I've often said that the Republican Party is validly called "the stupid party". The biggest reason for this is that many that call themselves "Republicans" have some version of a largely dead traditionalist world running around in their heads that is complete fantasy ... "return to the gold standard", "pay off the national debt", "no military intervention anywhere ... and maybe no armed forces", "demand leadership with absolutely unimpeachable character!", "get us out of the UN!". "voting only on a mountain top with finger print ID!" ... and on and on.
Often they hearken back to some halcyon politician of the past ... "Reagan!", "Goldwater!", "Ike!", "Coolidge!" ... even Lincoln ... how dead the heroic politician is makes no difference, and in many cases, the caricature of the imagined "great one" is way beyond what the actual person was. Never mind! These purist Republicans have "STANDARDS!", and to some degree, why have standards if they can't be unrealistic??
Which brings us to George Will, Max Boot and even John McCain to a certain extent -- they REALLY hate Trump, and they increasingly REALLY hate anyone that can look at him pragmatically and say "damned site better than the alternatives".
I read articles like the linked and am simply amazed that anyone really thinks people care about the virtue signalling of the column authors relative to Trump. So what? HW Bush had a stellar character and demeanor -- he was destroyed by the media. W was much similar -- kind, decent, Christian, honorable, etc -- he was road kill for the Democrat media popular culture machine. AND they were PROUD of doing it!
BO ignored the Constitution constantly, wanted to "bring a gun to a knife fight", and just generally stunk up the economy, foreign policy, the SCOTUS, race relations, and everything else he walked by ... always with his nose in the air, "above the fray". If some of these virtuous purist Republicans could have shown a TENTH the interest in combating BO as they do in combating Trump, we would have gotten Mittens in 2012, a few tatters of America would have been saved, and there never would have been a Trump presidency. Their "virtue" is very selective -- and not productive in the least!
Politics, ESPECIALLY conservative politics is never supposed to make people, or even politics itself an idol. The principles are smaller government, reining in the administrative state, strong defended borders, keeping religion in the public square and culture, low crime, encouragement of a work ethic ... those sorts of things. All people and certainly all politicians are imperfect in the extreme -- "the lesser of two evils" is vcry commonly the choice.
Sure, you can give yourself some faux "virtue" by being anti-Trump, but even REAL human virtue is seen as "filthy rags" to real conservatives that see man as the measure of VERY little, and certainly not "virtue".
Voting in Democrats because you want to virtue signal how much you dislike Tump is pretty much sanding your whole body and jumping into a vat of acid to show how "serious you are" -- seriously lost in space, certainly ... but why are we supposed to care?
Trump has governed far better than I think even the most optimistic of rational conservatives would have expected ... and now, another SCOTUS pick looms. It doesn't take much of a genius to see that Ruth Vader Ginsburg may exit at any time. Potentially, the stain of Roe V Wade can finally be overturned and the days of legislating from the bench might be significantly slowed for a generation!
Trump is a president and a person ... not a moral leader. 2016 was the election that Christians finally accepted the fact that we no longer lived in a "Christian nation" ... we could no longer hope for a president that shared our faith and values, but we could attempt to get one that would at least recognize us as a political bloc with a right to exist!
Conservatives, and especially Christians are in an existential fight in America, and we have been losing badly for a VERY long time. Trump is nothing more than a "reprieve", but we need to get together and take full advantage of that reprieve, not play into the hands of those that would make BOistan a nation where conservatives and Christians are hounded in the streets!
Here was my personal shot at what a new conservative party might be like.
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