit or read Ed Driscoll. I understand that some of the comments in the second link are unforgiving, but then again I’m unfamiliar with the nature of Treacher’s criticism/skepticism, and I think the nature of the criticism/skepticism matters. Most people who went over the top would likely swear up and down that they didn’t. I have no idea in Treacher’s case, and I’m not sure what conclusion we can draw from the comments section at Instapundit (or anywhere except for Ricochet). In general, I think there probably are people as you describe – it’s just that I haven’t really encountered them or found them to have any representation in media or represented in any significant numbers.
[I edited this comment because I misread the point about the links]
Romney might still have lost if he had challenged Candy Crowley on that debate stage seven years ago over her lie to help bail out Obama on Benghazi — the media definitely would have hit him with charges of sexism tied to the bogus “binders full of women’ kerfuffle. But what came out of that was enough GOP voters were convinced Mitt lost because he refused to go all-out in fighting back, and that’s what opened the door for them to be receptive to Donald Trump in 2015-16. Those people weren’t going to go for another candidate who took the high road, if they thought that meant the GOP nominee would always end up the loser, because he/she would let themselves be defined by the media without a struggle.
Again I haven’t really seen that. I haven’t seen anyone wanting to deplatform Jonah or even Bill Kristol. No longer reading people or losing respect for their opinions is not the same as deplatforming. I have seen people mocking them for the nature of the criticism for one and then for being so unselfaware and finally for not being in touch with the reality of the situation. That could be fair or unfair. It depends on the specifics.
That all may be true that his persona was a creation of Murdoch in a specific mold. I’m saying that I never thought of him as angry or playing as if he were angry. Forthright criticism, even brusk criticism, is not the same as anger.
Hard to say whether media is the cause or the effect. Are they causing increased partisanship or are we becoming more partisan/divided, and the media just reflects that. Also hard to say whether our increasingly partisan presidents are a cause or effect. Point is, Jonah was asking why Trump is popular with Republicans still, more than even other past presidents. The answer is its just a reflection of the increased partisanship overall. When the Democrats nominate Lizzy “but she fights” Warren….Democrats will love her…..and nobody else will. And she won’t be able to persuade a non-Democrat on anything.
I don’t think you see it here at Ricochet, due to the skin in the game/measured conversation, even in disagreement. But wander over to Discus or some of the other open-enrollment commenting platforms, and you do see a lot of people who have zero nuance or tolerance for anyone who was #NeverTrump three years ago. They’re the ones who’ve made lists and have checked them more than twice and decided they’re going to do everything they can to hound those people as much as possible, even when those people are writing columns or posts they’d cheer if someone else’s byline was on the piece.
Romney lost the moment he said he wouldn’t run a negative campaign and then the media framed his campaign as a negative campaign. Obama might not know the price of arugula, but it’s rich Romney who didn’t know the people. Obama never had to go after Romney because the system propping Obama up would do it for him.
It was a one issue campaign, Obamacare, and we ran the one guy who couldn’t attack it, because “conservatism scares people”
Might as well just throw this in, since it happened Thursday evening — Republican most responsible for setting up conditions to nominate Donald Trump for president announces he won’t endorse Donald Trump for president:
Hard to say if media is cause or effect? I think it’s pretty clear it is the cause. Watch them. They are full of alarm, vitriol and mockery. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. They have taken sides, they aren’t reflecting some kind of newly-formed divide. Most people even when they disagree or come from very different circumstances are very friendly, civil and respectful.The partisans in the media are stoking division.
Anyone who doesn’t see that can never understand Trump or his supporters.
When Trump says the media is the enemy of the people, people like you hear ( correct me if I’m wrong) Trump is attacking the free press and journalists who are just doing their jobs because he’s an egomaniac who wants everyone to bend at the knee to him and he can’t stand criticism.
What his supporters hear is: Exactly! The media have their own agenda. They are deliberately misinforming people, they are dumbing-down political debates, they are unfairly attacking the political enemies of their allies in the Democratic Party, they are creating and emphasizing polls trying to influence the election, they’ve even created an entire fictional world whereby Russia influenced our election and our President is some kind of foreign asset! I could go on.This is ruining our democracy. It’s hijacking our public square, not providing any ‘service’.
The fight is with the modern media, not serious or sincere journalism which barely exists in it. And the fight is not with dissent either. The Jim Acosta media narcissistically and idiotically believe their reflexive and ill-informed dissent is some kind of moral badge they can hide behind while they advance themselves and play the victim.
This harms our nation in a myriad of ways. I’ve lost friends because they have been effectively propagandized by the media. They believe things that absolutely aren’t true. This isn’t a matter of ideological disputes, and it isn’t my doing either. I can accept them as they are. These particular people can’t accept me.
Until this travesty is dealt with ( and real progress is being made for the first time) there can never be a real debate as Jonah and others pine for in their fantasy world.
