Enough Never Trump

We love Kevin Williamson, Jonah Goldberg is often entertaining, and David French writes but the NRO Never Trump Brigade needs to find a new song.  Today it is Kevin’s turn to salt the soil:

Some of the smarter right-wing talking mouths on cable news have already developed aggressive amnesia regarding their own complicity in Trump’s rise, and it is likely that many will follow. The line of argument will be: “Hey, I was a big Ted Cruz supporter, really, but, after the primary, it was Trump or Hillary.” Some people will need reminding of what they said and did.

To be fair to Kevin, he is against impeaching The Donald.  To be fair to us, we were for anyone but The Donald in the primary.  Like many, we were not a big Ted Cruz supporter but we voted for him in the primary because he was better than The Donald.  In the general election our first choice was Mitt’s second term but that wasn’t on the ballot.  The choice, and it was a binary one, was between The Donald and Herself.  We, and the country, made the right choice and voted for The Donald.

NRO deserves some credit for The Donald’s rise.  They were steadfastly against The Donald but tried to beat somebody (The Donald) with nobody for most of the primary season.  They, like many others, underestimated The Donald until it was too late and then nothing worked.

Many of The Donald’s supporters main concern was illegal immigration.  There has not been a legislative solution but there has been a change:

Illegal immigration across the southwest border is down more than 60 percent so far under President Trump, officials revealed Tuesday, even before the first new agent is hired or the first mile of his promised border wall is constructed.

Those supporters have gotten what they wanted.

It was a binary choice in November.  There were many folks that reluctantly supported The Donald.  It was the right choice.  If the Never Trump Brigade didn’t support The Donald in November then they were wrong.  They don’t need to admit it but the Never Trump Brigade needs to stop emulating The Donald.  Write less silly stuff.  Instead let us talk of serious things.

Binary Still

The Morning Jolt is discussing Conrad Black’s polemic when Jim says:

Maybe you saw Election Day 2016 as that strict binary choice. But we’re past Election Day. It’s time to stop measuring Trump merely as an alternative to Hillary and to start measuring him on his own merits. [Emphasis added]

Maybe?  The 2016 presidential election was a binary choice.  It still is.

Sidebar: Has Conrad ever written something that is not a polemic?  We enjoy him but  he can’t help recycle the same material: Nixon and FDR were great presidents and the US justice system.  This time Conrad says the Never Trump group has defected from being conservative Republicans.  It is a wonderful turn of phrase designed to infuriate his friends.  End Sidebar.

Moreover, comparisons, this time not binary, are how we measure presidents.  Reagan isn’t a great president because he batted 1.000.  He didn’t and no president is anywhere close to that mark.  Instead we compare presidents.  We need to criticize The Donald when appropriate but recognize the road ahead.

The 2020 presidential race is not yet a binary choice. If The Donald runs for the GOP next time is there anyone in the current crop of Democrats that you prefer?  We are not suggesting that you become a shill for The Donald but that you remember that there will be binary choices in the future.  So, yes, The Donald is still the [superior] alternative to Herself.

 

Diversity Again

Mike Wilbon is upset about an election.  No, not that one.  Tiger Woods was left off the list of 50 greatest black athletes as voted on Survey Monkey.  Tiger’s greatness is not in question.  Tiger, Jack, and Bobby are the three greatest golfers.  We will wait while you decide the order.

OK.  Mike says, “But it ain’t a credible list of the greatest [black athletes] if it doesn’t include Tiger.” We agree on greatness so Mike has decided that Tiger is black.  It is a binary choice and we would vote the other way unless given criteria.  Tiger, as Mike says, calls himself “Cablinasian.”  It means he is multiethnic.  Since he is half asian then he is less than half black and we would think that (at least half) would be the criteria.  If you go by the old Jim Crow criteria of one drop then he should be on the list.  Tiger surely is the greatest asian golfer of all time.

The good news is that many of the challenges of diversity will go away as folks become more multiethnic.  It can’t happen too soon.

The Donald And Jimmy Carter

David French has an article at NRO (motto: we are still Never Trump) trying to blame the lack of success of the Democratic Party during the 80s entirely on Jimmy Carter.  It has the subheadline:

If the present trajectory doesn’t change, Republicans will learn what Democrats learned after their 1980 landslide defeat.

Does this mean that the GOP will learn to nominate unelectable folks?  Certainly, the Democrats were unhappy with Jimmy because he was too far right on domestic policy.  He was a deregulator.  After Carter lost to Reagan then the Democrats nominated Mondale, Dukakis, and Clinton.  David says (and might think):

Democrats, stung by defeat after defeat, kept tacking right in national politics — culminating in a Clinton presidency that in many respects was to the right of both national parties today.

