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Will Conservatives Fight Each Other for the Next Four Years?
I have no idea what will happen over the next month. It’s possible but unlikely that President Trump will be re-elected; it’s also likely that Joe Biden will fill that seat; his winning this election fills me with fear and dread.
But to me, even worse than watching an elderly man who has cognitive problems and misguided ideas become President will be watching the Conservatives at each other’s throats. I foresee those who enthusiastically support Trump holding angry grudges against those who believed that Trump could not overcome the odds or beat back the fraud. And I can imagine those who believed the odds were long will be hated by those who believed that fraud should have been uncovered and Trump should have won.
This outcome is a lose-lose proposition for Conservatives everywhere.
Why do I bring this issue up now? Because in one sense, it doesn’t matter what the results are: we could waste our energy berating each other, blaming the system, and condemning those who were on the opposite side of us.
I’m also raising this issue now because we must focus on the real potential catastrophe: Democrats may very well be in charge of the government at one level or another and their dominance could destroy our country.
Now I will admit that I’m not fond of watching people fight with each other, verbally or otherwise (although I did enjoy the original Karate Kid). But the stakes are too high for us to get sidetracked and fall into Republican reticence of being Mr. Nice Guys or giving up the farm. Instead of fighting with each other over the past, let’s try the following:
- Make sure one way or another that a highly credible commission is established to study the results of the election, identify the fraud that occurred, find the mismanagement that was pervasive, and identify solutions. This effort will require identifying which steps should be proposed for the federal government to oversee, and which should be given to the states. If possible, the recommendations should include penalties for breaking or mismanaging the rules. The committee should be bipartisan and should preferably include people who are no longer in government, but have credibility on both sides of the aisle.
- Stop crying over spilled milk, no matter who wins. It will have been done. Arguing amongst ourselves is just another kind of distraction and will stall any progress on the part of Republicans. I frankly don’t care if you feel there was massive fraud or if you believe there was fraud, but not enough to make a difference. (I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle.) It’s history. Finished. Done.
- Let’s figure out the next steps for the Republicans that go beyond fighting the Democrats or re-litigating the election. We need to revamp totally the principles of Conservatism. We need to give up on old hopes that will be lost for the future, such as small government. We need to figure out how to educate people about US history and its goals in moving forward. We need to determine how to best engage people in America and build enthusiasm for 2024.
- We must explore the psychological impact of this election and be honest about its effect on ourselves and the people. Each of us should take a good hard look at ourselves and ask what really motivates our antagonism toward our colleagues. I learned a good lesson that is almost always true when it comes to human motivation. We become angry when two aspects of our psyche are challenged: being right and looking good. That means when someone accuses us of being wrong, we defend ourselves, insisting that we are right. It doesn’t matter whether we are “really” right or not; we must protect ourselves from those who question us. “Looking good” describes those characteristics that we value because we think they make us “look good”; they are what you value about yourself, not necessarily what someone else appreciates about us. That means when a person violates your important beliefs about your looking good—being smart, being right, being ethical, being educated—you will have a strong negative reaction and even fight back. I know intimately the limitations of these reactions!
Once we realize that our reactions to others’ challenging us are based on our irrational fears of being discounted, it’s much easier to disregard what they say about us. For example, some men like to tell me I’m reacting “emotionally” to something. Most women hate to be told that; I love it because I can respond by saying, “You’re right! I am emotional. But I’m also smart and knowledgeable.” That usually stops the attack.
* * * * *
My hope for all of us is that we don’t move into the next four years with a chip on our shoulders. Let’s not attack each other; let’s not spend our time in useless arguments. Instead, let’s transform our anger into passion; our concerns into dedication for America; our frustration into a laser-sharp focus. Let’s work together. Let’s help each other.
Let’s set the example of what it means to be proud Americans.
Published in Politics
Here’s a link to Trump’s story about Ted Cruz’s father being involved in the JFK assassination.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-ted-cruz-jfk-assassination-226020
Why must we agree with your premise?
If you’re a moral relativist, then you have no grounds to declare anything bad. If you’re a Christian, then you allegedly believe in things like redemption. The trouble with Christians of the David French variety is that their arguments depend on withholding the possibility of redemption from the President. They need him to be irredeemable so that they can continue to point fingers like the Pharisees they are.
The trouble with moral relativists is that they’re moral relativists.
It just seems to me that Trump haters aren’t willing to admit that they’re driven by irrationality.
Combo Post
Thanks, Gary.
Here’s a question: if Ted Cruz isn’t hammering the President on this, why are you? Why are you and Gary so offended on behalf of Ted Cruz? Does Ted Cruz need you to be his White Knight?
So, you think that sleeping with woman who are married to other men is ethical? Trump bragged about those affairs.
