Peggy Noonan writing in the WSJ
* * *
This first month of summer I see movement and...
no movement.
No movement: Donald Trump.
He’s like someone caught in the first act who lurches
into a second act — a solid, prepared speech, a subdued interview — then
scrambles back to first-act antics.
* HIS "ANTICS" CLEARLY RESONATE WITH "WE
THE PEOPLE," PEG.
(*SNORTING & SMIRKING*)
It’s easy to guess he’s surrounded by friends and
supporters who know more is needed than popping off about “Crooked Hillary” but
are afraid to mess with his swing. They fear taking the tang out of his secret
sauce.
* HE'S BEEN GIVING MORE - ALL ALONG. YOU'RE JUST TOO BLIND
TO SEE IT.
Another guess: He’s not sure he can pull off a change of
style — he’s afraid he’ll be boring if he’s serious, afraid he’ll bore himself
if he knows what he’s going to say next. So he continues to rant, not to
reassure fence sitters.
* IT'S THE "RANTING" THAT HAS GOTTEN HIM UNION
SUPPORT... AND BLACK SUPPORT... AND SUPPORT FROM EVEN BERNIE SUPPORTERS WHO
WOULD VOTE FOR HIM OVER HILLARY CLINTON!
* PEG. I FEAR YOU'RE A DOLT.
Hillary Clinton hasn’t entered a second act either, but
it’s partly situational: She’s trapped in a primary battle. When it comes to
Mr. Trump she tries various attack lines — “divisive,” “dangerous,”
“dangerously incoherent” — to see what resonates, as they say. She is plodding,
unimaginative, stolid. She wishes she had secret sauce.
* LIKE THE "SAUCE" ON MONICA'S BLUE DRESS?
* SORRY... COULDN'T HELP MYSELF...
(*GUFFAW*)
Closer to home I see movement. Friends who’d been for
John Kasich or Marco Rubio now sunnily and without a headache declare
themselves for Mr. Trump.
* GOOD! (EVEN THOUGH IF THEY WERE FOR KASICH OR RUBIO
THEY'RE SCUMBAGS...) (JUST SAYIN'...)
An intellectual friend, previously disapproving, confided
she’s for him too.
* YEAH. "AN INTELLECTUAL FRIEND." PEG... YOU'D
BE MUCH BETTER OFF STICKING TO FB AND CONVERSING WITH THE LIKES OF MICHELLE AND
DAVID ZORNES AND MY OTHER INTELLIGENT FRIENDS.
But two friends who had been early, enthusiastic Trump
backers now seem to be having doubts: They’ve lost their oomph, talk about him
less. Nothing’s set in concrete this year, not that anything was.
* DON'T WORRY; IN THE END THEY'LL VOTE FOR TRUMP.
A central predicament of 2016 continues. GOP elites and
intellectual cadres may be clueless about America right now, but they have an
informed and appropriately elevated sense of the demands of the presidency.
* BULLSHIT. TOTAL UNADULTERATED BULLSHIT. (YOU SHOULD TRY
FOLLOWING MY FB AND BLOG POSTS, PEG; YOU'D LEARN A THING OR TWO.)
They fear Mr. Trump’s temperament and depth do not meet
its requirements.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* HOW'BOUT OBAMA'S "TEMPERAMENT AND DEPTH?"
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
* SERIOUSLY... WHAT IS WRONG WITH MORONS LIKE NOONAN?
Trump supporters have a more grounded sense of America and
its problems but too low a sense of what the presidency can demand in regard to
personal virtues.
* HUH...?!?! (PERHAPS PEGGY WOULD LIKE TO BRING JIMMY
CARTER BACK? HEY... HE ONLY SERVED ONE TERM; HE'S ELIGIBLE!)
(*SNORT*)
If this problem is to be resolved, it is Mr. Trump who
will resolve it. He shows little interest. This space said in February that his
political fortunes would hinge on whether America came to think of him as a
good man and a fully stable one. It is still true.
* CLEARLY TRUMP IS A GOOD MAN. (HAVE YOU SEEN HIS KIDS IN
ACTION?!)
The Beltway intelligentsia of the conservative movement
continues to be upset about Mr. Trump’s coming nomination and claim they’d
support him but they have to be able to sleep at night. They slept well enough
through two unwon wars, the great recession, and the refusal of Republican and
Democratic administrations to stop illegal immigration.
* YEP. (SCUMBAGS!)
In a typically evenhanded piece in National Review,
Ramesh Ponnuru writes of conservative infighting.
* I HAVE NO IDEA IF SHE'S BEING SARCASTIC WITH THAT
"EVENHANDED" BIT.
(*SHRUG*)
* NRO IS LARGELY A FRIGGIN' DISASTER.
(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)
Most back Mr. Trump, but others, “especially among
conservative writers, activists, and think-tankers,” vow they’ll never vote for
him. “This debate splits people who have heretofore been friends with similar
views on almost all issues, and who on each side have reasonable arguments to
hand. It is therefore being conducted in a spirit of mutual rage, bitterness,
and contempt.”
