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A new fault line
Simple question: will the question of a “stolen election” by nefarious means – D malfeasance on the local level, top-down fraud efforts, Dominion manipulation, all of the above – divide the conservative side in the year to come? I get the feeling sometimes that if you’re not on board with the idea that Donald Trump actually won, full stop, you’re a cuck-shill Tapper-fluffer (cruise ship icon) RINO eager to buff your cocktail-party credentials.
Published in General
I suspect that you and I are essentially in agreement, but are perhaps looking at different halves of a whole.
What I believe, and what I think too often goes unspoken, is that all of the things you identify in your first paragraph could have been countered aggressively without alienating so many people.
I don’t want to rob the President of his accomplishments: he did show everyone what some of us already knew, that the press is largely duplicitous and corrupt. He did stand up to challenges from the would-be censors of the politically correct left. He did act boldly and directly with Israel, with Critical Race Theory, with deregulation and judicial appointments. That’s all excellent.
But he (probably) lost the election by a few tens of thousands of votes. I think he could have done everything he did, opposed everyone he opposed, and yet avoided the mistakes that drove so many, particularly women, away.
This is what I mean about teasing apart the good and the bad. We needed someone who could do what Trump did. We could have better used someone who could do that and also do what Trump seems unable to do, which is down-shift into a gentler, less pugilistic tone when appropriate.
We will need someone who can be the best of Trump, without also being the worst of Trump.
I don’t recall anything the GOP(e) ever did as having a good tone to it.
Ed, I want to win. I don’t care a fig about how Trump’s shortcomings compare to other people’s shortcomings. I care about winning.
Winning means governing like Trump and being smart about getting re-elected. Trump is the best President since Reagan, and in some ways better. But he (probably) wasn’t smart about getting re-elected. I know some people think that you had to be just like Trump in order to get done what Trump did, but I don’t believe that and don’t think it even makes sense. Trump, for all his virtues, has his limits.
There might not be anyone as good at being President as Trump was on the horizon, but I don’t believe that and I’m hoping that his example will show others the way. It isn’t actually hard to do a good job. You just have to be willing to stand up to the mob, to plainly say what you’re going to do and do it, to be fearless and tough, and to remember that you love your country and the people in it.
And I get a little bit frustrated when people seem to think that, since it’s just so unfair, dumb things like “tone” shouldn’t have to matter.
I want to win. Winning would have been another four years of Trump. We probably won’t get that, however unfair that seems, however shortsighted and foolish it was for all those suburban women to pay so much attention to the President’s careless speech and rudeness. They should have known better, and they made a bad choice.
Trump did a great job. Really. I still wear the Trump2020 hat and I’ll continue to sing his praises. He was up against a completely unfair and unbalanced political landscape. He got a raw deal all the way through. He was cheated by numerous agencies and forces. All of that is true.
But it would be foolish to deny reality because it seems unfair. The reality is that he could have charmed a few hundred thousand more votes out of America, and be starting his second term next year. That is, he could have if he were a different man. I’m thankful for what we got, for as long as we had it.
Exactly. Illinois Republicans lost the collar counties of Chicago long ago. I’ve been hearing about the need to moderate our tone and our platform the whole time – all the while the tone and the platform of the left getting actually more and more radical and extreme while they simply dial up their tone that to be conservative is just about evil.
The GOP’s tone is nothing to emulate. In the face of all the craziness over the last several years few of them could muster a proper tone in my humble and inconsequential opinion. Even talking about our tone gives the left cover not only for their tone but for their actual actions.
I don’t even think this is true – not completely.
It’s all good to talk nicely when your children aren’t being threatened or verbally abused. It’s another to join in on the bashing yourself (McCain).
That’s not a positive on tone.
Trump has never verbally attacked his base or law abiding citizens on the left – ever. EVER. To say he is divisive is only true in that the people divided themselves over him. He wasn’t ever divisive.
I read last week that the day after Trump concedes, he will start his 2024 campaign. If he does, I hope to be the first to write a check.
That is only marginally more ridiculous than thinking a lot of republicans were willing to elect Biden to get rid of Trump.
I hope serious Republicans are ready to put up the “Miss me yet?” Trump billboards when Biden/Harris really start turning the screws.
Depends what you mean by “a lot,” I suppose. But we’ve heard from some even here on Ricochet who were all in on that exact idea.
How did President Trump do that? To the extent that there’s a base level of irrational/emotional alienation that goes both ways in all times and circumstances, to what extent did many of the things from my first paragraph amplify and multiply that alienation? To what extent would “normal” treatment of President have amplified or multiplied pickup of support based on actual accomplishments?
You talk as if this alienation is just some organic growth planted by President Trump himself and had nothing at all to do with the rabidity of his opponents and those in various positions of power who were willing to so trash our institutions and basic civility just to hurt President Trump. It’s maddening. Yes President Trump was going to alienate people – just as literally all presidents do. The difference here was in what people were willing to do or condone in response. It didn’t just start with President Trump either. Reagan, Bush, Dole, Gingrich, Bush, McCain, Romney, Clarence Thomas – they just started shouting louder and actually breaking things once Trump showed up.