Also, I mentioned that one can make a case for voting for a politician who has serious moral imperfections. One can argue that issues is more important that whether someone has slept with married woman or some other ethical issue.
So, we could just stop lying to each other and ourselves and say, “Sure. I don’t like many aspects of Trump’s behavior. But I wanted more originalist on the US Supreme Court.”
This doesn’t really have anything to do with protecting any possible hurt feelings on the part of Ted Cruz.
Someone asserted that Trump lies. Another person asked for evidence. So, there is your evidence.
Take it however you want. This isn’t a cross examination. I have a higher degree of certainty that Donald Trump is a pathological liar than I do that the earth is spherical, and while I find the flat-earthers to be delightful eccentrics I don’t debate them on their core premise.
The question is an insult to the intelligence of all involved.
@HeavyWater and I disagree about Trump, but we agree about some things. I agree with him what he says in the above about Trump. The case for Trump has never been that Trump is what anyone would take to be a good man. Any honest conversation has to begin with that.
It also has to deal with the fact that Trump carried the overwhelming majority of Republican votes in this last election (including mine), and a lot of Democratic votes. This testifies to the rot in both the Democratic and Republican parties. What is it about the major parties that made so many voters turn to someone like Donald Trump?
@HeavyWater this is why we shouldn’t engage with their demands for “evidence.” When we give it they either engage in a 5 min hate over sources they don’t like or transition seamlessly into the argument that truth doesn’t matter.
They called me a fascist. They called me a racist.
No way back from that.
People who left the Republican party or voted for any Democrat over the majority will of the Republican rank and file and then failed to appreciate his generally conservative approach to governance and policy after being elected don’t interest me enough to be angry with because the hollowness of their commitment to actual successful conservative policies is obvious.
Most are in the paid media and I will make a commercial choice to not support them.
I voted for and supported Ted Cruz in the Primary and will do so again because he proved himself an able and canny political animal with principles and a very thick skin.
I voted for Trump in both general elections first defensively against Clinton then offensively for Trump’s accomplishments.
The most substantive change in my attitude is toward all government which is now cut it to the bone including defense. They are incompetent, expensive and anti-democratic grifters with god complexes that no one would tolerate in the private sector.
It is going to be a joy watching the destruction of the democratic party directed by the dimmest executive team in history over the next two years.
This site would be better with an “ignore user” function implemented.
I could have read this whole thread in about 1/3 the time if I could mark two or three people for ignore.
Here’s how I view the rise of Donald Trump in 2015-2016.
For quite a while, both political parties but mostly in the Republican party, there has been an advantage to being from “outside Washington.” It worked for Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia who got a lot of traction based on not being a member of Congress when Washington DC was so tarnished by Vietnam and Watergate. It worked for Reagan. One could argue that it worked for Clinton.
Even Ross Perot got a lot of traction when, in response to the criticism that he didn’t have experience in politics he said, “I don’t have experience in running up a trillion dollar debt.”
The problem that presidential candidates who lacked any political experience have had is name recognition. If you haven’t been in politics, maybe that’s a positive in the eyes of many voters. But if no one knows who you are, that’s a negative in politics.
So, Trump, with his very high name recognition and no time served in political office had the best of both worlds. Also, Trump was willing to take more risks in terms of the things that he would say. Other Republicans were more cautious in what they would say.
Also, if you were a moderate pro-choice Republican you could think that Trump was “really” pro-choice despite his claim to have changed his mind because, well, look at the life that Trump has lived. If you were pro-life, you might think that since those other politicians haven’t done much about abortion, why not try someone new. So, while Ted Cruz got votes from the conservative side of the Republican primary electorate. Trump got votes from moderates and conservatives and eventually defeated Cruz (in addition to the others).
Hillary was very much an “insider” while Trump was an “outsider.” One woman I knew at church, who was not very conservative, voted for Trump because she felt he would “shake things up” more than Hillary.
Once in office, the planets were aligned for getting certain aspects of the conservative agenda accomplished. Harry Reid had already nuked the filibuster for lower court federal judges.
I’m out of characters. To be continued.
I liked this comment for the content of the first paragraph.
The second has two problems. First, the voters can be wrong. What they disliked about the old GOP could be good and admirable, and in most cases I think it was. Second, general election votes (including mine) are driven by oppositional thinking and have little greater significance. Trump was chosen by a plurality of the primary electorate in 2016 out of a field that included many outstanding candidates and in 2020 by virtue of incumbency. That plurality, if it is still such is not entitled to get its way every time.
Thanks for the confirmation. You may have the last word if you need it.
Yep. Sure would.