* YEP. I CERTAINLY FEEL CONTEMPT FOR LYING SCUMBAGS WHO A
YEAR AGO WERE DEMANDING TRUMP SIGN A PLEDGE AGREEING TO SUPPORT WHOMEVER THE
EVENTUAL GOP NOMINEE HAPPENED TO BE BACK WHEN MOST FOOLS THOUGHT THIS MEANT JEB
BUSH.
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
That’s witty and true — I’ve seen it — but the division
is also promising. Too much has long been “agreed on.” At some point
conservative intellectuals are going to take their energy and start thinking
about how we got here. How did a party that stood for regular people become a
party that stood for platitudes regular people no longer found even vaguely
pertinent?
* IT'S CALLED "CORRUPTION" AND NAKED FINANCIAL
AND PROFESSIONAL SELF-INTEREST. IT'S CALLED "HUMAN NATURE."
(GEEZUS... SOMETIMES I JUST SHAKE MY HEAD...)
During the Bush administration, did the party
intelligentsia muscle critics and silence needed dissent, making the party
narrower, more rigid and embittered? What is the new conservatism for this era?
How did the party of Main Street become the party of Donors’ Policy
Preferences?
* SEE MY ABOVE REMARKS, PEG.
(*SNORT*)
An anecdote:
"Two years ago at a birthday party for a mutual friend, I bumped into a hedge-fund billionaire who turned to me angrily and lashed out over something I’d written that seemed to him insufficiently conservative. I listened, merely blinking with surprise I’m sorry to say, and removed myself from his flight path. Afterward I thought about how he must have come to view himself. He is, as I said, vastly wealthy, but also generous, giving time and money to think tanks, groups, candidates. He must view all this, I thought, as a targeted investment. Maybe he sees himself as having . . . a controlling investment. Maybe he thinks he bought conservatism. I felt in a sharp new way that my criticisms of the donor class had been right. Inevitably they see to their own enthusiasms and policy priorities. This was how the GOP became the party of We Don’t Care What Americans Think About Illegal Immigration. Who do those Americans think they are — they think they own the place?"
A great party needs give. It needs a kind of
capaciousness and broadness. On that, the best example of movement I’ve seen in
some time is what I discovered this week: a sophisticated, rather brilliant and
anonymous website that is using this Trumpian moment to break out of the
enforced conservative orthodoxy of the past 15 years.
* OR... YOU COULD JUST "FOLLOW" ME ON FB, PEG.
(*HALF-GRIN, HALF-SMIRK*)
It is called the Journal of American Greatness. Its
contributors ask questions that need asking and makes critiques that sting.
* I'LL LOOK INTO IT...
They describe themselves as “aghast at the stupidity and
corruption of American politics, particularly in the Republican Party, and
above all in what passes for the ‘conservative’ intellectual movement.” Who are
they? “None of your damned business.” Why? “Because the times are so corrupt
that simply stating certain truths is enough to make one unemployable for
life.”
* Hmm... FOLKS WITHOUT THE STONES TO PUT THEIR NAMES TO
THEIR WRITINGS TYPICALLY MERIT MY SCORN.
Where they stand: “We support Trumpism, defined as secure
borders, economic nationalism, interests-based foreign policy, and above all
judging every government action through a single lens: does this help or harm
Americans? For now, the principal vehicle of Trumpism is Trump.”
* THAT'S FINE... BUT THEY STILL MERIT MY SKEPTICISM IF THEY WON'T
REVEAL THEMSELVES.
They explore essential questions. “When — and why — did
free trade become a sacred ritual of the Republican right?”
* GOOD FRIGGIN' QUESTION, BABY!
(*APPLAUSE*)
They give neoconservatism its intellectual due but
explore the “unwisdom” of the “Middle East democracy agenda.”
* YEP...
Neoconservatives seem “incapable of learning from their
mistakes or changing their minds.”
* YEP...!!!
The contributors hilariously score "NeverTrumpers"
who claim to be standing at great cost on principle while others are “in the
tank” for Mr. Trump: “Of all the opinions that require little courage to
express, opposition to Trump is the lead one.” In the past two decades, they
observe, “a new conservative intellectual superstructure,” including magazines,
journals and think tanks, was built on the new base of the Republican Party. It
“routinized the production of its self-justification.” But “the base no longer
wants the superstructure.” Voters have their own ideas of what conservatism is.
* DAMN STRAIGHT! (AND IN SHORT... YOU CAN'T HAVE AMERICAN
"CONSERVATISM" WITHOUT "BIG L" TRADITIONAL AMERICAN
"LIBERALISM.") (THINK THE FOUNDERS, FOLKS!)
I contacted JAG by social media and asked about their
work. “If we had to characterize ourselves, we would like to think that our
writing is informed by a mix of pragmatic experience and theory. What brings us
together is our dismay at the stultification of political ideas in the United
States. We see ourselves as challenging the intellectual rigidity that has come
to characterize, in our view, so much of what passes for self-described
‘serious thinking’ today.”
* I WONDER IF NOONAN HERSELF IS ONE OF THE ANONYMOUS
WRITERS - AND THUS THE PLUG?
(*SHRUG*)
Their reach and the reactions they’ve received “have thus
far significantly exceeded our expectations.”
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