There’s an amusing though frequently verging on depressing kerflusterfuck waxing and waning on the right, triggered by a column in the National Review by Charles C. W. Cooke, who, in addition to being to being the only person I know to use two middle initials—in homage, one can only assume, to legendary Bonnie & Clyde wheelman CW Moss—offers a thunderous takedown of “anti-Trump zealot” Jennifer Rubin, who hangs her wighat at the Wash Post. As CW points out, Jennie, in her frenzied opposition to Trump, has turned herself inside out, denouncing all that she praised and praising all that she denounced.
As one who has himself chuckled at the sight of Jennie passionately defending the environment when her pre-Trump position was basically “Hey, it’s just dirt!” and denouncing Trump for moving the U. S. embassy for Israel (or at least planning to do so) after denouncing him for not doing so, I can’t entirely disagree with Charlie. The thing is, being turned inside out is the best thing that ever happened to Jennie. After Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress, old Jennie criticized Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, aka “Senator Limp Wrist”, tweeting “Unenthused Rand Paul Lifelessly Applauds Bibi”, even though, as wiseguy Bill Maher noted, Rand gave Bibi 50 standing ovations, “one for every Jew in Kentucky.”
But the horror of the Donald, now affectionately known as “Cap’n Two Scoops”—and, one suspects, the horror of his blood and soil “Jews you will not replace us” buddies—sobered Jennie, causing me to post the following last June:
“There was a time when I wrote so many columns making fun of WashPost Likudist from Hell Jennie Rubin that I stopped. Jennie was so over the top that it didn’t seem fair, or relevant, to make fun of her. Well, that was then. The non “I want to die for Israel and I’m going to make you do so too!” side of Jennie was always pretty liberal, and the ghastly election of Donald Trump has more or less forced Jennie to come out of the closet and display a respect for civil liberties that, frankly, surprises me. Cranky old Jennie has turned into one of the shrewdest, most clear-eyed, and most persistent critics of il Duce Trumpo and all his minions on the scene today. I wish we didn’t need the new Jennie, but we sure as Hell do, and I’m glad she’s here.”
Charlie, to get back to him, is positioning himself as a “thoughtful” semi-Trumper, explaining himself as follows:
“Conservatism in this country long predated Trump; for now, it is tied up with Trump; soon, it will have survived Trump.”
My response to that is, “Oh, yeah?” Cooke “forgets” where it’s the Republican Party and not Jennie who has changed—on free trade and immigration, on the whole notion (which Rubin surely did not apply consistently) of a just and dispassionate world order, instead of one based on threats, bullying, and deceit. And one could say the same about Trump’s notion of governance within the United States as well as without.
Cooke and his thoughtful compadres simply won’t see that Trump has completed the ruin of the Republican Party that Newt Gingrich began and the Tea Party brought to a boil: the hatred of order. Trump openly wishes that he could indict anyone he wishes for any reason he wishes and force them to prove their innocence, at ruinous cost. He demeans without the slightest regard for truth anyone who defies his will, because for him the only “justice” is the instant and complete fulfillment of his appetites—his appetites and his alone.
The Republican Party has entirely surrendered itself to Trump’s will and has made itself an instrument of his appetite. In an extensive and excellent column, the New York Times’s Thomas Edsall describes many—though scarcely all, or even most—of the faults and fraudulences of the many-faceted travesty the Republican Party now calls “tax reform”. There is no honor left in the Republican Party, none. And Jennifer Rubin, at least, knows it.
Afterwords
After effects of Cooke’s outburst include a “thoughtful” column by David Frum, “Conservatism Can’t Survive Donald Trump Intact” that actually is thoughtful, though “Donald Trump Has Wrecked Conservatism” might be a more accurate headline. In particular, Frum argues that for a conservative to make a living these days, s/he has to show up on Fox News with some regularity, and to do that requires total commitment to the kissing—indeed rimming—of mighty Trump’s mighty ass. Liberals, Frum notes, have more varied ways to make a living.
To its credit, the National Review continues to print columns from pretty serious never-Trumper Kevin D. Williamson, who remarks the following in response to Frum’s post:
“A great deal of damage already has been done, and there’s surely more to come. But there is a vicious cycle at work, too: Trump has an agency all his own, but the outrage merchants of Fox News and talk radio were on the lookout for their Trump before Trump came along. Trump fulfills a narrative necessity: There must always be betrayal. You cannot sell what they are selling without it. If the Democrats are in power, then they are betraying the country; if the Republicans are in power, then the “establishment” is betraying the country, “the country” here meaning the 0.8 percent of Americans who watch Tucker Carlson’s show on any given evening.”
Yet even Williamson, after that crushing aside, has to take it back in an awkward parenthetical: “(That isn’t to mock Tucker Carlson; he’s a gifted man, but relatively few people watch cable news for the same reason that far fewer people read National Review than US Weekly.)” Uh, Kevin, you first implied that the 0.8 percent of Americans who watch Tucker Carlson’s show on any given evening are frothing followers of Steve Bannon and then in your next sentence you compare them to the rare spirits who delight in the frothy neo-Buckleian wit of the National Review? Why not just plaster a bumper sticker on your forehead that says “Tucker I’m Your Bitch!”
