RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s a certain indication that NeverTrump is miserable when it turns on Rich Lowry, embraces Michelle Obama, and imitates Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps rattled by new poll numbers showing President Trump with rising approval ratings, NeverTrumpers seem particularly unnerved this week. To some degree, their columns and tweets expose (again) their fundamental contempt for Trump voters and preference for Democrats when given the choice.

But this week, die-hards such as Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, and Kevin Williamson have taken it up a notch: Their collective spite has nothing to do with Trumpism, “conservatism,” or even good manners. Realizing they’re once more on the losing side of a colossal political battle—Trump is getting politically stronger, their beloved Mueller probe is foundering, and the GOP isn’t yet vanquished—NeverTrump is lashing out in an ugly way.

Good Riddance to the “Libertarian Moment”
In his inaugural column for The Atlantic, Kevin Williamson, a longtime writer for National Review and savage NeverTrumper, presented a mostly warmed-over version of his many anti-Trump rants at NR. (The Atlantic faced a fierce backlash for hiring Williamson over his comments about abortion and minorities. Just weeks before his hiring was announced, Williamson, a prolific tweeter, deleted his entire Twitter account to cover his tracks.)

The piece is classic Williamson: Bursts of compelling prose mixed with childish ridicule and pretentious preening. He laments that the “libertarian moment” is gone, sniffing how “libertarianism is an intellectual tendency rather than a cultural instinct, one that benefited from the rigor and prestige of the economists who have long been its most effective advocates.” Translation: Trumpists are morons and I am superior.

He portrayed Trump’s base this way: “Those who celebrated Trump the businessman clutch their heads as his preposterous economic policies produce terror in the stock markets and chaos for the blue-collar workers in construction firms and manufacturers scrambling to stay ahead of the coming tariffs on steel and aluminum.” (As if to unwittingly counter Williamson’s poor political temperature-taking, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article that same day about how Midwest manufacturers can’t find enough workers amid the tightest job market in 20 years.)

I’m sure the media will be discussing this as much as they’ve discussed Obama’s photo with Louis Farrakhan. And then they’ll us that the real anti-Semitism we should be worried about is on Twitter.

Assemblywoman Diane Richardson’s 50-minute rant during the Board 17 meeting Monday night faulted Jews for gentrifying in her district, which includes East Flatbush, Flatbush, Crown Heights and Prospect Lefferts Gardens, according to an eyewitness.

During a rezoning talk, a board member complained that people constantly ring her doorbell to ask if she’s interested in selling her home.

“It must be Jewish people,” Richardson responded, according to Lew Fidler, a former City Council member who is Jewish and attended the meeting as a representative of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Before faulting Jewish interlopers, Richardson snidely referred to Brooklyn state Sen. Simcha Felder as “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”

Richardson suggested that the real-estate industry is gunning for her but developers had the mayor and the borough president in its pocket, an attendee said.

“All they have on me is a broomstick,” Richardson reportedly said.

That was a reference to her 2016 arrest for allegedly beating her son with a broomstick — a charge that was later dropped.

A broomstick seems appropriate. What the story leaves out is that Diana Richardson (proper spelling) is a creature of the Working Families Party. That’s spelled ACORN. And is an incubator for radical leftists. And it’s no surprise that a politician associated with the hateful WFP would be anti-Semitic. And you can bet that the WFP will keep standing by her. As they did during the broomstick incident.

Jonah and Ramesh have written a response to my column last week titled, “The Never Trump Delusion.” It always pains me to disagree with them. But the good news is that, judging by their response, we don’t disagree much. The bad news is that we are apparently talking past each other.

I made several points in the column: I. Trump deserves to be criticized in many ways; II. That there is unlikely to be a serious primary challenge, and that Trump’s welfare at this point is caught up with the party’s. III. He has delivered for his coalition and achieved some significant conservative policy victories; IV. We need to take account of his populism and nationalism, which have very often been part of a successful Republican politics. Not wanting to acknowledge points II. and IV. is what I call “the delusion.”

Jonah and Ramesh dwell a lot on I., address II. somewhat glancingly, ignore III., and even more glancingly address IV.

Forgive me for being pedantic and quoting a lot, but it’s necessary to disentangle some of the agreements that are presented as disagreements or corrections, and clear up some misunderstandings.

First, there is the definitional issue. Jonah and Ramesh say that Never Trump is hard to define. I agree and that’s why I said this coterie of critics is “loosely referred to as Never Trump.” I could have spent more time delineating who they are and distinctions among them, but as Jonah and Ramesh know, space goes fast in a column, even a longer one of 950 words.

The lines are obviously a little fuzzy. I’d say Never Trumpers tend toward a totalist critique of Trump, are very reluctant to praise him for anything, and give a sense — perhaps unfairly — of being emotionally committed to their opposition. Never Trump gave us Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot.

Yes, there are many judicious critics of Trump out there and some who are fully aware of the need for a more populist direction in the GOP (I’m colleagues with many of them, obviously), but it’s not true that it’s only Jeff Flake and John Kasich who exemplify the attitude I was criticizing in the column, as Jonah and Ramesh imply. I direct you, for instance, to George Will’s columns, Morning Joe, and Bill Kristol’s Twitter feed, for starters. None of them, nor do many former Bushies who are anti-Trump, give much of a sense of wanting to take Trump’s populism seriously and learn anything from it.

Remember when, in early 2011, in the wake of the massacre that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others, President Obama called “for a New Era of Civility in U.S. Politics”?

The scene inside McKale Memorial Arena was a mix of grief and celebration, where a capacity crowd of 14,000 gathered beneath championship banners for the University of Arizona Wildcats. The service, which was televised nationally on the major broadcast and cable news networks, gave the president an opportunity — and burden — to lead the nation in mourning during prime time.

Aides said Mr. Obama wrote much of the speech himself late Tuesday night at the White House. Laden with religion nuance, the speech seemed as though Mr. Obama was striking a preacher’s tone with a politician’s reverb.

That was when blame was being heaped on Sarah Palin for issuing a map with targets on congressional districts that were believed to be possible wins for the GOP. There mere visual metaphor of a target was an outrageous incitement, according to the theory of the moment, because clearly insane people like the perp, Jared Loughner, could be so suggestible.

That was before the Left began its campaign to incite an assassination attempt on President Trump. The campaign has encompassed publicity-seeking entertainers as well as the ostensible guardians of high cultures, such as Shakespeare in the Park.