I can learn lessons, but tone is not one of them to learn here because tone doesn’t matter. If it matters more than my first paragraph, well that’s a shame for all of us – including those on our side with some weight who cared more about tut tutting and preparing for the next decade than in pitching in now when it might have mattered.
Maybe you could suggest some people?
It has nothing to do with “shouldn’t have to matter”. I think tone should matter; it’s not dumb. In a perfect world. I’m saying that tone obviously doesn’t matter in the world we actually live in. At least it doesn’t matter more than propaganda.
“Lot” is relative, I suppose, but we have a 1/4 wit on the web who bragged that if somewhere between 3% and 5% of repubs voted for Biden the NTs could celebrate Trump’s loss.
I would think the real question is “Why do people keep paying to do it?”
Evening Henry,
There is an article in The American Mind https://americanmind.org/features/get-ready-for-a-fight/trumps-greatest-achievement/ which notes that Trump’s greatest value maybe in that the response to him has exposed not only fault lines but the depth of corruption and rot in our ruling elites. At 73, I had seen the disdain that our betters had for Reagan, you know that amiable dunce, I thought I was used to that, I didn’t imagine how deep that disdain had become. When Murray noted the increased separation in “Coming Apart”, I did not see how this gulf in classes could so quickly lead to a return to the 60’s, with the 60’s SDS dopes now the ruling class.
I used to be worried about all the proper conservative issues, debt, national security, well thank God for Trump, Compared to the corruption in the FBI, State, Defense, media, tech, debt is nothing. The FBI tries to pull off a coup and everyone in govt knows it is a crock and yet they put the country through the Russia collusion theater. I should have seen how corrupt the FBI was when Strassel documented how the FBI harassed Catherine Engelbrecht and worked with the corrupt IRS of Lerner fame in “The Intimidation Game”, but again I never imagined how corrupt the FBI was. Again, I never imagined Armed Forces leaders lying to a president about keeping forces in Syria to make Russia’s plans fail. I never imagined State could successfully pull off an impeachment stunt with such weak tea as the Ukraine call. Lastly the immensity of the gulf between me and those who I thought were my conservative allies was made most visible by the passivity these conservative “leaders” had toward the coup, and all the rest, as if Trump justified any corruption because of a “higher morality”. They seemed to think that this was just a variation of the usual govt corruption, and that Trump was a bigger threat than the corruption of the admin state. To me they are so obviously wrong and the depth of our govt corruption is our most serious threat. This corruption in the ruling class is our most pressing existential threat and the gulf between those who see Trump as a threat and those who don’t seems unbridgeable. Trust is a fragile commodity, and many leaders have in the admin state, media, tech, and our conservative leaders have lost my trust and the trust of many other deplorables like me.
I agree. It’s been said that Trump has changed the discussion from race/sex division to class division. While I think that’s overstating it, I think it’s a worthwhile change and I hope it takes root.
It’s hard to talk productively about the lessons Trump teaches us. An honest analysis should, in order to be most productive, look at the good and the bad of Trump. But those of us who supported him are understandably tired of hearing his flaws emphasized, manufactured, belabored, and often react poorly to hearing them enumerated one more time. We should do it anyway, when the chads settle and the current kerfuffle is over: we need another Trump; it would be good to have one even better than this one.
Ed, no, I never talk that way. I routinely point out how unhinged the anti-Trump movement has been, how dishonest and unfair and unbalanced is the press, how every institution and much of his own administration has worked against him.
I will be the first to admit that it took an extraordinary person to persevere as he has persevered. I voted for him, and I’m proud of the job he’s done.
What I’ve tried to communicate, and seem to do so poorly, is that nothing in the much deserved praise Trump receives denies that he’s short of perfect. I reject what seems to be an implicit belief that, because he is uniquely (in our experience) good in so many ways, it follows that he can’t be intrinsically handicapped in other ways that work against him. I believe he is; more, I believe that those flaws are relatively easy ones for someone else to avoid.
My concern is that, as we look for the next great Republican conservative, we not conflate the aspects of Trump that are essential with the aspects that are incidental and possibly counter-productive. To avoid that, I think we should make an honest appraisal of the man. That’s challenging, because it won’t be in every respect a positive assessment, and that upsets some people. (It will be overwhelmingly positive, in my opinion, and of course that upsets a few people as well.)
Henry, I just don’t see what your comment has to do with Jim Beck’s. You’re talking about lessons to learn from Trump in response to Jim talking about deep and wide corruption and failure of our highest institutions. If you agree with Jim, then this isn’t about tone, and it isn’t about Trump.
One of things that I initially did not like about Trump was his opposition to entitlement reform. In the first presidential debate in 2015 (which featured about a dozen Republican presidential candidates) Trump and Huckabee both said that they would not touch Social Security and Medicare. I didn’t like this at the time because I believed then and believe now that, unreformed, those two program would bankrupt our country.
But I do think that one of the reasons why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election was that he had Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential running mate and Ryan was the author of the “Ryan plan” to reform entitlements. Democrats loved portraying Ryan as a would be killer of grandmothers, taking away their health care and reducing their Social Security checks.
