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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The Hypocrisy of the NeverTrumpers |
| 2018-02-14 |
| h/t Instapundit [OmbreOlivier] As the regular reader of this blog (Hi Sarah) knows, I’m not an American. When it came to the 2016 election I was a NeverHillary who had low expectations for a Trump presidency. It wasn’t that I didn’t like some of the things Trump said, but I was intensely skeptical that he would try to do any of them, let alone succeed. Over the last year I’m very happy to say that my skepticism has been proven wrong. Not that he’s perfect by any means and yes in part as far as I’m concerned he benefits from the bigotry of low expectations, but he’s so far exceeding those initial low expectations that I now judge him as a president in his own right as opposed to being #NotHillary. ...It is the acts that will be his real legacy and an honest NeverTrumper should take a look at them and admit that he (or she ‐ coff Jennifer Rubin coff) was wrong. But sadly (and Ms Rubin is a great example) they don’t. Instead they twist themselves into a pretzl and claim that policies that they were once in favor of are now bad because they are implemented by Trump or worse they point out that Trump’s actions in a particular policy area are not the ideal ones they would prefer in a perfect world and use that as a cudgel to assail the fact that Trump has made a change which was previously unthinkable. ...Trump, on the other hand, is combining the "art of the possible" with his "art of the deal" and getting results that are moving the goalposts ‐ the Overton Window ‐ of potential policy options back from the progressive/statist side that Obama moved them. Indeed in some areas he seems to be moving them back to the same sort of area that they were last seen under President Reagan (PBUH). Moreover, some of the areas that he’s moving back are surprising. Contrary to all the lefty cries about "Dictator" and "Tyranny", Trump is actually trying to get congress to do its job. Witness the whole DACA thing, or earlier the way that he enabled congress to roll back most of Obama’s last minute regulations. If you are a conservative NeverTrumper it is pretty much guaranteed that you are in favor of the US Constitution as originally written ‐ three branches of government, federalism, states rights etc. ‐ so maybe you ought to look at how Trump is devolving power, reining in the unelected 4th branch ‐ the administrative state ‐ and so on. In much the same way, indeed as a continuation, Trump wants to reform the civil service hiring practices: ...He may fail but I wouldn’t count on it. And any conservative NeverTrumper who isn’t a total hypocrite should look at this and consider whether they should continue to stand in front of the Trump train shouting STOP. If they do, I trust the train will do what real trains do and squash them into paste |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #5 train, oops!!. |
| Posted by: Dale 2018-02-14 11:57 |
| #4 Aw, yes the resistance. Do nothing types or the saboteurs in word or deed. Leave them in the dust of disrepair, this rain is moving on. |
| Posted by: Dale 2018-02-14 11:57 |
| #3 Iblis, Well put. |
| Posted by: E. McGurque8709 2018-02-14 10:58 |
| #2 There were, at the time, many good reasons to be NeverTrump. Among the good ones - he had never run a campaign or won political office, he had spent most of his life as a New York liberal Democrat, he was good friends with the Clintons, he had supported assault weapons bans, etc. It was entirely reasonable to decide, as I did, that Trump would govern as a Democrat. As a conscientious conservative, I opposed Trump for these reasons. There were also many bad reasons to oppose Trump. I generally lump these in with the Establishment, GOPe, "Tame" Republican sitzpinkler types. He was not one of them, hadn't put in his time and could not be relied on with regard to immigration, climate change, etc. It's OK to promise these things to people, because that's a great way to get votes. But under no circumstances can you actually deliver them. I would think that those of us in the first category have largely changed their minds. I have. Trump is proving to be the most conservative president in at least a generation. For those in the second group, Trump is fulfilling all their worst nightmares, and it makes sense that they would continue to oppose him. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2018-02-14 10:54 |
| #1 Never Trumpers were never classical conservatives. They were con people running a racket in a niche political environment. The emperor has no clothes. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-02-14 07:44 |