If, as increasingly appears to be the case, Donald Trump’s wild career will end, not with a bang but a whimper, then, sighs NYT opinionist Ross Douthat, more in sorrow than in anger, there will not be
any accountability for Trump’s soft enablers within the Republican Party. There was a certain political accountability when the “Stop the Steal” devotees lost so many winnable elections last month. But the men and women who held their noses and went along with Trump at every stage except the very worst will continue to lead the Republican Party if he fades away; there will be no Liz Cheney presidential campaign to deliver them all a coup de grâce.
In other words, Ross says, there will be no accountability for soulless shitheads like me! Because nose-holding à la Trump was one of the things Ross has done best for the last six odd years.
Ross attempts to differentiate himself from the nose-holders—literally styling himself as a “Never Trumper” (his exact words)—by citing a pre-November 2016 column he wrote saying he felt Trump was, if elected, likely to be a measurably worse president than Hillary Clinton, an “argument” that was totally blind to Trump’s obvious and overwhelming moral corruption, a man entirely without decency or restraint, compared to an earnest, cautious, unimaginative, and utterly conventional middle of the road liberal Democrat..
But that was scarcely more than a warmup. Later, when Trump was facing his first impeachment for withholding funds appropriated by Congress for the government of Ukraine in order to pressure its new president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, Ross “explained” that, well, the whole impeachment thing was really a “theater of the absurd moment” (his words) that was “really” about what sort of policy the U.S. should pursue in Ukraine, one in which Donald Trump and Barack Obama were really on the same side, an exercise in subject changing that made me gag.
I gagged again when Ross further explained that the failure to remove Trump from office really wasn’t that big a deal anyway, because we “really” remove presidents from office not on the basis of any high crimes and misdemeanors they might have committed, but rather on whether or not the country is enjoying peace and prosperity, which explains why Clinton got off and Nixon didn’t—because why would anyone think that Nixon was worse than Bill, amirite?
You get the picture. Ross always finds a way to distance himself from both Trump and his detractors, a way that allows him to cast more shade on the detractors than Trump. Sure, Ross is saying, Trump is not my first choice, not by a long shot, but the way you guys talk, I get the feeling that it’s more about you than it is about him.
Ross continued to talk more and more in this vein as November 2020 approached, his hypocrisy reaching its apogee—or perigee, depending on how you want to measure these things—in his hilarious in hindsight October 2020 post, There Will Be No Trump Coup, in which Ross explained that
the scenarios that have been spun out in reputable publications — where Trump induces Republican state legislatures to overrule the clear outcome in their states or militia violence intimidates the Supreme Court into vacating a Biden victory — bear no relationship to the Trump presidency we’ve actually experienced. Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like “plotting” implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks.
You’d think that, if Ross Douthat had, well, you know, a modicum of self-respect, or even, perhaps, a shred of simple, common human decency, he might have exercised a certain amount of caution when writing about post-Jan 6 Donaldo. But you’d be wrong. Post Jan 6, Ross went out of his way to ingratiate himself with Trump’s merry band of election deniers, as I chronicled in such posts as Shorter Ross Douthat: Pay no attention to that orange-haired man with his hand up my ass! and Shorter Ross Douthat: Donald Trump is my daddy!, not to mention Oh, Donald! You silly, silly man!.1
As long as Trump looked “dangerous”, Ross was more than happy to play footsie with him under the table. But now that Donnie looks like he’s lost a step or two, Ross and all the other Ron DeSantis-fancying semi-Trumpers are plotting as to how they can best stab the old man in the back and steal all his gold without anyone noticing. And Ross has a message for all the real Never Trumpers, many of whom, like Bill Kristol, I have detested for decades, who fought the real fight against Trump from the get-go, who recognized Trump as a monster, a disgrace to the Republican Party, and indeed a mortal danger to the country, and said so, out loud, and the message Ross has for them is this:
Listen up, losers! This is the Nose Holders Party, the Smelled Donnie’s Shit And Said It Smelled Like Ice Cream Party, not the Honest Persons Party! So you faggots can go fuck yourselves. Because we don’t do “honest”! Never have and never will!
Edmund Burke supposedly said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” I don’t know if Ross Douthat is a good man. But I do know he did nothing.
Afterwords
My Douthat files, which are, amazingly enough, not all negative, are so massive that I should probably publish them as a book, but I need a title. Profiles in Cowardice is probably a little too on the nose, but it definitely fits.
1. I am not obsessive, but I am thorough.