And I’m postulating here that the well-educated elites ( I’m saying that in an non- disparaging tone) have a natural tendency to want to exercise their skills in the realm of ideas and persuasion. They for the most part travel in sophisticated circles ( again I’m not disparaging here talking about beltway cocktail parties) and aren’t personally vulnerable. They can afford to hold these ideas. They can also afford to wait-out a Hillary term, or even survive hard socialism for a couple of decades. These people have lost their influence over the right-leaning middle class who’ve been taking the flak, and metaphorically as well as literally, dying in battle.
So naturally they bristle at a President who doesn’t know what they know, can’t explain why Gorsuch is a good choice, and isn’t providing air-tight Cruz-ian arguments for the polity to consider.
They think a Marco Rubio-like presentation of the conservative cause will convince voters. They have fantasies they can convert their way into office and power. I once had those fantasies myself.
Another related viewpoint is the idea they have of the role-model President. Most Nevers believe we can put forth a Romney-like candidate who will embody goodness, and through that help people convert over into the ‘rightness’ of our cause. He/she would be immune from scandal and attacks and thereby the way clear for him to be heard. I held some of that notion myself until I was proven to be 100% wrong.
The Romney run killed that one dead. And thank God for it.
And they are spectacularly wrong in seeing the world the middle-class live in. Thus they are unfit to lead. Ideologically they are sound. But that’s not relevant at this point. So they feel they aren’t relevant. They lash out. They chortle, and dismiss Trump and his supporters as a defense mechanism.
Any under-educated amateur like me can write anonymously on the internet and challenge their deeply researched conclusions. That’s gotta be annoying…
But ironically, many of us have actually read Liberal Fascism ( I read your book, you magnificent bastard!) and Thomas Sowell and Fredrich Hayek. Me, I’ve been around the block and around the world. We’re not all the image they hold of typical Trump supporters who have no grounding in ideology or no political perspective.
But elites ( and here pejorative) can be quite hypocritical. They say they want this Democracy, but as soon as the people elect someone who threatens their interests, in this case only peripherally, they get petulant and claim it’s ‘populism’.
Tellingly for me, our 2 deepest and most grounded public intellectuals (Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson) were extremely worried about candidate Trump, but have been fairly sanguine about actual President Trump.
It’s been the lightweights that have been rending their clothing over President Trump and castigating the people who support him. (Sorry, but Goldberg is just pop-Hayek.)
Actually, it’s been a significant problem here on Rico too, though it has diminished significantly in the last year or so. There were Rico members who were routinely attacked either openly in the comments, or in backroom posts and groups, for having been anti-Trump in 2016, and not being sufficiently pro-Trump since. I’ve also seen people who were friendly with each other suddenly have their friends turn on them quickly because they wrote a post that was harshly critical of Trump on some point or another, and 2 years later still are spurned and tarred with a rep of being “anti-Trump”. Try writing a post here that is largely praising Trump, but include a disclaimer about this or that particular action, and you’ll often see several people dismiss the post in toto, and heap scorn on the poster ever after.
Yes, and VDH has a foot in both worlds of scholarship ( considerably more advanced than Goldberg) and the real world in a hard-scrabble California farming community. Here’s a guy they have to admit has real credibility, but they whistle past his insights.
And Hanson has been shunned by some of these other think-tank captains, which is far more damning than someone in an unmoderated Instapundit comment-section a previous poster was lamenting here. “Some Trump supporters are being mean to a Never Trumper pundit on the internet!”
The term “elite” is one I have to object to on the grounds that it is both amorphous (meaning very different things to all sorts of people) and over-applied, especially when coupled to “well educated”. There are plenty of people who are anything but “elite”, who are extremely vulnerable in either a personal or professional capacity (or both), and they don’t travel “sophisticated circles” or “cocktail parties”, who objected to Trump on moral and ethical grounds, and continue to do so today.
The slurs of “elite”, “cocktail parties” and so forth only serve to dehumanize the people they’re lobbed at, and it’s just a repetition of the lie that only the “comfortable” could afford to oppose Trump, while non-elite “real” people are somehow the only ones who see clearly. It’s another way of saying that opposition to Trump or his policies can never be legitimate.
This is nothing more classicism. You can claim you’re saying this in a non-disparaging tone, but the entirety of your comment is nothing but disparaging, claiming only your own experience is legitimate and worth considering.
And thats why we have these increasingly partisan candidates. Voters increasingly don’t want anyone with any knowledge or actual experience in crafting workable solutions or an ability to persuade anybody. They want the person who peddles all the unworkable fantasies and slogans they want to hear. Meanwhile, ACA is at record high approval, and single payer is on the table, but hey, Trump fights, and fighting is fun to watch at least.
Lizzy Warren talked about killing the filibuster at the debate. At least she’s being honest that the only way her fantasy policies get done is by killing the filibuster.
@skipsul
I’m not sure what exactly you are referring to, but I haven’t seen much of this. And there’s something many of our friends still don’t understand: In the environment that was created by the left media, our friends on the right are playing a fools game trying to separate themselves from Trump.
