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Mitt Romney inaugurates 2019 by firing a shot across Donald Trump’s bow, but did he miss his mark? And with the government still shut down and with neither Democrats nor Republicans having any reason to compromise a way out of the conundrum, does it ever open again?
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Nice to see you gentlemen opening up some distance between yourselves and the Boot/Rubin axis. Progress.
Don’t really think Romney is thinking about his political future. He is just saying what needs to be said about Trump. But he should have done it in a way that doesn’t benefit the Democrats. At least also point out that while Trump is bad, the Democrats are worse.
I think it is too soon to say whether Ben Sasse has survived his positions. It is likely that he can survive but that has not yet been shown.
Sasse was elected in 2014, he was censured by the Nebraska Republican Party for his anti-trump stance in 2016. He does not stand for election until 2020.
So by survived you mean that a guy who was elected and can not be recalled is still a Senator? There is nothing the people of Nebraska could do if they were that angry.
There has always been a major difference between these two groups. Commentary – and nearly all the other NeverTrumpers on Ricochet – started with their conservative principles and went logically from there to opposing Trump. Whereas Boot and Rubin started out with opposing Trump and moved from there to deciding on their principles.
Trump supporters are a lot like the latter, in which they started out supporting Trump and moved from there to deciding on their principles – which is why they no longer care about morality, or free trade, or American leadership in the world, or small government, or any of the other things that used to define conservatism.
I’ll take exception with John’s breezy condemnation of a border wall as “ridiculous” and “comic,” and with Noah’s dismissal of it as merely “an idea.”
Building a border wall is as important to me, and, I’m sure, to most border wall enthusiasts, as not building it is to the left. And not building it is very important to the left. Why? Because a conspicuous, even if largely symbolic, effort to secure the border asserts an idea. That idea — and the reason the left is passionately opposed to any money being allocated toward a border wall — is that there is such a thing as a distinctly American identity worthy of being celebrated and protected.
That’s a pretty significant idea, one as dear to me and, I suspect, to a majority of Americans as it is offensive to people mired in the belief that America — outside of its enlightened coastal enclaves — is a blight upon the world. It’s neither ridiculous nor trivial. Ideas are what culture is made of, after all: we surrender the culture if we let bad ideas go unchallenged — and, most significantly, if we let ideas of cultural nihilism hold sway.
So let’s spend a few billion and build a physical reminder that we do have the right to secure our border, and that there’s a value in doing so.