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The first COMMENTARY podcast of the week finds John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, and Noah Rothman wondering at the grandiose plans of Steve Bannon after the White House. A new news channel! War in the Republican party! Etc! All this leads into speculation about 2020, because why not, and why Joe Biden might be the guy to challenge Trump. And then they descend into more crushing morosity as they contemplate whether our divisions nationally are just too large to heal. Give a listen.
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John Podhoretz said something that I hadn’t really thought about. I knew that supporters like the fact that Trump never backs down from a fight. But I never connected something that John said before: He said that if Biden were to win the nod of the Democrats, he would stand equal to Trump in that kind of confrontation. Biden would treat the President as badly as he did Ryan. And then what would Trump do? It is a very good insight. Because I want people to behave with dignity, I never really understood how deeply Trump resonated with those people who were tired of being pushed around.
I hope, though, that this will not become the standard in politics. As much as I want to beat the Democrats, if we keep going down this road, it will be the country that loses.
The most grievous error Trump’s supporters have made is to underestimate the extent to which their boy has tainted the conservative brand; the way he has tarnished the very idea of conservatism. They are incapable of grasping the extent of the PR damage, and when you try bringing it up to them they say glib things like “Lefties would be accusing us of all that stuff anyway!”
They simply have no idea, these people. They just can’t see it. And what’s more, they can’t be made to see it, no matter how painstakingly you try to connect the dots for them.
So true conservatism is dead in this country, because the next (and largest) cohort of voters are now associating it with racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Thanks, Trumpsters.
Way to go.
Modern American Conservatism — 1964-2016 — RIP.
I’m glad John is reading Harry Potter 5, the book wherein the banality of evil is most clearly illustrated in the person of Dolores Umbridge.
It kills me that those on the left fancy themselves to be Dumbledore’s Army, when the very thing that created DA was Umbridge’s dumbing down of the Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Which side is more likely to pull that garbage: cons or libs? They absolutely fail to see how incredibly conservative the Potterverse is.
Alas, J.K. Rowling, like Joss Whedon, is an obnoxious liberal on social media whose fictional universe (like Firefly) embodies the exact opposite of her public worldview.
Also, we didn’t sober up after 9/11 — we got worse. How many political blogs got their birthing on 9/11? And how much of the rancor that was generated in the wake of the Iraq invasion defines the political side-taking that still exists today (LGF notwithstanding)?
I’m sorry, did I miss the time in my life when American conservatism wasn’t associated with racism, sexism and xenophobia? Did I just imagine Mitt Romney having “Binders full of women” being a negative or Joe Biden telling us Romney wanted to put black people in chains? Have I missed the enlightened times when simple enforcement of borders wasn’t hurting third world families “just wanting a better life?
All the “art” associated with John McCain and George W Bush? Figments of our collective imagination?
Ronald Reagan was going to bring about the normalization of the Klu Klux Klan into the White House, if you believed Coretta Scott King. Ted Kennedy got up and said in Robert Bork’s America, women would need to go to alleys to have abortions and Jim Crow would return, and it was deemed “appropriate” for discourse to then discuss this as a real possibility.
Trump didn’t “ruin” any brand. He’s just a blowhard. We don’t have a brand because no one will fight when we find a fighter.
Ted Cruz ran as a conservative, who really were the ones to kill Cruz as a candidate? When Cruz wanted to deny spending, there’s Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to bury him for grandstanding or being “against the decorum.” John Kasich, who nobody wanted to be President except John Kasich wouldn’t throw support to help defeat Trump. Reince Preibus prevented any sort of Trump defeat at the convention.
Sayeth Pogo “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
The GOPe does enough to tell us conservatism won’t work. The reason some of us abandoned NeverTrump was we realize the “next man up” isn’t going to fight, it’s going to be this “let the Left shape the narrative and parry our way into defeat” mindset again. To @George Townsend point, I think we don’t understand there’s a deep bench of “fighters” on the Left because they’re never going to be critiqued. They also don’t need someone like Biden per se because the media will do it for them.
Yeah, maybe you missed the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan won a majority of the youth vote (in 1984; look it up).
Trump and his crazed minions (“WE HAVE TO FIGHT AND KEEP FIGHTING!!! IT’S THE ONLY CHANCE WE HAVE!!!”) have hastened the end of Conservatism as a credible option for any American under the age of 40.
And the irony is, Trump is about as Conservative as Noam Chomsky.
Much of what you say is correct. Who can deny it? Much of the media will always cover-up and make excuses for the goons on the left, because they are just like them. They hate what conservatism stands for, and, because they are supposed to be “news” people, they can’t say the vile things themselves. So they give the hard left, and even the moderate left, a platform to say it for them.
But the point of we Trump Skeptics is that we refuse to be like them. We want to convince people we are right, not start bon fires. That plays into the hands of the left. And it doesn’t do much for our country either.
Conservatism must stand for something more than a list of position papers. It must stand for the advancement of civilization, and the beauty which God has given to us. If we descend in to the fire pit with the left, all the good that we want is conserve is bound to be lost.
