Just want to get something off my chest.
Ever since Trump began to domination the ‘16 nomination, Never Trumpers like Rick Wilson and Jennifer Rubin are all over the media, howling self-righteously about Trump.
So, OK. An adversary pitted against a worse adversary has value. And at least they seem to have some level of principle. (Although I suspect it is more about an elitist dislike of Trump’s populist style.)
But these people NEVER talk about what makes Trump possible and what sustains his viability despite public, inconceivable levels of both corruption and incompetence.
Wingers cannot see Trump clearly because 50 years of horrific propaganda have literally reshaped their view of reality. And also because the MSM, a collateral division of the Noise Machine, refuses to stop enabling the madness.
But do these Never Trumpers acknowledge this? Everything Trump does and stands for—the racism, the corruption, the reality bending propaganda—has been the bedrock on which the American conservative movement has been built since Nixon. The movement Wilson and Rubin and George Will and others have supported and defended and worked for is precisely Trump-style corruption and incompetence. It has been for decades. So, Rick, how about it?
I could respect a Never Trumper who said, OK, I get it now. I told myself for years that the end justified the means. But now in Trump I see the fruit of what WE have been doing for decades. I am disgusted by him but also horrified by what I have been a part of. I repudiate today’s conservative movement and I will devote my efforts to pursuing my political ideals by rebuilding a democracy that honors good faith.
When have you heard a Never Trumper speak anything like that? I think, actually, that Steve Schmidt did some of this (I don’t remember clearly) and he has not been pimping himself as the others have. But Wilson? Rubin? They have repudiated nothing but Trump. When he’s gone, I expect they’ll be back peddling GOP bullshit as they used to.
As I say, there is value in a guy labelled “Republican strategist” hammering GOP leaders on TV. But I don’t trust people like that an inch. I will believe they have real principle when they start acknowledging their own sins and repudiating the Way of the Lie.