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Some of your guests might benefit from talking about Trump less and listening and watching him more.
I recommend the opposite. If you ignore what Trump says and does as mere distractions and focus entirely on substance, then you can be pleased with this administration. I say that as someone who didn’t vote for Trump because I was afraid of what he might do. Before the election, I felt like Kristol when he talks about an incompetent captain tugging on the ship’s wheel. I don’t feel that way now. The policies have been good.
Unfortunately, Kristol doesn’t want to admit this. He’s too much of a sourpuss.
He’s suggesting that any good policy that comes from the White House must have occurred in spite of Trump as if he’s not presented with options and then choosing between them. That doesn’t sound crazy at all, Bill. Michael likes him, but I find him tiresome.
Kristol’s different from Michael or David French. They have religious reservations about Trump. As a secular person, I respect that they’re following their consciences, but I don’t understand them. I understand God not liking people to be sinners. His being unhappy about what jobs they have? That just confuses me.
Kristol is somewhere between Joe Scarborough & George Will. He mostly worries about the party’s brand but he’s also petulant about deviations from conservative orthodoxy. If the brand had been in good shape, Trump couldn’t have won the nomination. Using his ship analogy, it was already taking on water. If Trump had lost the general, which is what Kristol would have preferred for the sake of the brand, it’d have foundered.
He’ll never admit it, but those ideological apostasies are evolutionary adaptations. Kristol talks about losing young people, but he has no idea how to win them. No one under 50 voted for Ronald Reagan. A Republican running on Reagan’s legacy in 2020 would fare no better than a Democrat running on FDR’s in 1980. Michael has the right idea: knit together Reagan’s values and the concerns of Trump voters. It shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s not crossing a parakeet with an octopus. It’s breeding a lion and a tiger. For heaven’s sake, just look at which states Trump flipped!
You could fashion a message that appeals to Reaganites, Trumpsters, and (FTW) the increasingly anti-SJW Gen-Z. Forget Millennials. (They’re zombified.) The difficult part would be getting GOP politicians and conservative institutions to sign on. You know what won’t help with that? Kristol talking about Trump’s substantive views doing real harm to the nation and saying that the Trump presidency has been an assault on the constitution. Riiiiight.
Derrick Watson is today’s Publius. <facepalm>