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The Issue Is Not Trump
According to Kevin Williamson, The Issue Is Trump.
What do Republicans want? What do they believe? What do they cherish? They should be careful how they answer.
Personally, I cannot wait for Election Day, if only to find out whether the backers of the Lincoln Project and those who sympathize with them are “irrelevant,” as Trump and his allies like to say, or whether that estimate will change right around the time Fox News calls Pennsylvania.
We live in a culture where just a year or two ago it was fashionable on the left to say that a recession would be worth it if Trump could be defeated. More recently, it is obvious that those possessed by the idea of a necessary lockdown are more than willing to accept a worldwide depression as long as they can go on virtue signaling and screaming at people to wear their mask. Surely, this will bring Trump and the Trumpkins to their knees.
There are three stages that every Marxist takeover goes through. Stage one is the collapse of the economy. To paraphrase Hayek, the free market is the economy and the economy is the free market. Thus when you make the economy illegal (the free market) it collapses and in short order starvation is the result. Of course, people aren’t happy with starvation so they now decide to protest this new Marxist regime. After all the Marxists had been selling protest before they took over. Now the people discover that the Marxists meant that you had the right to protest the capitalists. The new Marxist state is simply right in all things so any protest is sedition. First, starvation, and next absolute tyranny.
However, there is yet something more to come. You see, Marxism doesn’t really believe in the individual, much less individual moral autonomy, much less individual rights. Thus, inevitably, when a “group” rubs the brutal useless Marxist state the wrong way an ultimate solution must be found. Classically, this is phrased “the x group is on the wrong side of history so they must be liquidated.” This sounds so much better than “purifying the race” or “exterminate”. Of course, what goes on by any other name say “ethnic cleansing” is in realty genocide. Genocide is the inevitable end game of Marxism. If you don’t believe in the value of the individual then you don’t believe in the value of a whole bunch of individuals and so it then becomes possible to just murder them. It is good to remember that Stalin embarked on his genocidal policies years before Hitler came to power in Germany. The Germans had to catch up.
I watched in the late ’70s as the Democratic Party, which had been defending the lower-middle-class working person since the Great Depression, simply gave up. They now became the party defending the trivial hallucinations of spoiled left-wing college graduates while completely abandoning the interests of the working class. From that time onward the Democratic Party has pursued policies, economic, social, and international that simply make it “the enemy of the people.” These policies destroy the family unit, most important to the happy life of the average working person. They destroy the long term stability of jobs most important to the economic well being of the average working person. Finally, they undermine the bastion of freedom that allows the blessings of liberty to be enjoyed by the most ordinary person in our society. The Democratic Party is concerned with transgender rights, postnatal abortions, allowing the impoverished from around the world to be illegally imported as slave labor, and, who can forget, destroying the rational basis of Western Civilization because logic is a patriarchal plot.
In such a political environment, for someone to gleefully look forward to Trump being defeated and the above described Democrat Party to obtain complete control of the government requires either incredible willful blindness or the hatred of mankind itself. Kevin Williamson has apparently not learned his lesson from the affair with The Atlantic. They treated him with complete contempt not because he was too Trump-like but because he had expressed a political opinion to the right of Che Guevara.
Recently, the daily abuse of Bari Weiss at the Times became just too much for her so she resigned from the NY Times but not without making it clear what the reasons were. Again, Kevin failed to grasp what she was saying and why. Willful blindness or hatred of mankind, you decide. The big platforms silencing right-wing websites, the democrats intending massive election fraud through mail-in ballots and vote harvesting, all Trump’s fault. Get rid of Trump and Antifa will never burn a police car again. Promise.
The fantasy that being anti-Trump places you in some special moral or intellectual higher category continues. It is, of course, just a more sophisticated version of TDS. At this point, I am afraid that there is nothing else to say. Kevin Williamson is suffering from a severe case of TDS and should seek help immediately. Not only does he hurt himself but those who are being attacked daily by the pack of left-wing hyenas need a champion. Kevin is leaving them to these predators. He is leaving the American public and humanity itself to destroyers. Once in full power, these idiots will bring destruction like Kevin apparently can’t imagine. Full-scale depression likely means that a thermonuclear exchange could take place. In a very short time, death and destruction could happen that could make WWII look like a child’s birthday party.
As Scrooge said to the spirit:
“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life?”
Perhaps Kevin can awake before it is too late for him. If not the spirit may seal his fate. And ours too.
