I often visit the website of the National Review, to find out what “responsible conservatives” are thinking, one of the most responsible (usually) being Ramesh Ponnuru, though Ramesh, I’m sad to report, while once a fairly stout Never-Trumper, has been sliding slowly into the slough of hemi-demi-semi Never-Trumpism, where, like misery, he enjoys company.
NR is, in fact, a mix of fairly exuberant yay sayers and increasingly awkward nay sayers when it comes to Cap’n Two Scoops. Ramesh can be pretty harsh on Uncle Donald—writing at Bloomberg rather than NR, Ramesh reviewed the recent “immigration summit” meeting between Trump and congressional leaders, when Trump first said he would sign anything Congress passed—followed, of course, by vicious tweets and statements ridiculing Democratic leaders, not to mention immigrants—and concluded “It is not entirely clear why the meeting was held and televised; perhaps to prove that White House meetings don’t look like footage of the Gorilla Channel.”
Oh, snap! n'est-ce pas? That’s Ramesh for you, trying to give the old GOP elephant a boot, or at least a nudge, in the ass: “Wake up, kids! This guy’s a disaster!”
Well, it isn’t working. The GOP base is still coo-coo for Donald—that is to say, still the party of white nativism—which, for non-white conservatives like Ramesh, is a bit of a downer. They hate the Democrats too much to cross party lines, so they end up silent, feeling guilty and morally compromised. And, when you’re feeling guilty and morally compromised, the last thing you need is some self-righteous schmucks pointing out the fact that you are guilty and morally compromised, which is just what happened to Ramesh when a couple of left-wing smarty pants named Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes wrote a piece in the Atlantic calling for a boycott of the Republican Party on the grounds that it is, for all intents and purposes, completely loyal to Trump and nothing and no one else. Hey, guys, you shouldn’t say things just because they’re true, God damn it!
Well, this charge/observation is true, and I have made it myself many times, but in the old days, when the whole point of the English common law was to protect the big shots, there was a saying “The greater the truth, the greater the libel,” and poor old Ramesh is really feelin’ the sting. So, naturally, he goes on the attack: “If Rauch and Wittes believe what they say they believe, isn’t there a more straightforward argument they should be making? Shouldn’t they be arguing, that is, for the impeachment and removal of the president, and for voting Democratic as a way of enabling that specific result?”
Well, here’s the thing, Ramesh. We Democrats (or at least me Democrat), unlike you Republicans, believe that impeaching a president should not be a partisan activity. Yes, Donald Trump is entirely unique as the first president ever “elected” to be entirely without honor. But unless and until a large percentage—a very large percentage—of the Republican Party believes he should be removed from office, the impeachment process is destructive rather than constructive. The impeachment by the House, and ultimate conviction by the Senate, of Richard Nixon, forestalled by his resignation, was both constitutionally and politically valid; the partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton, on grounds that would never win approval in the full Senate, was not.1 We know that Trump is damaging America every day he stays in office; but attempting to remove him when the Republican base still worships him “as an unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above” (Karl Marx, describing the French peasant’s attitude towards Napoleon III) would be an even greater disaster.
It’s time, Ramesh, to stop looking at others’ faults and to start looking at your own. It’s time to gird up your loins like a man and speak truth to white nativists, even if it means you’ll never have lunch in this town again. Stop pretending that “the Democrats are just as bad.” You know it isn’t true. No president, and few public figures, have ever been as remotely ignorant, vicious, and corrupt as Donald Trump. If you spend the next three years pretending you don’t know this to be true, you won’t have a mind, or a soul, when you’re finished.
- After Clinton was impeached, Republican Senate Majority Leader Tent Lott began to work out an informal deal with Senate Democrats that would forego a formal trial, complete with Chief Rehnquist presiding, in favor of a preliminary vote that would effectively dismiss the charges. The Republican leadership in the House demanded a meeting with Senate Republicans and insisted that the trial go forward. Former US Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner, who hated Clinton for his insufficient devotion to Israel, was nonetheless stunned by the sight of the prosecutors demanding a secret meeting with the jury ahead to time to “fix things”. ↩︎
