CNN commentator Matt Lewis recently observed the bitter fights breaking out on social media among conservatives who in an earlier era might have seen themselves as ideological allies.
“We are at the stage where the (last?) fight on the right is between people who share something in common: None of them were initially Trump fans,” Lewis wrote on Twitter. “Half of these folks ended up embracing him, and half went entirely the opposite direction. Both sides now view the other with contempt.”
The truth is, we’re well past this stage. The battle between Trump converts and critics has been raging for years. The current stage represents a fight breaking out between people who have remained critical of Trump. However, one side has adopted what’s become known as the “balls and strikes” attitude of applauding decisions they agree with while condemning him, oftentimes harshly, when they disagree. The absolutists, however, view any deviation from incessant attacks on Trump to be tantamount to enabling his worst behavior.
I recently found myself embroiled in one of these dust-ups.
Before getting to it, I should note some background for those unfamiliar with my work. Nearly three years ago, when Trump captured the Republican nomination, I publicly deregistered as a Republican and explained my decision on national television, including Fox News. I received a significant amount of backlash, but the principled position I took was that I could not stomach voting for him.
In the end, because I couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton either, I cast a ballot for “none of the above” in D.C., which was never in play.
During the primaries, the term “Never Trump” had a very simple meaning, at least to me. It represented conservatives who decided that if Trump were the nominee, they would not vote for him.
Because few people expected Trump to win, there wasn’t much thought given to what the term “Never Trump” would stand for during an actual Trump presidency. His surprise victory drove a wedge among those who had embraced the term during the election.
To me, once Trump was elected, the term had passed its expiration date. That is, he was already president and would be pursuing policies regardless of my views of him in 2016. I vowed to criticize actions of his I disagreed with while giving him credit when it was due. This seemed to me not only the logical approach, but the fair one for somebody who, despite writing opinion articles, is ultimately a journalist rather than an activist.
Over the course of his presidency so far, I’ve found myself supporting his Supreme Court nominees, his relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, his pulling out of the Iran deal. On the other hand, I’ve criticized his defenses of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, his anti-free trade policies, his failure to grapple with the federal debt, and his invocation of emergency powers to build a border wall.
But it soon became clear to me that some people viewed Never Trump as a pledge to adopt a posture of being in constant opposition to Trump, even when he takes actions with which they may have otherwise agreed.
The other day, I noticed a clip from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” featuring Washington Examiner contributor Kristen Soltis Anderson and Never Trumper Tom Nichols in which they were asked how they felt about the conservative movement being overcome by Trump.
Anderson gave a nuanced answer, noting that, on the one hand, Trump had taken many actions conservatives liked, while on the other hand, he smashed norms in a way that runs counter to a more tempered view of conservatism.
Nichols responded, “There is no policy that I want enough to trade off the norms that we are destroying daily in the Trump administration. There is no judge; there is no policy; there is no tax cut. Nothing to me personally is worth what we’re paying for.”
I noted on Twitter that I didn’t think the question of whether Trump was “worth it” was a live one. That is, it was relevant when he is on the ballot in 2016, and it will become relevant again in 2020. Should Democrats bring up articles of impeachment that present evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, it could become relevant earlier.
But for the time being, Trump is president. He will be tweeting wild things and saying and doing plenty of things I don’t like. Yet he will be doing those things regardless of what kind of judges he appoints or what type of other policies he pursues. So, I’d rather he pursue some policies I agree with, and I won’t be afraid to say so when he does. Next time he’s on the ballot, I can decide whether, on net, he’s been “worth it.”
For pointing this out, I was attacked as a Trump “apologist and enabler” and people questioned whether I even had a soul. Nichols then weighed in, arguing that any breath I give to defending Trump on judges is time not spent attacking him for undermining norms. Then, he suggested it was important to support Democrats who won’t enable Trump.
Even if one takes a critical view of the Trump presidency, what exactly is the evidence that Democrats are a sane, norm-restoring, option? They have not responded to the Trump presidency by employing temperance, they have responded by embracing his tactics to advance an ever more radical agenda.
As I write, Democrats are rallying around in defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., a freshman who has repeatedly peddled anti-Semitism. Leading presidential candidates have embraced socialized healthcare and the fairy tale Green New Deal. The Democratic Party is not exactly a welcoming place for a Jewish conservative who is pro-Israel, pro-life, pro-free market, and pro-gun rights.
Hard to see how actively trying to get more Democrats elected out of some sort of Never Trump absolutism would somehow be truer to my principles than taking the approach I do now, which is to criticize Trump when I disapprove of him while giving him credit when I believe he’s right.