Published in General
The issue is NOT President Trump!
Williamson take an “A pox on all their houses” attitude in the paragraph prior to the ones quoted above:
…which seems to skirt the reality that The Lincoln Project isn’t simply attempting to raise funds to oust Donald Trump; it’s also seeking to raise funds to oust GOP Senators both in the 2020 and the 2022 election cycles. That takes it past a personal animus towards Trump and into a scorched Earth strategy seeking to recreate the Democrats’ congressional super-majority of the 2009-10 session.
George Will is all-in on that strategy too, in order not simply to punish Trump but to punish anyone who hasn’t punished Trump — a 99-to-1 Senate with Mitt Romney as the lone surviving Republican would seem to be the ideal makeup of the upper chamber in the minds of people like Will Steve Schmidt, or The Rick Wilson (and where a decorum Republican like Will doesn’t have any qualms about the decorum of a Rick Wilson, let alone the types of behavior House Judiciary Committee Democrats showed toward AG Barr on Tuesday. Williamson notes decorum’s bad on both sides, but only one is claiming moral superiority).
Jon,
No, I didn’t take this on. Actually, because I was being too kind to Kevin. This is a stupid and trivial argument that again repeats the lie that Trump is somehow like Hitler because he is a populist. As always the trivial external aspects of Fascism are emphasized while you say, “see just like Trump”. Trumpist aesthetic?! Fascism was a hideous eugenic horror mentality that had wrapped itself around a totalitarian socialist point of view. No, that isn’t like Trump at all. I made arguments like this when I was about 12 years old. Pathetic.
I must get a little nastier. This is the argument of a spoiled brat who has been allowed to grab the brass ring all his life by triangulating to the center and presenting an argument so banal as to be worthless. I did a better job of this when I was 12. From Kevin, I expected more.
Regards,
Jim
Why fixate on these idiots? Who listens to them outside the neurotic inside politics people?
Kevin has a snark streak that likely finds a shared spirit with some of the snarkier people at TLP, where the difference is Williamson has refused to abandon his conservative positions, while at the same time feeling no more sympathy towards Trump then when he wrote his snarkapalooza column after Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015.
Schmidt, Wilson, et al. put their snark up to the highest bidder, and really don’t care what the Democrats would do with a 2021-24 super-majority. I would have hoped Williamson would at least be able to see that at least as much as Rich Lowery does, instead of offering up amoral equivalence between the likely outcomes of the two sides of the argument.
Jon,
If one can’t or won’t see the difference between Trump’s policy and Pelosi’s policy you must be both blind and stupid. The third possibility is evil. I’ve held back going there but it is beginning to seem very likely.
Regards,
Jim
I get a certain vibe, more from Jonah than from Kevin, that for those who have not abandoned their conservative positions, but still hate Trump with a white-hot passion, they were really hoping the Mueller report or the Burisma impeachment would succeed, so they could essentially have their cake and eat it, too — Trump would have been gone, and Pence would have been the guy running against Biden (or whoever) this November.
They do not want to beclown themselves in the style of Max Boot or (though they’re loathe to say it) Bill Kristol, in abandoning everything they’ve claimed to support for the past quarter-century because those ideas are now tethered to Donald Trump. But we’re getting closer and closer to the moment they’re going to have to pick a side in a binary election (they still have the option of voting third party or not voting for president at all — several pundits beclowned themselves in 2016 by being suckered into supporting Evan McMullen. However, if you’re punditing for food, basically saying you’re not going to vote for Trump or Biden doesn’t eliminate the reality that Trump or Biden is going to be president on 1/20/21, and you’re going to have to spend the next 95-plus days taking about what a second Trump term would be like, compared to what a Biden Administration, especially one where the Democrats run both houses on Congress, would do to the country).
The Lincoln Project is not important. They are just another grifter operation in an ocean of grifters and pundits for hire. In general, NR, like most media, is desperate for clicks and uses Trump bashing as an economic crutch. When NR comments on TLP, they are just rehashing Trump stories.
The Republican base wants protection from the predations of the left. That’s number one, now. The Republican party has a 20 year record of failure on that issue. What Republican leaders or conservative thinkers even acknowledge that?
Yes, if the boogie man would just go away the whole world would be right again. Or something.
Kevin Williamson rather infamously hates Trump voters and Trump (in that order), a perfect example of why assigning journalists to cover their own home turf is a bad idea. It’s best to simply ignore him.