The Democrat actions say the opposite.  They tacked left from Jimmy with all their nominations.  Bill campaigned and initially tried to govern from the left.  Does David remember Hillarycare?  The eruption of 1994 left him a choice: have a couple of years to make appointments or try to shape the times.  He took the latter.

Shame on David for making such a dishonest argument.  We are glad we have The Donald rather than Herself.  We hope the GOP does better in the future but that is up to the GOP.  What we really wish is that the Democrats could do better but that seems extraordinarily unlikely.  We will try to explain why soon.

It Will Be A Binary Choice Chris

Senator Chris Coons (D, DE) is fighting to keep at least a single Obamacare insurer in his state.  He said this about the failing enactment:

“I’ve never said (Obamacare) was perfect,” Coons said. “I wasn’t a member of Congress when it was passed. It was passed by only one party [his], and it was passed with the expectation that the ACA would be amended, would be fixed, would be improved over time, as experience showed some of its limitations.”

It will soon come to a binary choice Chris.  He says he won’t work with the GOP but will party be more important than constituents?  The Democrats have been able to create amazing party loyalty recently.  It is a major reason why their numbers have dwindled in the Obama era.  Here is the Washington Post trying to put some lipstick on the deceased.

 

Healthcare And Binary Choices

In our last post we were sucked in to the healthcare maelstrom.  Soon we will be down to a binary choice: The GOP proposal or the status quo.  But we are not there yet.  We would like to discuss George Will’s support of the Pat Toomey amendment.

First George talks about the critical need to rein in entitlements:

It required tenacity by Toomey to insert into the bill a gradually arriving, but meaningful, cap on the rate of growth of per-beneficiary Medicaid spending. It is requiring of Toomey and kindred spirits strenuous efforts to keep it there, which reveals the Republican party’s itch to slouch away from its uncomfortable but indispensable role as custodian of realism about arithmetic.

We agree 100% that entitlements including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security need to be brought under control.  We have no choice and it is easier to do it early rather than to wait.  Then he tells us what Pat did:

In the Senate draft, for eight years the growth of Medicaid spending would equal inflation in the health-care sector (somewhat more spending for the elderly and disabled). After eight years, Toomey’s measure would lower the growth rate of per-beneficiary spending to meet the normal measure of inflation — the basic consumer price index.

Color us much, much less excited.  It doesn’t say how this rate of growth reduction will happen.  It sounds to us like this is or will lead to price controls and revives George’s question of why do we need Republicans if this is the best they can do?

Still, it will eventually come down to a binary choice: GOP or the status quo on healthcare.  This attempt to reform healthcare might be better than the status quo and we might support it but we would prefer a process to limit entitlements.  An optimist might say that the process will follow the restriction.  George is being much more optimistic than usual.

Never Trump Again

Jonah Goldberg continues to spend time trying to justify his NeverTrump obsession.  It was a good idea that NRO put the newsletters on the website so they are easy to reference.  Jonah says:

Conservatives for most of my life argued that character matters. That went by the wayside for many people in 2016.

Well, we suppose it depends on what he means by many but we continue to have a different take than Jonah.  We don’t think that conservatives generally changed their evaluation systems in 2016.  Character didn’t matter in the 2016 presidential election because it wasn’t on the menu.  Folks didn’t worry if The Donald or Herself were an iota less reprehensible because character was not a positive attribute for either.

Sidebar One: Why has iota survived as definition for a very small quantity?  We assume it was used in this meaning in schools at one point but when?  We used and saw lots of Greek letterers we were in grad school all those years ago but none of them were named iota.  When did iota happen?  End Sidebar One.

Jonah wants to measure character on an absolute level.  Character was a positive attribute for every GOP nominee between Nixon and The Donald.  This is not to say every GOP nominee had relatively superior character than their opponent but they had a positive absolute level of character.  Character can also be measured on a relative level.

Sidebar Two: There has been much discussion about the left’s attempts to smear the character of previous GOP nominees made telling the truth about The Donald’s character difficult.  There is some insight to this point of view but we see that bringing up character when you are trying to promote Herself is a losing proposition.  End Sidebar Two.

Sidebar Three: We once asked students if Rita Crunwell, who embezzled millions from Ronald Reagan’s hometown or fictional Walter White was worse.  It was a fun exercise because, like 2016, both were of poor character on an absolute scale.  End Sidebar Three.

The Donald was a dominate choice in 2016 because of the alternative, Herself.  The worst attributes of The Donald, character and trade, were matched by Herself.  The Bernie is an economic fool of epic proportions but his nomination would have made a more difficult choice for conservatives because he would win the character argument.  Character does matter but it didn’t matter in 2016 because it wasn’t an option with either candidate.