At this point I think we’re all just looking for our own way to virtue signal. NeverTrump virtue signals to be used by people who think you’re fascist racist sexist phobes. Then the GOPe kills the intellectual purity to virtue signal we’re nice.
We are nothing more than a list of position papers for use for fundraising and grandstanding. We keep one eye on “What they’re going to say about us” and nominate squishes like Romney, McCain and give credence to useful critics like Kasich. Ted Cruz actually tries to invoke conservatism and is called an egomaniac and “too confrontational.” The Tea Party elects people to go in there and fight and they’re told “Thanks, now go along to get along” and the ones who play ball all of a sudden start taking non-conservative positions. Then nobody gets upset when we lose. Well, we tried, we just need to explain things better ad nauseum.
Even JPod has his “I’m conservative, but…” issues when it comes to immigration.
At least the Left gets its victories for its intellectually pure, that is, a bigger administrative state, even though the Bernie set doesn’t think its enough. We always lose on the side of pleasing them rather than testing the hypothesis they set that there’s such a thing as being too conservative. But we don’t even get victories, we get crap sandwiches and are told at least we get something. Or we get smacked around and told “at least we played the game by the proper rules.”
People on my side (those that wanted someone else in the primaries and went anti-Hillary) just want someone to fight back instead of pointing to how well we’re behaving. They just want admittance from the cocktail party set of the reality that the Left hates us not because of who we nominate but of what we are. It seems this is a sticking point for 2/3 of the Commentary podcast who don’t go to Brooklyn/Williamsburg or talk to the cultural trendsetters in Los Angeles (where I live and somewhat subsist on the outer edges of showbiz). You want to win a philosophical argument, they say casually “I hope all these old white Republicans die soon” (they really think that’s the demography) and no one finds it uncouth.
It is uncouth, Jeff, and it drives me bananas. But this “Trump’s a fighter! We have to fight!” nonsense is killing Conservatism. It is driving a stake through its heart, and I’m dumbfounded at the number of Conservatives who don’t realize that. They can’t see past the next election cycle. They don’t quite believe that young people — who were vaguely contemptuous of Conservatism pre-Trump — now despise the very idea of it.
I agree with much of what Filmklassik is saying. Of course the left is uncouth. Who is denying that, for God’s sake?? But why be like them? I doubt if I, or anybody, will ever convince the ones who are itching for a fight that they are wrong. But they are. What have we gained from this fighting? Trump’s poll numbers are down; Congress and he are bogged down; and nobody wants to join the administration, because this man is so coarse, and anybody associated with will bear the brunt.
As far as being “Pure” is concerned: Buckley wanted to legalize drugs; he was also in favor of some sort of mandatory service, so kids could show gratitude to the country, and Friedman disagreed with him on that. I don’t like that Reagan signed amnesty, but it didn’t hurt the economy. You are never going to find “purity” among human beings. I proudly voted for McCain and Romney. McCain has done some very unwise things, but he is a good man, a patriot, and he is now dying.
Conservatism is NOT just a bunch of position papers. I will say it until they plant me. And unless we stop thinking that people should be called squishes because they don’t have the “right” position on this or that, we shall never really understand what it is that we truly are conserving.
It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to both of your positions, I am, I was there. Then Trump won an impossible election and I had to go back and try to figure things out and now I’d like show some positive momentum for all the trouble. I can’t because everywhere I turn, people like Podhoretz want to go on CNN and MSNBC to give some fake
But a lot of criticisms are playing the game. Trump’s “poll numbers are down.” You know what would get those numbers up? Doing things like confirming more judges and passing more things for him to sign. You know what drives them down? Making him look bad because we’re playing into the hands that Democrats are going to come around to think us fair minded if we help destroy Trump.
Democrats tell us the reality is if they’re upset, then everyone else must be, and Republicans comply by being scared and saying “we need more indication that we won’t get criticized, maybe we need more of a mandate.”
I was born in 1973. I’ve never had the luxury of living in a time where Republicans were liked. I’m tired of being beaten into submission by them and our own side would rather silence us than fight for same. I get the people who are “embarassed” by Trump but the alternative is Democrat rule and us being noble in defeat and hoping some day our ideas get a fair shake that’s not coming unless we stop living in this created reality where we need to be dignified while they try to destroy us.
I think a lot of the problem is generational. I could be your father, Jeff. 1954, to be specific. You were only 8, maybe less, when Reagan won a landslide. Eleven when he won an even bigger one. And much of the media hated him. Such a truly wonderful man, and they hated him. But he prevailed. And The Soviet Union went away; the economy hummed for a couple of decades; and people were proud to be called American. It CAN be done!
Yes, he prevailed
But in the aftermath, even that’s being re-written. Had we had the 24/7 news cycle we’d probably have a cottage industry of the moderate wing saying Reagan was too flippant, too conservative, and talking with Democrats about the 25th Amendment re: Alzheimers.
I merely want more use of Alinsky against the group who have used it so effectively.