Two Sorts of #NeverTrump
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
We need to do a little analysis of what it actually means to be #NeverTrump. This is a political issue, and political issues are always slippery. They are slippery because every night someone comes in and slathers them all over with axle grease, or with money, hard to tell which.
The avowal of #NeverTrump sentiments can be taken as a personal vow or it can be taken as an act of punditry. In the former, the person is saying that there are no circumstances under which he or she will support the Donald. In the latter, the sentiment amounts to a prediction that he will necessarily fail as a candidate and that Hillary is going to be the next president.
The two sentiments can exist together, but the former only becomes really relevant if you think he is viable candidate, one who could actually win.
If the election is really close, then the first kind of #NeverTrumpers become relevant. If Trump loses by a hair, then principled conservatives like myself will be blamed for the ascendancy of Hillary. But if Trump goes down in double-digit apocalyptic flames, then he lost because he was a terrible candidate and not because Jonah Goldberg wouldn’t get on board. If Hillary goes down in said flames, then conservatives will have to retire sadly to Babylon and seek the good of the city, wherever and however they can.
The reason for bringing this up is that on various conservative web sites I have seen what I believe to be hard expressions of the second sentiment that are actually driven by personal animus arising from the first. In other words, someone detests what Trump stands for as a candidate, and therefore predicts (in a clear wish fulfillment way) necessary defeat for him. If he is a bad candidate in the first sense, he must be a bad candidate in the second, or so the thinking goes. But deserving to lose and losing really are logically distinct—I make this observation after seven years of Obama, remember.
So Trump is a bad candidate, but this phrase admits of the same two categories. He could be a bad candidate because he will do bad things if elected, or he could be a bad candidate in that he is a candidate who can’t win. I cheerfully grant that he is a bad candidate in the first sense, but I am not at all convinced that Hillary will beat him.
It is often observed that Hillary has been extremely fortunate in who she has to go up against. But that is an edge that cuts in both directions. Hillary is a very poor candidate also, and in this regard Trump is about equally as fortunate as she is.
Moreover, the best weapon that Hillary had available—her willingness to fight dirty—is a weapon that has already been knocked out of her hand. Trump’s past is so openly tawdry that all the weapons that the Clinton machine would pull out to use to destroy any other Republican—and which would in fact destroy any other Republican—are weapons that are completely useless against Trump. Adulterous affairs, strip-club ownership, bankruptcies, court judgments, delinquencies, bombastic lies, marriage to a soft porn model . . . those aren’t bugs. Those are features. It reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s observation: “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
Now I am not going to be voting for Trump, as I believe I have made plain in the past. But at the same time I think we need to be preparing ourselves for a Trump administration, because I think it is a real possibility. The vindictive denunciations of his disastrous polling performances in mid-August have started to sound pretty hollow as the polls have seriously started to close. And Hillary really does have the capacity to self-destruct—as she appears to be doing. Even though she would have to commit at least three felonies in the course of one of the presidential debates for our leftist media to take serious notice, this is a bar that I think she might be able to clear. She could have a staffer smash some undiscovered Blackberries during the breaks. Either that or have a grand mal seizure during one of her answers, crying out, “Vince Foster!” just before she goes down.
So my opposition to Trump is principled, knowing that he could win. If Hillary wins, she really will face a united opposition. She is despotic and evil, but she would have a fight on her hands. If Trump is elected, he also has that dictatorial bent, but the opposition to him will not be united. It would have to be cobbled together issue-to-issue from the ranks of the Democrats and half the Republicans, and they would share nothing in common. The other half of the Republicans would be thinking that they ought to “go along” because they did endorse Trump after all. You don’t ask a girl to the dance and then not dance with her.
Think of it this way. Suppose Trump is elected, removing the second “bad candidate” categorization. You can no longer reject him as a candidate who “can’t win” if he won the first time. The problem of 2020 immediately arises. What do conservatives in the party do about a second run at the White House by Trump? There will be a primary challenger. Now what?
Because of party discipline, not to mention the long odds involved, there wouldn’t be seventeen candidates like this time. There would likely be only one primary challenger, and what kind of challenger it will be will depend on what faction of the party Trump decides to appease once elected. If he goes hard right on Supreme Court appointments, the challenge will likely come from the Romney wing of the party. If he goes squishy in his SCOTUS moves, then the challenge would likely be from Ted Cruz. If Trump has his wits about him, he will try to nominate Cruz to replace Scalia. If Cruz has his wits about him, he would say no. That is because—given the SCOTUS stakes and how the left will fight—it is not enough for a president simply to nominate a good jurist. He would have to fight for him like it was Ragnarök. Someone like Cruz could in good conscience accept a nomination to the second open seat on the Court, after viewing how Trump fought for his first guy.
And if Hillary wins the presidency, then the race for the Republican nomination will begin almost immediately. There will be a shakeup at the RNC, and a bunch of rule changes will be instituted banning open primaries, along with other measures designed to prevent another seventeen-car demolition derby.
For we will have entered the era of non-stop presidential campaigns.
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