By Charles C. W. Cooke
Friday, February 26, 2016
I want to push back a little against the cynicism and defeatism
that I’m seeing this morning in some quarters of the Right. As far as I can
tell, it is broadly accepted that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz did what they had to
do at last night’s debate, and, moreover, that Trump was rattled by their
having done so. And yet, seemingly everywhere, conservatives are whining that
it was probably “too little too late.”
I can understand this attitude when it is exhibited by
dispassionate news outlets that must, in the name of objective auguring, cover
themselves in caveats; frankly, it would be dishonest to imply that Trump
doesn’t have an excellent shot at the nomination. I can also understand that
those of us who dislike Trump might be tempted to accept defeat now so that, if
the anti-Trump campaign should fail, it will hurt less later. But for movement
conservatives to play the cynic at this critical juncture is counterproductive
in the extreme. Trump cannot win unless we let him win. To give in to fear is
to let him win.
Whether the push that started yesterday evening has come
“too late” remains to be seen. Perhaps it has. But what alternative do we have
other than to try? We learned last night that Trump is not invulnerable — not
even close — and, moreover, that both
Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are entirely capable of making him look stupid. We
learned, too, that Trump has a host of Achilles’ heels, and that mockery, as ever,
is a more effective weapon than outrage. We should be treating these lessons as
the welcome overture to a sustained, unrelenting, brutal three-week barrage —
from now up until at least the 15th of March. Nothing should get in the way of
this attempt: not depressing polls; not Trump’s likely wins on Super Tuesday;
not the seeming immovability of his online fan club. Nothing. There are plenty
of paths still to be trodden. If we fail, we fail. But we will not succeed by
giving up.
On the contrary: This is fight-them-on-the beaches time.
This is Agincourt. This is the moment at which the champions of liberty and
limited government must pick up the kitchen sinks and cast them over and over
and over again at the charlatan in the hairpiece. The alternative is to rebuild
our movement from scratch, after a con artist has dismantled it with our
permission. The alternative is to watch in horror as the slow rebuilding of the
last seven years is exploded in a puff of vanity. The alternative is to spend
another four years in opposition, this time under a shallow crook. Should the
other Republican candidates have taken Trump on earlier? Yes, they should. But
they didn’t. Now, they are. It would be an act of vandalism to leave them
without a sail just as they began to right the ship. Too-little-too-late-ism is
for post-mortems, not for battleplans. Time to gird those loins.
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