I think some people here on Ricochet think that since Trump receives so much relentless criticism in the press and elsewhere, conservatives should not engage in any criticism of Trump, even if the criticism has merit. I think the attitude is that if you criticize Trump in any circumstance, you are providing aid and comfort to the enemy. I don’t accept that. I think it’s good to take a look at, especially post election, what is good and what is bad about various Republican politicians, including, but not limited to Trump.
My eyes were opened in the 2016 primaries. As you point out, there were many “outstanding candidates” other than Trump. The non-Trump vote was divided between all those candidates. Trump himself never got much more than a third of the primary vote, but kept winning state after state because of that division. It was obvious what needed to be done: The anti-Trump vote needed to unite behind a single candidate. I remember hearing this possibility raised on chat shows, but seeing it dismissed on the grounds that you couldn’t ask candidates to drop out of the race.
And there you have it. The non-Trumpers and Never Trumpers had the chance to stop him in the primaries, and knew how to do it, but were too selfish and venal to do the right thing. That is what I mean by the rot in the Republican Party. Trump is the kind of man you get when the supposedly “better” people aren’t actually better, but only maintain a facade of virtue over a rotten core.
Trump legitimately won the nomination. Instead of looking in the mirror for the reason why Trump won the nomination, a Never Trump coalition formed that adopted a pose of moral superiority, blamed the voters, and joined with Democrats in efforts to undermine the Trump Presidency. They still seem convinced of their moral superiority, and still refuse to see that Trump only became a Republican force in the first place because of the degeneracy of the established Republican Party. That degeneracy doesn’t go away when Trump goes away.
I think Trump legitimately won the 2016 nomination in the sense that I don’t think Trump hired a software engineer to discretely siphon votes from Ted Cruz toward him the way that Joe Biden has done to Trump in this election (kidding).
As for the problem being that non-Trump candidates did not withdraw from the race soon enough, I don’t know if that was the real reason why Trump won.
It wasn’t just that Trump was getting 30 or 35 or 40 percent of the vote in many of the primaries (and sometimes more than that). Trump was getting his vote from the moderate wing of the GOP primary electorate and also the more conservative wing of the GOP primary electorate.
This indicates that it would have been hard for the non-Trump GOP primary electorate to unite around a single Republican candidate. Perhaps Cruz could have defeated Trump in a 1 on 1 race with Trump if other candidates had dropped out after New Hampshire (which is unrealistic). But Cruz had antagonized much of the Republican party.
In 2015, I did not like Ted Cruz because I felt like he was advocating unrealistic tactics in the Congress, leveraging a government shutdown so as to repeal Obamacare while the Democrats held the White House and the US Senate in 2013. I thought his tactics were crazy pants. But many conservatives thought it showed that Cruz was tough and willing to fight.
I voted for Cruz in the Indiana primary. But that turned out to be a Trump landslide and Cruz withdrew that night, if I remember correctly.
I don’t blame the non-Trump GOP. I don’t think the non-Trump GOP was rotten to the core at all. But that’s another discussion, perhaps.
Or change the subject? From Trump lying to why should anyone care more than Ted Cruz.
It’s too soon after the election. People still seem to be in fight or flight mode.
Or that’s what it seems like to me.
Trump (the MOST popular Republican ever!) had almost no allies in the GOP for 3 years. It is shameful that those cowards put their political careers ahead of the good of our country. Devin Nunez was an exception and a hero in my book for taking on the greatest corruption ever and Big Media single-handedly. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham were all loud during the McCabe hearing this week, but they were silent 4 years ago, when it mattered. Camera hogs making sound bites for fund raising.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say here. If your judgement of the 2016 field is rightly harsh, I still find it too harsh. The same thing happened in 08 and 12 when it was moderates whom we needed to unite against, though the stakes were surely lower. Of course if I had been running I would think I was the guy to unite around rather than one of the many who needed to drop out. That’s human nature. “Not as good as they needed to be” is a long way from “not better” especially when Trump is the point of comparison.
And I look forward to the populists facing the same challenge in 24. If they truly are the majority tendency now they may come to wish they weren’t as their lane is clogged with also-rans hawking books and angling for cable shows.
I disagree with your last set of assertions. If you think there’s a way to condemn behavior that needs to be condemned without having people accuse you of “moral superiority” I’d be happy to hear it. Otherwise I’ll continue to ignore such accusations. And I don’t see much merit in the “joining with the dems” stuff either. A side that regards criticism from within as illegitimate isn’t one with which I want to affiliate.
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It should also be noted that there are quite a number of think tank personnel and alphabet agency people involved in amping up divisions.
