The Case against Meeting Republicans Halfway on Trump

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, September 01, 2022

 

Charles, as I wrote earlier, “We have to accept this crap because the Democrats will do bad things” is the same rationale the usual partisans and sycophants make for everything from voting for Marjorie Taylor Greene et al. to trying to whitewash January 6 and everything else.

 

You insist that this isn’t about reelecting Donald Trump. If you don’t think the Blake Masters campaign is about putting Donald Trump back in the White House, then you need to have a conversation with Blake Masters, who sees things differently — unless, like his prior statements on abortion, that becomes inconvenient.

 

If you have a persuasive argument for why we have to accept this election-conspiracy lunatic but reject that election-conspiracy lunatic, I haven’t heard you make it yet.

 

Surely it can’t all come down to aesthetics.

 

Of course there is more on the ledger than the sins of the Republican Party. But the presence of other things in the world to dislike or worry about does not erase these. And the Republican Party is, if I understand things correctly, a party, meaning that its members are conjoined in an allied effort toward a shared goal. And it won’t do to pretend that this goal is only heading off the worst that Nancy Pelosi’s addled little mind can imagine. Qui tacet consentire videtur. Republicans need to be plain, honest, and energetic in rejecting what Trump and January 6 stand for, but, with a few honorable and excruciatingly rare exceptions, they aren’t. Instead, they make excuses, try to change the subject, and, if pressed, shriek, “But Chuck Schumer!”

 

You’re willing to go all the way when it comes to Trump, rightly labeling him a “lunatic,” but, in my view, you are cutting excessive slack for his enablers and supporters. I understand your practical concerns, but you are operating on the wrong timeline. In spite of what the Sean Hannitys of the world insist every 24 months, this country is not going to rise or fall based on a single election — it might, however, be irreparably damaged by a nihilistic and authoritarian personality cult that embraces political violence and that has, in spite of its constant protestations to the contrary, utter contempt for our constitutional order. It was never one single man who ruined a republic.

 

Republicans had a chance to break with Trump and Trumpism after January 6, and, for about a week, it looked like they were going to avail themselves of the opportunity. But they have chosen another course. I believe in a politics of compromise, but I am not going to meet the Republicans halfway in what they are becoming.