By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment?
That’s what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the
host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe insist
that Donald Trump’s inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce
the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was “disqualifying.”
For those who might not have seen The Bridge on the River Kwai, it’s partly the story of British
lieutenant colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of
war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his
captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai River. Nicholson
thinks that if he shows the Japanese what good British discipline is all about,
he will win some kind of moral victory. Of course, if they finish the railway
bridge, the Japanese military will win an actual victory.
Only at the last minute — spoiler alert — does Nicholson
realize the error of his ways. “My God, what have I done?” he says with his
last breaths as he falls on the TNT plunger, destroying the very bridge he
built just seconds before a Japanese train goes over it.
Nothing so dramatic transpired on Morning Joe, where Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski have
been among Trump’s most valuable boosters for nearly a year. And will likely
remain that way. Indeed, it may be too late to stop the Trump train anyway.
But it would be nice to hear “My God, what have I done?”
from a lot of people. A rich mixture of resentment (both misplaced and
well-earned), incompetence, wishful thinking, greed, and celebrity worship has
led us to where we are: An intellectually and ideologically unqualified, and often
unhinged, demagogue is poised to become the Republican nominee for president.
For months, GOP pooh-bahs, cable personalities (including
some friends and colleagues of mine at Fox News), talk-radio hosts, and
politicians stood by and watched — or cheered — as Trump built his populist
cult of personality almost unopposed. Now that Trump has a personal
relationship, as it were, with his followers, he can do no wrong.
Trump famously joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth
Avenue and not lose his support. That remains to be seen, but he can play
rhetorical footsie with the KKK, reveal that he thinks judges “sign bills,”
subscribe to vile “truther” explanations of 9/11 and the Iraq War, embrace the
health-care mandate, traffic in reprehensible sectarian tribalism, and vow to
weaken the First Amendment so he can exact vengeance on journalists who don’t
kowtow to his Brobdingnagian ego — yet not shake loose his fans.
That “success” has bred more success, as politicians jump
on board the train. New Jersey governor Chris Christie set a torch to his
integrity by endorsing a man who stands against nearly everything Christie once
claimed to believe, Christie has confirmed all the darker aspects of his reputation
as a cynical, self-interested, spiteful bully.
Many decent and sincere Republicans, in and out of the
Republican leadership, have been operating on the assumption that Trump will
fade and that the gravest threat is a third-party run by the dean of Trump
University. There was a time when that concern was defensible. But once it
became clear that he was favored to win the nomination outright, Republicans
should have realized that a third-party run was more like a best-case scenario.
Better the GOP do battle with a know-nothing bigot (and
lose the presidency) than become the party of know-nothing bigots (and still
lose the presidency).
That’s why I embrace the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump,
initiated by conservative talk-show host Erick Erickson. For too long, Trump
has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will
be “reasonable” and support the nominee. Such thinking paves the road to power
for demagogues.
Trump says he gets along with everybody and will unify
the country, even as he suggests that an inconvenient judge is biased because
he’s Latino, vows to ban all Muslims from the country, insists his Central
Intelligence Agency will torture people, and boasts that he will declare war on
disloyal journalists.
When your opponent is that unreasonable, the reasonable
response is not surrender.
I don’t know whether Trump will win the nomination or the
presidency. But I am fairly certain that if he does, a great many people will
one day say, “My God, what have I done?”
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