The issue is the anarchy created by 1) the virus, and 2) the deaths of black perps at the hands of the police . . .
I would have thought the Never Trumpers would have run out of senseless things to say by now. Grifters gotta grift.
Did this even happen? I’ve never really heard of it before. The people at the Lincoln Project are just revealing who they always were.
I love a (Lincoln) brigade.
Actually, Trump is the ONLY issue.
But for Trump, we would have a majority in the House. But for Trump we would be going for a filibuster-proof margin the Senate. But for Trump we would be looking at a landslide in the Presidency. But for Trump, any other Republican President would have rallied the country behind him or her to tackle COVID-19.
Our only hope is that the American will be satisfied with defeating Trump, and will not wipe out the rest of the party for failing to hold Trump accountable for extorting Ukraine on July 25, 2019.
I think that this ad sums it all up.
So they should hold Trump accountable for his ‘quid pro quo’ of asking for an investigation in to Biden’s publicly bragged about quid pro quo by electing Biden?
If the boogie man would just go away. . .
Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander stated that the House Managers had proven their allegation of a quid pro quo, but that it did not justify removal. (Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio came to the same conclusion.) Utah Republican Senator agreed that a quid pro quo had been proven, and that it did justify removal.
I agree with Senators Romney, Alexander and Rubio. The House Managers proved a quid pro quo. The Republican Members of the House and Senate (other than Romney) were too gutless to admit it. Shame on them.
Only for left-wing Democrats such as yourself. I know, you’re going to give me some nonsense about Reagan, so go ahead.
So you do wish Hillary had won. But, I know, you’re going to give me some nonsense about Reagan, so go ahead.
As for the CCP virus, you do wish we had Hillary genuflecting to the WHO and Xi as they contributed money to the Clinton Foundation. I wonder how many more wars she would have gotten us into or how many more catastrophes like Libya she would have created. I know, you’re going to give me some nonsense about Reagan, so go ahead.
I’d be betting Trump is going to be re-elected because of the polling on Biden’s approval/disapprovals which are even worse than Hillary’s.
Does anyone around here go on lefty forums and troll them with an Obama avatar?
We have too much class.
Let me address one issue. If Trump had acted like Republican Governors Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, Mike DeWine, and now Greg Abbott, he would be steaming towards re-election. I suggest that you watch the video at Comment #17.
I don’t know. I am a Reagan Republican.
Simple question: to whom or what do you attribute Trump’s current standing in the polls and how much responsibility should Trump take for it?
Almost all.
Any competent small government conservative should be rolling towards a Reagan 1984 or Nixon 1972 re-election. Between Trump’s lack of integrity and character and his imposition of populism upon the party has led us to our current quandary.
The one produced by the Lincoln Brigade?
Gary,
I think your tunnel vision has reached warp speed. If not for Trump, Hillary would have nominated 2 supreme court hyper-left justices and would have taken the house with her coattails. Trump gave us the House. Then you, the Never Trumpers, and Paul Ryan lost it for us because you couldn’t get over your TDS.
Are you sure you haven’t been in some sort of seance? You are channeling Dr. Goebbels. You keep repeating the same Big lie over and over again. Hopefully, it’s not working. Of course, the weak-minded, the perverse, the resentful, they might go for it. It’s an open question.
Regards,
Jim
KDW is arguably the best writer on the right this country has produced since WFB. He is always worth reading, even when, as in this piece, I disagree with him. I urge you all to resist the temptation to cast him into outer darkness because he dislikes the current political atmosphere. He is not alone and we’re going to need lots of people of his opinion if we’re to stop the lurch leftward.
Suspira,
I have been a fan of Kevin. When the Atlantic jerked him around big-time I made it clear that Kevin had been wronged and it was the Atlantic that needed to be cast into the outer darkness for abominable behavior. However, Kevin continues to imagine that this is all about Trump and his imaginary flaws. Kevin has the same disease, perhaps to a lesser degree, as the Never Trumpers and Dems. They live in a magic dreamworld where socialism isn’t a hideous tyrannical system that brings poverty, then tyranny, and finally genocide. It is more important to worry about Donald Trump’s rough edges than to defeat the hideous hard left.
We must defeat them. Kevin is wasting his writing on junk and encouraging the worst people. He’ll waste a column to smear the likes of me as if we have all the time in the world. We don’t. It is coming down to the wire and it is time to get a move on. Stop wasting time on preening crap!
Regards,
Jim