As we are exploring here, you’re either with him or against him. Those are their rules. Try “praising” Trump on public supposedly non political forums and see what you get back. I guarantee it’s ten times the intolerance. So it’s by no means a matter of “ both sides are doing it”.
Moreover, I continually read through disclaimers which are themselves a rehash of falsehoods and debunked tropes.
There’s no requirement from Trump supporters to praise him, just please don’t advance these debunked memes and spurious moral judgements or half-baked psychological diagnoses. If you do, you won’t be treated with much respect as a political observer.
At the very least, Instapundit should be your regular stopover for catching up on the news. Everyone should use it as a first read in the morning. (And several times throughout the day.)
You’ve just reinforced my point.
You have called all disclaimers “a rehash of falsehoods and debunked tropes” and “debunked memes and spurious moral judgements or half-baked psychological diagnoses” – which is just another way of claiming that any here who utter them are dupes or liars, and thus illegitimate. This is just saying that any criticism of Trump must be untrue.
“As we are exploring here, you’re either with him or against him. Those are their rules.” Irrelevant to the point raised, which was about Ricochet specifically. Whatever goes on elsewhere on the internet does not justify the treatment of people here. That’s akin to someone complaining to the cops that their wallet was stolen in a rough neighborhood, and the cop retorting “too bad, usually they kill you too, be grateful.”
Right. If anyone here tries passing along the Charlottesville lie (again), I reserve the right to treat them contemptuously. We should not be helping the media spread lies about the President.
Not all criticism of Trump is in the same category as the pointless arguing about Charlottesville. No presidency is perfect, all presidents makes mistakes, and to lump all criticism in with the Charlottesville nonsense is senseless.
Or maybe, those who promote themselves as having “knowledge and experience in crafting workable solutions” haven’t actually done anything to conserve conservatism.
The Never Trumpers don’t seem to realize that we, non coastal conservatives, who for decades put up with their feckless, ineffectual , weak, half hearted candidates and found ourselves frustrated time and again by losing to the Democrats even on those occasions when we won the election, have finally found the fighter we were looking for.
This one time we said follow us for a change and the Never Trumpers said no we will not. They are nuts if they think we’re going back to them hat in hand, that after four years of winning through strength we will return to their losing through weakness. In the heat of battle they ran and some ran to the other side. Lord Cornwallis is not reviled in this country , Benedict Arnold is.
Every term is amorphous, pretty much, but thanks for the pedantry. As to it’s over-application, I kind of agree, which is why I took pains to de-couple the term from its disparaging connotations. What term should I use for these people? Can I categorize anyone without being amorphous?
I am in no way saying my own experience is the only legitimate one worth considering. Where did you get that? However people who have think-tank contracts, daily columns, and weekly podcasts, lecture on cruises with like-minded people who have the time and money to do such things ( ahem) might just not ‘get’ the guy who lives in a small Kansas town whose son was maimed in Iraq and whose ex-wife is on oxycontin and the mill just left for Mexico. Now maybe that’s too specific for you. But I’m trying to avoid certain terms….
You miss my general points entirely. It’s not that these non-elites see more clearly per se. They are more affected and thus pay closer attention. This results often in more clarity. In any case, people are entitled to vote their ( perceived) interests. No?
Most of those in this affected class you speak of who are squarely not onboard the Trump train are committed Democrats and or frozen into an identity politics mindset.
I don’t know that you are properly characterizing Frano’s point. If you come out and say Trump meeting with the Taliban at Camp David is a bad idea (a position I hold) I don’t think you are going to catch a lot of flack. If you come out and say Trump right on policy X but is a racist or supporting Nazi’s, your disclaimer is is a debunked trope.
I don’t think you see the attacks you are talking about when discussing actual policy. Immigration, trade wars foreign policy. Just when the disclaimers are about Trump the person, not Trumps actions as President. If you say Charlottesville like it means something and ignore the guy literally saying I am not talking about the Nazi’s who should be condemned, you are rehashing falsehoods.
Again, you’re proving my point. It’s about class, and you automatically assume that anyone outside of the blue collar world who is opposed to Trump (or at least is highly critical of him) is really a Democrat or “frozen into an identity politics mindset”. Yet again you’re saying that any criticism of Trump outside of certain class is illegitimate or borne of snobbery.
Yes. Though I’d probably point to the elites and say “he started it!” I think the last 10 years have really shown us how much they hold us in contempt. I point to the Tea Party movement — a grassroots movement that returned the House and Senate to Republicans. Only to have Republicans tell us to shut up and go away, mock us as “wacko birds,” and if accounts are true, join with Democrats to sic the IRS on us.
Then, of course, you have the last three years where the entire Washington machine tried to overturn the choice of the citizens by hamstringing or even impeaching the President who we chose. (And if accounts are true, there were Republicans assisting with this effort, too.)
So yeah, I feel comfortable mocking the elites. They’ve shown us how much they despise us, think of us as “deplorables” and care little for addressing the issues that we find important.