Ramesh Ponnuru, defending Trump’s UN speech, lays an inverted curate’s egg

What is a curate’s egg? Webster’s Third International defines it thusly: “something with both good and bad parts or qualities [so called from a cartoon in the weekly Punch depicting a curate who was given a stale egg by his bishop and declared that parts of it were excellent]”.

So what is an inverted curate’s egg? One of which it can be said that “parts of it were not atrocious”.

Yes, that is the argument of “Ignore the Bombast. Trump Gave a Conventional Speech”, a recent posting from the supposedly principled Ramesh Ponnuru, who’s learning that while discretion may or may not be the better part of valor, it is most surely the better way to score a decent invite.

You can read Ramesh and decide for yourself whether he still has a soul, but I will comment in some detail on one paragraph, part of an extended riff by Ramesh in which he pretends that another president would have delivered a speech differing in detail rather than substance from Trump’s oratory:

“Another president, it’s true, might not have bluntly warned North Korea that ‘we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea’ if it threatens nuclear aggression. That other president may have been wise to speak with less bravado. But the threat of retaliation has always been our chief deterrent against nuclear attack, and was our explicit policy during the Cold War.”

Yes, another president might not have threatened to kill 25,000,000 men, women, and children if their government didn’t do what s/he told them to do, but, anyway, we made similar threats, sort of, back in the day, well, except that we weren’t warning the Soviet Union not to make ICBMs but rather not to use them, which really is only a difference in detail. Of course, back then we and the Soviets were in the grip of a worldwide struggle for power, whereas today North Korea, however brutally oppressive and obnoxious it is to its own people, poses no threat to the United States. And, in fact, the greater part of Ponnuru’s “look at all the good things Trump said” rap centers around Donnie’s enthusiasm for “sovereignty”: “You do your thing, dude, and I’ll do mine”. Except that Ramesh did say that Trump “threatened action against rogue regimes that pose a risk to American interests — or even American values,” which kind of sounds like Trump expects other countries to run their business the way he tells them to. Or, you know, else.

Right-wingers like Ponnuru know how corrupt Trump is, though they pretend not to, but they also know that without Trump, there is no Republican Party any more. If you don’t have Donnie’s dick up your ass, it’ll be Hillary’s. Or Liz Warren’s! Ouch!

Afterwords
After sucking up to Trump on foreign policy¹, Ramesh takes another dive, criticizing people who criticize the Republican Party latest attempt to wreck the American health care system without even waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to complete its review of the bill’s potential impact, though even he can’t swallow the Republicans’ latest abomination without gagging a little.

Sure, says Ramesh, “Some of the complaints about the process Republicans have used in trying to legislate about health care are valid: It is absurd to hold a vote on a far-reaching piece of health-care legislation without holding so much as a hearing about it. But we’re not losing anything important because the CBO hasn’t weighed in.” Yeah, so some of the criticisms are valid, but some aren’t! So we’re practically even! Practically! Except for the part about denying health insurance to tens of millions of people in an act of pure political spite! But otherwise, you know, even steven!

UPDATE: Ponnuru Hatches An Inverted Curate’s Egg!
In a new post, Ramesh endorses the “absurd” Graham-Cassidy bill that would sabotage the American health care system because, well, because all of the other kids did!² Keep those invites a-coming, folks! There’s nothin’ ole’ Ramesh won’t do!