Thoughts from Sea Island
We’re just back from lovely Sea Island, Georgia, site of the annual world forum of the fine think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute. I can report that a stimulating, interesting, and fun time was had by all. Since the forum is off-the-record, I can’t report much else. But I will say that spending time with young senators like Tom Cotton (AR), Ben Sasse (NE), Cory Gardner (CO) and Tim Scott (SC) cheered me up about the future of the conservative movement and the Republican party. Indeed, the “early bird breakfast conversation” I moderated on the last day with Gardner and Sasse (see, by the way, Mark Hemingway’s article on Sasse in the current issue) was impressive: Who knew senators could be funny that early in the morning? (Honestly, who knew they could ever be funny?)
It’s also fair to say, however, that a specter was haunting the World Forum–the specter of Donald Trump. There was much unhappiness about his emergence, a good deal of talk, some of it insightful and thoughtful, about why he’s done so well, and many expressions of hope that he would be defeated. The attendees at the forum were businessmen and scholars, mostly, so the expressions of hope, and injunctions to do something were directed at those who were thought to have some ability to influence events–such as magazine editors.
I of course tried to explain the limits–shocking but true–to the power of magazine editors. But I did come away with this conviction reinforced: There’s obviously lots of analysis of Trump and Trumpism to be done, and in fact we’ve done a fair amount of that in the pages of The Weekly Standard. But the key task now, to once again paraphrase Karl Marx, is less to understand Trump than to stop him. In general, there’s a little too much hand-wringing, brow-furrowing, and fatalism out there and not quite enough resolving to save the party from nominating or the country electing someone who simply shouldn’t be president.
And we can be saved from Trump. He’s getting about 35 percent of the vote so far. As Jay Cost points out today on the blog, there’s a very good chance he’ll fall short–perhaps far short–of a majority of the delegates at the convention. Stopping Trump will be a messy proposition, and there will be disaffected Trump supporters and threats of defections to deal with–but that’s a much better problem to have than trying to deal with Trump as the nominee of the Republican party.
So this is a moment, it seems to me, to keep calm and carry on. And to make the case. I’m struck by the huge reaction we’ve gotten to Steve Hayes’s eloquent explanation in the current issue of why he can’t support Trump. So we’ll keep on making arguments, as well as analyzing the situation. And we’ll resist the pseudo-sophisticated fatalism that can lead people to prefer to be clever in foretelling disaster rather than energetic in working to avert it.
***
ADVERTISEMENT
***
A Conversation with Garry Kasparov
And speaking of pseudo-sophisticated fatalism, Garry Kasparov’s reflections on the fall of the Soviet Union are relevant here. For the pseudo-sophisticated mocked the view he came to, as a young adult, that Soviet Communism could not be reformed but had to be done away with. Yet Kasparov wasn’t deterred, and in my conversation with the former world chess champion released last week by the Foundation for Constitutional Government, Kasparov discusses the part he and others played in the last half of the 1980s. As he reminds us:
What was true then is true now, and not only in the great struggles against totalitarians and terrorists abroad. Political will and the spirit of freedom are always in short supply, but perhaps especially now, as they tend to cut against the accommodating and rationalizing spirit of the times.
And speaking of the estimable Kasparov, here are excerpts from a blog post he wrote just yesterday:
We say in chess that you have to attack when the position suits it, and that failing to do so will inevitably hand the initiative to your opponent. Here is an excellent case of life imitating chess! Declining to attack Trump for months was a tactical decision made by the entire Republican field, as well as the GOP establishment. This allowed him to get a free ride on the huge wave of media coverage drawn to his fame and outrageous statements. Trump’s complete lack of intelligible policies went largely ignored since his rivals were giving him a free pass in order to attack each other. Their expectation was that the Trump phenomenon would burn itself out, and that voters would “come to their senses” and move to whichever of the establishment candidates was left. The GOP was also afraid of a Trump third-party run that would guarantee a Democratic victory in November. (Although this seemed like a ridiculous fantasy to me. No way Trump would spend his own money just to play spoiler.)
Many months ago, the GOP candidates all pledged to support the eventual nominee. This sort of loyalty oath is nonsense, and was an attempt to box Trump in and cut down the chance of a third-party run. But the tables have turned and the pledge backfired by making a joke out of Cruz and Rubio’s belated attempts to attack Trump. They finally joined the rest of the world and pointed out that Trump is a liar and a fraud, a demagogue who will say anything, and that, while many of his supporters are righteously angry about the state of the USA, he will have no chance of beating Hillary Clinton in the general election. After finally saying all this, especially Rubio, who had been the only major candidate to present a positive vision of change, Cruz and Rubio still promised to support Trump should he win the nomination! This embarrassed admission made all the valid criticisms of Trump sound hollow.
Their excuse was that they had no choice because they had promised to support the eventual GOP nominee back in September! In other words, this silly pledge is more important than their party, their country, and their principles. Since that pledge was made, Trump has said and done many things that should make him totally unacceptable to any conservative…The last GOP debate was an ideal time for Rubio and the others to say that their consciences would not allow them to support Trump after all he and his supporters had said and done. Perhaps breaking the pledge would have hurt them with some voters, but the answer would have been that this pledge was to the GOP and Trump does not and should not represent the GOP, and that it was a pledge to party loyalty that Trump has not displayed himself, not a suicide pact for the party and country….
It’s never too late to fight for principles. The values of conservatism, of individual freedom, of small government, of an America that is a positive force in the world, these values matter and must be defended.
As a PS, what happened to the Bush family? Has anyone seen them? Are they okay? Two former presidents and one prominent 2016 candidate and to my knowledge they have all declined to comment lately. They still have considerable influence, especially in Texas, Maine, and Florida (which votes on March 15). Was it not their obligation to defend the honor of their party and their country by standing up to Trump, who mercilessly humiliated Jeb and routinely insulted George W? Will they also put party before principles and endorse Trump should he win the nomination?
A bracing exhortation from a true freedom-fighter of our time.
***
Onward!
Bill Kristol