Politics is the art of the possible and perhaps previous Republican plans to reform entitlements were never going happen. So, why lose election for a lost cause?
President Trump has run up huge deficits and that is disappointing to me as a fiscal conservative. But at least it disarmed the Democrats in their attacks.
Ed, sorry, that was probably my mistake somewhere along the way. This is such a long thread that I might easily have crossed conversations, or pulled from multiple themes. I’m sure I was responding to some other thought expressed somewhere in the 300+ comments here. — H.
This isn’t about Trump at all is the point. Either good or bad. Talking about tone and such misses the point entirely.
The rapist lies and says the victim consented. The rest of us come to find out that she didn’t really consent. The rapist says: yes yes but she was acting like a slut. The rest of us say: well, maybe next time she shouldn’t act like a slut and she won’t be raped. Lesson well learned, right?
In case I’m not on the nose enough, I view the series of craziness we’ve seen over the last several years to be as serious to us as rape. No matter who we put up next time, they’ll “rape” that person too.
If we want to learn any lessons and plan for next time, it’s how do stop getting raped and actually punish the perpetrator.
@henryracette
On comment #319 I discussed how Trump’s opposition to reforming Medicare and Social Security took away one of the Democrats’ favorite attack lines against Republicans. I think we need entitlement reform to avoid going bankrupt and ending up like Argentina. But I also believe that politics is the art of the possible.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on how future Republican presidential nominees should deal with the runaway entitlements issue. Trump’s tactic seemed irresponsible in some way. But it also seemed practical and helpful politically.
Okay, let me try to be clear. And maybe I’m missing your point, or maybe I’m simply wrong, but let me give it a shot.
You say this isn’t about Trump. I’m saying that, if it’s true, as I believe it is, that different behavior from Trump could have turned this election into a win for us, then yes, it’s about Trump. Especially if that different behavior is something that many of us have been counseling for years.
It doesn’t matter how fair that is. It doesn’t matter that Trump has been up against terrible odds.
Your example of rape is horrible, but let’s run with it for a moment.
If the victim is in the habit of walking into dark alleys alone at night, that doesn’t excuse the violence done her. It doesn’t make any of that right. But if our interest is in seeing her not get abused, and if we’ve warned her time and again to stop going into dark alleys, and if she persists in doing it, then…
Then it’s still wrong, and awful, and unjust, and evil that she’s abused. But I’m not blaming the victim if I observe that we will have greater success if she refrains from entering dark alleys. That isn’t a moral judgment of her.
And it isn’t a moral judgment of Trump to observe that not all his habits contribute to our success.
Evening Henry,
I think you are one of the most reasonable folks on Ricochet, and at some time an analysis of Trump might be fruitful, but I don’t think this is the time. It wouldn’t have been useful to analyze Patton during WWII, nor Sherman during the Civil War. We are in a world were from high to low, if you are in the ruling class or useful to the ruling class the administration of law will be different (BLM rioters, Hunter Biden, Clinton), than how the law is applied to a deplorable or a stumbling block to the ruling class (Flynn). This is so precarious that I think that focusing on Trump is a luxury we can’t afford. Sincerely, your observations are among the best.
I absolutely agree. I mentioned elsewhere that we should let the current kerfuffle settle, and I should take my own advice. ;)
HW, I appreciate you asking, and I’d love to jump in.
But @jimbeck made a damn fine point, above. This isn’t the time for a post-mortem. That’s going to be hard enough later, when we aren’t in the throes of a disputed contest.
Let’s put a pin in it, as cool business people say. (Or push it onto the stack, as nerdy computer geeks like me say.)
President Trump was raped over and over. We can review each count again if you want. Russia Hoax, very Fine People Hoax, etc, etc, etc. This happened to him not because he deserved it, not because he brought it on himself by living recklessly and hanging around the wrong crowd. It happened because the progressives and left are radically dangerous and did this all out of nothing. They will do this to anyone. They will do it again.
The people who fell for it all, I can only surmise that either they don’t know the extent of the rape or they really don’t think the rape is a big deal, that everyone does it or something like that. None of the options reflect well on the citizenry. Whatever – that’s still not the victim’s lesson to learn. Except maybe next time to come armed.
Ed, I agree with you in almost every particular. And now isn’t the time for me to pick nits about the man I’ve twice voted for and continue to enthusiastically support. I’ll bow out, and we can both hope for the best.
Best to you, H.
Not if the field again is 10-20 candidates. If Trump opts to run in ’24, he’s going to have the same 25-30 percent base of support he had in 2016. That might not be enough in a 2-3 person race, but if the field is in the high single digits or double-digits, he’s going to win again because of his core base….
…which doesn’t even begin to go into the question of why that 25-30 percent would turn out for a candidate in the general election against Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris) who was backed by the #NeverTrump people when they had spent (by 2024) nine years trashing Donald Trump? They may not want Trump in ’24, but they’re either going to get him or someone like a Josh Hawley who’s been tethering himself to Trump’s populist message for the past few years (I can’t see it being Haley, because both sides seem to hate her for being too Trump-supportive or not supportive enough).
Except BlueYeti has determined that this is all Trump’s fault.