The breach between the right and the alt-right is widening. For months now, most conservative publications have spent their time being anti-anti-Trump: not actually defending the president and not really defending the principles they claim to hold, but attacking the unhinged outliers among Trump's critics. It's hard to defend Trump's Charlottesville behavior, and it's hard to attack him, so they have often taken the easy path of just attacking any kooks they can find on the left. Not now.
The editor of RedState, Caleb Howe, posted a beautiful and passionate appeal to conservatives.
Now, these sorts of criticisms didn't stop Trump from winning. Remember the National Review issue -- the whole issue! -- devoted to attacking Trump's candidacy? A lot of voters just don't listen to elite opinion, even if it's their "own" elites. But they badly damaged him, and the breach between the conservative movement and the alt-right will damage him now, too.
The president is finding out that a burning bridge casts a bright but brief light... and there aren't that many bridges left to burn.
The editor of RedState, Caleb Howe, posted a beautiful and passionate appeal to conservatives.
It’s a given on social media and among bloggers that those who to this day remain critics of Trump will be called stupid names and have base motives attributed to them by a certain sort of person. ... The "join or die" zealotry of that aforementioned disastrous column, carried on past the titular election and into the term of the roulette pistol.A writer at The Federalist, Robert Tracinski, breaks from his publications relentless anti-anti-Trumpism to argue the same.
That dynamic, however toxic and stupid, has held in place these past six months. The Republican rift turned into a 38th parallel, a North and South Korea staring across barbed wire and quietly building nukes. But that time is over, thanks to a different and American North and South. Now the reality of the bullets is upon us. They’ve been fired and we’re bleeding from the head. The plane is about to explode, the company to go bankrupt. The dying is at its peak. All the metaphors have realized their full selves.
You can see it in the tone and tenor of social media as well as on the news. We’ve had our share of Trump crises. But this is by far the most serious, and he has faced not only his fiercest backlash, but the most widespread within his own party. This is a moment.
Real conservatives know the phrase for such a moment. It’s a time for choosing.
Right now there are otherwise good people who, out of partisan habits or long-borne outrage at biased media, are trying to concoct excuses for why Trump’s Q&A wasn’t so bad and all the criticisms of it are just fake news.Even Julius Krein, who founded a pro-Trump newsmagazine, now says he can no longer stand by this president due to the man's character.
It’s time for that to stop. It’s time to stop looking at the latest Trump statement in relation to how bad you think the alternative is on the Left, or how biased the media is, and instead to compare it to what we should actually expect from a president. In a country where 99 percent of the population is opposed to Nazis, it should be the easiest thing in the world for an American president to unite the country by appealing to our shared values. Only Trump could take one of the most uncontroversial ideas in American politics, the Indiana Jones Rule, and turn it into a wrenching national argument.
I don’t believe in the supernatural, but if there were a devil, he would be laughing his head off right now as we all whip ourselves into a murderous frenzy against each other.
No, I don’t think Trump is going to resign any time soon. If he were capable of setting aside his personal vanity to do the right thing, we wouldn’t be in this situation. But he needs to be left hanging out there all on his own without support from anyone in his party (or from anyone in the right-leaning media). He is a vortex of destruction, and the only way to survive is to get everything we love as far away from him as possible.
I supported the Republican in dozens of articles, radio and TV appearances, even as conservative friends and colleagues said I had to be kidding. As early as September 2015, I wrote that Mr. Trump was “the most serious candidate in the race.” Critics of the pro-Trump blog and then the nonprofit journal that I founded accused us of attempting to “understand Trump better than he understands
himself.” I hoped that was the case. I saw the decline in this country — its weak economy and frayed social fabric — and I thought Mr. Trump’s willingness to move past partisan stalemates could begin a process of renewal.
It is now clear that my optimism was unfounded. I can’t stand by this disgraceful administration any longer, and I would urge anyone who once supported him as I did to stop defending the 45th president.
Far from making America great again, Mr. Trump has betrayed the foundations of our common citizenship. And his actions are jeopardizing any prospect of enacting an agenda that might restore the promise of American life.
Meanwhile, alt-right Breitbart has a cavalcade of articles about how the "Unite the Right" rally wasn't all white supremacists, how you'd have to take down statues of FDR if you take down statues of Robert E. Lee, and about how the violent "alt-left" is the real problem. They loved this, and so did a lot of Trump's ardent base of support. But since Trump needs more than just his base, that's a problem for him.
Now, these sorts of criticisms didn't stop Trump from winning. Remember the National Review issue -- the whole issue! -- devoted to attacking Trump's candidacy? A lot of voters just don't listen to elite opinion, even if it's their "own" elites. But they badly damaged him, and the breach between the conservative movement and the alt-right will damage him now, too.
The president is finding out that a burning bridge casts a bright but brief light... and there aren't that many bridges left to burn.
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