For instance, often when the mention of a surge in anti semiticism is brought forth, the think tank man or woman immediately leads into an “admission” that this is coming from the Far Right groups like the Proud Boys. This admission is nothing more than disinformation. For after all, the Proud Boys are about the Constitution, and they abide by its instructions and no other. They don’t care what your skin color is, what your religion is, what they want from anyone joining their ranks is a willingness to protect our Republic. So if a Jewish person wished to join their ranks and continue to wear a yarmulke, they most likely won’t mind that as long as that Jewish person was not a liberal shouting about the need to de-fund the police.
So the Deep State is seeking more and more divisiveness.
The audio file at the following link connects many of the dots:
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/election-special-pre-planned-2020-election-chaos-and-the-new-9-11/
I think a conservative case can be made for a National Road. And even though Andrew Jackson vetoed it, I’m voting for him again because he’s the right guy for the time.
The case for Trump was not clear for me in 2016, which is why I wrote in a Dead Crab. And I definitely figured that the country could do a lot worse than Hillary, and I figured she’d win. Wrong I was and then I got to know Trump.
At the simplest level, I explain to my kids that Donald Trump knows how to solve problems and make money doing it -or die trying! Almost all politicians, on the other hand, make money not solving problems, or, worse, cause problems and make money doing it.
To educated people who didn’t like Trump, D or R, unless they had serious philosophical differences/strong opinions regarding policy, are snobs, pure and simple – that I think are really very few people (though vocal and public and smart, from George Will to Jonah to John McWhorter, etc.), Trump just doesn’t seem “presidential” because he’s a boor and just did not attend the right schools and doesn’t read books, eats pizza with a fork, and so forth. Thusly, never. At least that’s my take.
The Conservative case for anything should be based on what the Constitution says, I think that’s about it and there’s a big umbrella out there for us all.
@jclimacus
My eyes were also opened in the 2016 primaries, but differently than how you describe your epiphany.
I used to have confidence that while Republican primary voters could make mistakes in selecting candidates in local contests, they were careful to never nominate a kook in a presidential race. Sure, Republican primary voters might occasionally nominate a Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware US Senate race. (O’Donnell ended up cutting a television ad telling viewers, “I am not a witch,” attempting to explain her past behavior). But in a presidential primary, sober Republican primary voters would select a non-crazy, non-reckless candidate to go up against Hillary Clinton.
As the Republican primaries unfolded, I started to view the Republican primary electorate differently. Trump would say in the first debate against his multiple Republican opponents that single payer health care worked well in Scotland. He also promised not to reform entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. This came on top of prior behavior that I found disqualifying, such as donating money to Harry Reid’s reelection campaign in 2010 and Terry McAuliffe’s campaign for governor of Virginia in 2013 and Trump’s endorsement of Obama’s economic stimulus plan in 2009.
The day before the primary here in Indiana, Trump would introduce the National Enquirer into the conversation, presenting a National Enquirer story about Ted Cruz’s father being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I hoped that this was a series of statements that would cause Republican primary voters to question the psychological stability of Trump and support Cruz. But Trump won the Indiana primary by a landslide.
So, I didn’t view Trump’s primary victories in 2016 as evidence that the GOP was rotten. Instead I viewed it as an instance where a significant number of GOP primary voters made a wrong choice. Perhaps one could argue that those who supported Trump in the 2016 primaries were vindicated by Hillary Clinton’s defeat. But if that’s the case perhaps that verdict would have to be reversed based on Joe Biden’s victory.
I would have been happy to support any of the 2015-2016 Republican candidates for president except for Trump. Similarly, there are lots of Republicans I could support in 2024.
Some folks just can’t forget 2016 Trump. Admittedly pretty awful. I supported anybody else before him. But what matters is the last four years and the Democratic party. The Democratic party offers the end of the Republic or does BLM, Soros, university marxists, and millions of uneducated kids, a clueless weak decaying crook in the White House to be replaced by a dim witted marxist when he becomes totally dysfunctional not matter? All but aging traditional democrats call for totalitarian persecution of Republicans. Will this bunch allow honest elections in the future? Then there’s China, the giant trading companies and the damn disease. It’s insane to allow the Democrats to steal this election.
I can understand not voting for Trump but voting for Biden is because of his “decency” is something I do not understand. Biden was part of the team behind “Borking” of Supreme court nominees. His treatment of Justice Thomas was more despicable that any Trump tweet. His family (Hunter and his siblings) using his name for Fun and Profit seems to be ignored by all of the never-Trumpers.
Moving forward they will see only the back of my hand. No money or votes for Bushes, Romneys, Cheneys, Flakes, Kasichs, Ryans, etc etc etc.
Don’t forget about him lying about the driver involved in his wife’s fatal accident. The investigation showed that his wife was at fault but Joe continued to say that he was a drunk and “drank his lunch”. Nice Uncle Joe is anything but. A vile man.