What a weekend: Friday featured the Trump tape, the reactions, and the midnight pseudo-apology. Saturday featured a wild scramble as people reacted. Sunday had Trump’s meeting with the women wronged by Bill and Hillary Clinton followed by the second presidential debate.
All kind of exciting, if you’re editing a political magazine and commenting on radio and TV. But fundamentally depressing. As you know, I hate to be a Debbie Downer. On the other hand: If not now, when? If not me, who?
I’d actually written a somewhat upbeat editorial for the print magazine Thursday, pointing out that Mike Pence’s performance in the vice presidential debate was a reminder of the viability of conservative arguments in domestic and foreign policy, and an indication that the task of post-Trump reconstruction might not be quite as difficult as I’d feared. But then came the weekend. Not good.
In any case, I’m not going to belabor every twist and turn. (If you’re interested in a running commentary, take a look at my tweets from Friday evening here.)
I stand behind what I wrote for the website this weekend. Here’s my first take on Trump’s disgusting and predatory video, something far beyond any normal “locker room banter.”
The post was headlined, “Dump Trump: Now More than Ever,” and in it I argued:
What is to be done? There’s a month until the election. Republicans of all types could band together to try to get Donald Trump to step down as the Republican nominee. Trump might not go easily. But if it were made clear to him that all endorsements were to be withdrawn and that all resources were to be denied—if Mike Pence were to resign from the ticket and Reince Preibus were to refuse any further help—Trump might be persuaded.
There would undoubtedly then be a messy process of selecting a replacement, and there would be issues of ballot access and the like. But if the GOP electors in the various states agreed to vote in the electoral college for a candidate designated by the Republican National Committee—probably Mitt Romney, perhaps Mike Pence—these difficulties could be overcome.
If Trump refuses to step down, serious Republicans and conservatives need either to persuade someone like Mitt Romney to stand as an independent write-in candidate and/or to urge a vote for Evan McMullin; perhaps the two strategies could be combined if McMullin would agree that his electors would vote in the electoral college for Romney. But whatever the mechanism, serious Republicans and conservatives need to make sure there is another choice. And at the same time serious Republicans and conservatives, having written off Donald Trump, need to make the case for a Republican Senate and House in order to check a likely President Clinton.
The removal of Trump, or at least the separation from Trump, offers hope for Republicans and conservatives. But a party and a movement that continues to stand with Trump will fall with Trump. It will have lost the future.
Nothing that happened in the next 48 hours changed my views. And so I argued after the debate that:
But it’s always easier to find excuses for inaction than to mobilize to take bold and difficult action. Sunday night’s debate may prove an excuse for inaction. If so, it will mark an important station on the road to disaster.
Here’s the problem: Some Republican leaders could well make the mistake of thinking that because Donald Trump wasn’t destroyed at the debate, there isn’t now a dire need to act. They could decide that because Trump didn’t dissolve into a puddle in the center of the town hall, the situation has stabilized, and the status quo is sustainable. That would be a fatal mistake. Hillary Clinton failed to do the GOP the favor of landing a knockout blow on Donald Trump Sunday night. But he is nonetheless on a path to defeat, a resounding defeat that will do great damage to the Republican party.
The Declaration of Independence identified the problem: “All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Republicans may be disposed to suffer, rather than take bold action, contrary to the forms to which they are accustomed, to shove Trump aside. Republican leaders may think, or hope, that Trump is a sufferable evil. They will be cruelly disappointed in that judgment.
Or will some key GOP leaders—such as Paul Ryan, or Mike Pence—see further than their contemporaries, and act boldly?
(For intelligent reactions to the debate, see also the posts from late Sunday night–actually, early Monday morning (THE WEEKLY STANDARD never sleeps!)–from Jonathan V. Last and Mike Warren.)
How will it all end? As of Monday morning, it’s unclear what the resolution of this crisis will be. I’m not optimistic it will be one that will help the Republican party or the conservative cause. But there’ve been so many twists and turns this year, isn’t it time for a hopeful and helpful one?
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Beyond Trump…
But you can’t let Trump get you down. After all, there are other things in life than politics.
For example, there’s baseball. I was pleased a week ago that three teams I’d rooted for over the years had made the playoffs. There was Baltimore–I became a mild Orioles fan in the 90s, when there was no team here in Washington and we’d take the kids to Camden Yards (a terrific ballpark) for occasional games. But they lost the AL wild-card elimination game in extra innings. Then, there were the Mets–my original team, from my youth in New York. They lost the NL wild-card elimination game in the ninth inning. (Here’s Lee Smith’s excellent and fun account of the two wild-card games and what they tell us about the sport of baseball.) And there are the Red Sox, whom I started rooting for when I got to Boston for college. They’re down 2-0 in the division championship series to the Indians. So that’s all going great! And of course I’m already out of our TWS contest, having picked a Mets-Sox World Series….
Then there’s opera. We spent five (!) hours Saturday afternoon at the Met’s “Live in HD” broadcast of Tristan und Isolde at a local theater. There was fantastic singing by Nina Stemme, Stuart Skelton, Rene Pape, and Ekaterina Gubanova. (Here’s a clip of Stemme as Isolde.) But the set was weird, the plot was weird, and Wagner is…well, perhaps Mark Twain was right when he said that “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds,” but deep down I’m not sure. Still, it was good to see such a fine performance of so famous and important a work…once. But somehow it didn’t really perk me up.
And there’s religion. Yom Kippur begins Tuesday night–24 hours of fasting, which I for some reason find easier as I get older. But it’s also 24 hours of absence from engagement in worldly pursuits, such as Twitter. Now that will be tough–though, I’m assured, good for my soul.
Or so they say.
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
