Peggy Noonan writing in the WSJ
* * *
What is needed among Republicans in Washington now is
patience, soberness of thought, and a kind of heroic fairness. Reflection and
humility wouldn’t hurt either.
* MIGHT I ADD "AND A RASH OF SUICIDES?"
(*WINK*)
One of our two great parties...
* "GREAT" AS IN BIG.
(*SMIRK*)
* BOTH PARTIES SUCK.
...is either shattering or reconstituting itself. It is
not united and has not been since the George W. Bush era.
* GEEZUS, PEGGY... DID YOU SOMEHOW MANAGE TO FORGET ABOUT
ROSS PEROT?
(*SNORT*)
As the pollster Kellyanne Conway noted this week, if it
were, there wouldn’t have been 17 candidates for president, and Donald Trump
wouldn’t be the presumptive nominee.
The optimistic thought is that it is reconstituting
itself. The past year the base of the party has been kicking away from its
elected and established leaders in Washington and, simultaneously, broadening
itself, with new members coming in. That suggests a certain dynamism: Maybe
something’s busy being born, not busy dying. We’ll see.
But almost every conservative and Republican in
Washington — in politics, think tanks and journalism — backed a candidate other
than Mr. Trump.
Every one of those candidates lost, and Mr. Trump won.
After November, think tanks and journals will begin
holding symposia in which smart people explain How We Lost The Base.
Mr. Trump’s victory was an endorsement of Mr. Trump but
also a rebuke to professional Republicans in Washington.
* AKA: SCUMBAGS.
It was a rebuke to comprehensive immigration plans that
somehow, mysteriously, are never quite intended to stop illegal immigration; a
rebuke to the kind of thinking that goes, “I know, we’ll pass laws that leave
Americans without work, which means they’ll be deprived of the financial and
spiritual benefits of honest labor, then we’ll cut their entitlements, because
if we don’t our country will go broke.” The voters backed Mr. Trump’s stands on
these issues and more.
(*TWO THUMBS UP*)
A political question for November: Does Mr. Trump pick up
more Democrats than he loses Republicans?
* YEP! (DEMOCRATS AND "INDEPENDENTS.")
Is that how he plans to win?
* YEP!
Does he draw in enough new or non-Republican voters to
make up for the millions of Republican voters he will surely lose?
* YES... (AND NO, PEG, HE'S NOT GONNA LOSE ALL THAT MANY
REPUBLICANS; AS USUAL, YOU BUY INTO THE POPULAR WISDOM.)
In an act of determined denial, Washington Republicans
and conservatives continue to see and describe Mr. Trump’s nomination as the
triumph of a celebrity in a culture that worships celebrity, the victory of a
vulgarian in a vulgar age, the living excrescence of our shallow values and
lowered standards. Also, he’s tapped into the public’s rage.
He is all of those things. But he is more, and Washington
is determined to ignore the more.
* WASHINGTON IS A CANCER. IT TRULY IS.
He understood, either intuitively or after study, that
the Republican base was changing or open to change, and would expand if the
party changed some policies. He declared those policies changed. And he won.
As to the matter of rage, it’s more like disrespect for
those who’ve been calling the shots.
(*NODDING*)
If you know Trump people in real life as opposed to
through social media, if they are your friends and family members, you
understand that “rage” doesn’t do them justice. They dislike the Republican
Party, which they believe has consistently betrayed them, but Trump people in
person are just about the only cheerful people in politics this year. They
actually have hope — the system needs a hard electric shock, he’s just the man
to do it, and if it doesn’t work they’ll fire him. They’re having a good time.
* GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, PEGGY NAILS IT HERE!
BRILLIANT FRIGGIN' OBSERVATION! RIGHT ON TARGET!
Here I throw in a moment I had in Manhattan Thursday
afternoon. I was standing on a corner on York Avenue in the 60s when a cab
screeched across two lanes to stop in front of me. “I am voting for Trump!” the
driver yelled through an open window. “You want to know why? He is neither
right or left!” He then laughed and sped on. Not all Trump supporters are quiet
about it.
* NO, FOLKS... THAT WAS NOT ME.
(*GRIN*)
* AND ACTUALLY... TRUMP IS FAR MORE "RIGHT"
THAN NOT. (BUT BEYOND BEING "RIGHT," HE'S OFTEN CORRECT - WHICH IS A
KEY TO WHY I SUPPORT HIM.)
