One of the reasons covering politics this year has been so painful is that it seems much of the commentary isn’t so much about policy as it is over the correct pose one is to adopt vis a vis President Trump. The latest intramural conservative dustup is a perfect distillation of this.
The other day Charles Cooke called out Jennifer Rubin for her intransigent opposition to Donald Trump, even when Trump pushes policy that Rubin is on record as having previously supported. Cooke uses Rubin’s own words against her, and makes a point I’ve been raising on my Facebook page:
Rubin is not the only example of this president’s remarkable talent for corrupting his detractors as well as his devotees, but she is perhaps the best one. Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, Rubin has become precisely what she dislikes in others: a monomaniac and a bore, whose visceral dislike of her opponents has prompted her to drop the keys to her conscience into a well. Since the summer of 2015, the many acolytes of “MAGA!” have agreed to subordinate their true views to whatever expediency is required to sustain Donald Trump’s ego. Out has gone their judgement, and in has come their fealty; where once there were thriving minds, now there are just frayed red hats. During the same period, Jennifer Rubin has done much the same thing. If Trump likes something, Rubin doesn’t. If he does something, she opposes it. If his agenda flits into alignment with hers—as anyone’s is wont to do from time to time—she either ignores it, or finds a way to downplay it. The result is farcical and sad; a comprehensive and self-inflicted airbrushing of the mind. How, I have long wondered, could Trump’s unprincipled acolytes do what they do and still sleep at night? How can Jen Rubin?
As I’ve said, Never Trumpers are as obnoxious as the Ever Trumpers,. They are as unyielding in their hatred and criticism of President Trump as Ever Trumpers are in their blind devotion. It’s an anti-cult of personality, if you will.
So David Frum took to the pages of the Atlantic and, well, he pretty much conceded Cooke’s argument, but somehow pretended that he (and Rubin) occupied the high moral ground.
First calling Cooke’s column a “savagely personal attack” – because directly quoting someone is evidently beyond the pale – Frum alleges that Trump’s ascendancy is so potentially destructive to the conservative movement that all the old rules of politics need to be bent.
Rubin’s crime is that rather than waking up every morning fresh for each day’s calling of balls and strikes, she carries into her work the memory of the day before. She sees patterns where Cooke sees only incidents. She speaks out even when Cooke deems it prudent to hold his tongue.
In this course, Cooke is following the Republican leadership in the House and Senate and the more presentable of the conservative commentariat: Hope for the best. Make excuses where you can. When you can’t make an excuse, keep as quiet as you can. Attack Trump’s critics in the media and Hollywood when all else fails. That has also become the working position of many conservatives who in 2015 and 2016 called themselves “Never Trump.”
In the spring of 2016, National Review published its “Against Trump” issue.Twenty-one prominent conservatives signed individual statements of opposition to Trump’s candidacy. Of those 21, only six continue to speak publicly against his actions. Almost as many have become passionate defenders of the Trump presidency, most visibly the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell and the National Rifle Association’s Dana Loesch.
Frum is basically saying Charles Cooke is Marshall Petain, and the rest of the conservative Never Trump commentariat are Vichy Republicans.
I find it highly amusing that David Frum has taken it upon himself to be the moral arbiter of principled conservatism. I mean the only thing missing from his savagely personal attack is stating that Cooke and his colleagues are unpatriotic conservatives, but I guess he’s already exhausted that idea.
Nevertheless, there is a kernel of truth here. A number of conservatives who initially opposed Trump have not only reversed course, they have become Trump’s loudest cheering section. I won’t even get into the sad shell bloggers like Ace of Spades have become, or how David Limbaugh decided his brother’s Trump sycophancy was a bit too soft. Yet there’s a large space between conservatives who have become outright boosters of the president, and those who merely refuse to concede the exaggerated talking point that Trump is leading us down the path to fascism.
Frankly, there is no worse place to be in this current climate than where writers like Cooke, David French, and a host of others (including yours truly) are. There are no potential best sellers titled “The President’s an ass, but he’s not really that bad.” The louder one screams one’s absolute contempt or adoration for the president, the more clicks and the more book buys one enjoys.
Frum concedes as much, writing about Erick Erickson’s departure from Fox News, yet fails to follow this to its logical conclusion. Frum’s monomaniac opposition to Trump promises to be much more lucrative career-wise for him than Cooke’s middle-of-the-road approach. Frum then launches into a tirade which indicates all support of Trump (or opposition to his media and political critics) is itself destructive. Frum assumes questioning Robert Mueller’s objectivity, or simply observing there doesn’t seem to be much of a “there” there with regards to collusion with Russia, is ipso facto demonstration of selling out. Frum doesn’t even seem to consider that Trump skeptics can simultaneously distrust the media and question the current investigation because it’s the intellectually right thing to do. In other words, people may think Trump is an ass and also think many on the other side are even bigger assholes, and that this investigation are a big nothingburger because the evidence leads us to this conclusion.
Implied in Frum’s response is this notion that Trump’s presidency represents such an existential crisis for the nation and for the conservative movement that blind opposition is the only sensible response. I reject this notion. As I’ve also written about on Facebook, the exaggerated claims about this presidency do the Never Trumpers and the far left no favors. The only thing extraordinary about this presidency is its ordinariness, at least when it comes to policy. Fears that Trump is a budding authoritarian have been contradicted by his actions. If anything, the tendency of this administration has been to reverse Obama era regulations that crossed the boundary lines of the separation of powers and imposed greater government regulations. Say what you will about Trump’s FCC reversing Obama’s FCC net neutrality regulations, it’s the opposite of authoritarian.
One of the primary reasons I opposed Trump was because I perceived that his presidency would be antithetical to conservative values. When there are a continuous string of executive actions, appointments, and now legislative accomplishments which are fully in line with values I’ve held dear, am I supposed to pretend those things aren’t happening? When do I get to admit many of my concerns have not come to fruition? When Donald Trump did what so many previous American presidents promised to do but didn’t – recognize the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capacity – am I just to pretend it isn’t a significant accomplishment?
I think Rich Lowry and especially Conrad Black (who must be paying Trump rent for living so far up Trump’s rectum) give Trump too much credit, and don’t sufficiently acknowledge Trump’s failures of leadership. And we cannot completely ignore the other side of the Trump presidency, which is about as bad we feared it would be. But I basically agree with Heather Wilhem: maybe things aren’t quite that bad.
Frum says we don’t just start off from scratch every day, and we need to remember what happened yesterday. But what if there are enough okay yesterdays to make writing off today seem silly?
Jonah Goldberg, David French, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Charles Cooke himself have all written rebuttals to Frum, and they all make many of the points I’ve made above and then some, so go read them if you are so inclined. The maybe in 2018 we can actually getting back to debating issues.
Ha.
The Cranky Conservative 