Raging Against Peggy Noonan

What a silly world we live in. People are genuinely angry at a very fair piece by Peggy Noonan. You can read the piece here.

This is the piece that burns up those consultants who now have invented an income stream against Trump, having been marginalized within the GOP.

Never Trumpers never seem to judge themselves. Many of them, when they were profiting through past identities as Republicans or conservatives, supported or gave strategic cover to the wars that were such a calamity, and attacked those who dissented. Many showed no respect to those anxious about illegal immigration and privately, sometimes publicly, denounced them as bigots. Never Trumpers eloquently decry the vulgarization of politics and say the presidency is lowered by a man like Mr. Trump, and it is. But they invented Sarah Palin and unrelentingly attacked her critics. They often did it in the name of party loyalty. 

Some Never Trumpers helped create the conditions that created President Trump. What would be helpful from them now is not pyromaniac fantasies but constructive modesty, even humility.

Noonan is not wrong.

Take Steve Schmidt who, if press reports are true, tried to work for Trump in some capacity and did not get it. Schmidt tried to foist John McCain onto us all. He gave us Sarah Palin and then let his henchmen in the campaign leak against her. McCain gave up the fight at the end, suspending his campaign and recognizing history was upon us with Obama.

Then there is the part of Team Romney also helping — another candidate who many conservatives saw as more willing to go after his own side than the Democrats.

There are the Max Boots of the world who helped inspire a foreign policy quagmire and, with no seat at the table anymore, has renounced every position he once held. Jenn Rubin has done the same. Pick any position and you’ll find they’ve held both sides of it.

In fact, the only consistent principle a lot of these people have is cashing in. Were there a seat at the table or crumbs off the table from Trump Land, the reality is many of these people would be humping Trump’s leg just like Jerry Falwell, Jr.

That’s the truth.

There are others with genuine principled opposition who still subscribe to character counting who will not vote for Trump. But among the most vocal set of not just Never Trump, but also now Never Republican, are the set who could not care less if a baby lives or dies.

That, in fact, seems to be a real dividing line between those who’d destroy the whole of the GOP and those who just can’t bring themselves to vote Trump. If you think abortion is killing children, you recognize there is only one party that stands with you and, for all its faults, has put some points on the board.

The other part is a death cult perfectly willing to exterminate children up to the moment they enter the world and then some and is moving on to the extermination of the elderly too. See e.g. Andrew Cuomo.

What I find so remarkable about the most strident of the NeverRepublicans is, having cashed in with a bunch of losing candidates who everyone could tell spoke conservatism as a second language, they are now perfectly willing to burn down the party they failed to capture, never really understood, but pretty consistently privately disdained.

With no seat at the table and no future cashing in with candidates of the GOP, they’ll pour gasoline and strike a match on the way out.

Trump would not exist in a world that never had their cynicism and gamesmanship within the GOP. They were perfectly happy to constantly escalate the stakes for their candidates. They were perfectly happy to make bold promises they never had any intention of fulfilling. So long as they themselves could get the power and call the shots, they’d say or do anything.

Now they can’t.

Instead of taking their football and going home, they’re going to try to wipe out the whole team they played with. Frankly, it is their only real shot to stay in politics.

It really is amazing how everyone on the right has been expected to have some level of self-reflection on how they brought about Donald Trump, but these people are incensed Peggy Noonan could dare point out that they too played more than a bit part.

We should not, however, expect any modesty or self-reflection off these sorts of people.

I really don’t care if someone wants to vote against Trump or run vanity ads in the DC market solely designed to troll him. But there are two parties in America, one of which is okay with killing kids and one that generally is opposed. None of us should be surprised that the ones who privately mocked the pro-lifers from within the party will now be so public in their disdain.

Donald Trump’s unique superpower has always been to make others behave exactly as they claim he behaves. That superpower works here too.