But back to the new Republicans — the Democrats and
independents who’ve voted for Mr. Trump, as usual with the Republican Party,
these new friends were not cheerily invited in (who would ever think of that?) but
crashed the party with the guy with the yellow hair.
(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)
* COM'ON IN, FOLKS... THE DONALD WILL BE PROVIDING OPEN
BAR! (I'LL BE SINGING TOO!)
A lot of Washington Republicans seem to have spent the
past week wondering what they always wonder: How much should we snub them? How
uncomfortable should we make them? Should we not talk to them or just not give
them a drink? Way to do outreach, fellas.
* THERE'S A REASON THE GOP IS KNOWN AS "THE STUPID
PARTY."
It is good that Paul Ryan snapped out of his smug-seeming
“I’m just not ready” approach of last week, and met and talked with Mr. Trump
this week. When a sitting Republican speaker of the House is cool on or
considering rejecting that party’s presumptive presidential nominee, more is
needed than “I’m not there yet.”
* SERIOUSLY... RYAN IS AN ASS. IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE FACT
THAT HE HAS YOUNG KIDS I'D WISH FOR HIM TO PUT A LOADED GUN INTO HIS MOUTH AND
PULL THE TRIGGER. TOTAL DOUCHE.
He has every right not to endorse Mr. Trump, but if he
doesn’t, both Mr. Trump and his supporters deserved more. You have to explain
at length and with moral and intellectual seriousness and depth in exactly what
ways he’s not worthy of your support, and you have to do it in a way that
summons a response that is equally thoughtful and temperate.
Not much is known about the meeting at this point. Mr.
Ryan told the press afterward that he was “encouraged” by their talk, but still
declined to endorse.
* AGAIN... I BELIEVE TRUMP SHOULD GO ON THE OFFENSE AND PUBLICLY
BACK RYAN'S PRIMARY CHALLENGER, PAUL NEHLEN. (WHILE PRIVATELY TELLING MCCONNELL
THAT HE'S NEXT SHOULD HE NOT TOW THE LINE!)
In a joint statement issued soon after, Messrs. Ryan and
Trump said: “It’s critical that Republicans unite around our shared principles,
advance a conservative agenda, and do all we can to win this fall.” They said
they were “honest about our few differences” but “there are also many important
areas of common ground.” There was a nod to “many millions of new voters,” who
showed up for the Republican primaries, “far more than ever before in the
Republican Party’s history.”
All of which strikes me as a Trump win.
* DUH!
Mr. Ryan referred to his conservatism and suggested Mr.
Trump holds political principles.
Mr. Trump should want to bring the party together. He
makes sounds that he doesn’t need to, but he does and must know it or he
wouldn’t have met with GOP leaders in the first place. A party fracturing all
around him will only spread unease, increase tension, and intensify sourness.
He needs at least a semblance of calm so he doesn’t look every day like Thor,
God of Thunder and Battle.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... I LIKE THOR, GOD OF THUNDER AND
BATTLE!
Those who oppose Mr. Trump should do it seriously and
with respect for his supporters. If he is not conservative, make your case and
explain what conservatism is.
* FOR MANY... IT'S CORPORATISM AND EVEN CRONY CAPITALISM.
FOR MANY... IT'S NEOCONISM. FOLKS... THE FACT IS... MANY "CONSERVATIVES"
SIMPLY... AREN'T.
No one at this point needs your snotty potshots or your
supposedly withering one-liners. I confess I have lost patience with many of
those declaring they cannot in good conscience support him, not because reasons
of conscience are not crucial — they are, and if they apply they should be
declared. But some making these declarations managed in good conscience, indeed
with the highest degree of self-regard, to back the immigration proposals of
George W. Bush that contributed so much to the crisis that produced Mr. Trump.
* YEP!
They invented Sarah Palin.
* I THINK PEGGY MEANS "BACKSTABBED" SARAH
PALIN.
(*SNORT*)
They managed to support the global attitudes and
structures that left the working class jobless.
(*NODDING*)
(*PURSED LIPS*)
(*ANGER*)
They dreamed up the Iraq war.
* FRIGGIN' MORONS...
Sometimes I think their consciences are really not so
delicate.
As for the political consultants who insult Mr. Trump so
vigorously, they are the ones who did most to invent him. What do they ever do
in good conscience?
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