Never Trumpers, Get Over It
When the College Football Playoff Selection Committee chose the Alabama Crimson Tide over the Ohio State Buckeyes as the fourth playoff team, an apocryphal internet story circulated in which an on-air ESPN field reporter told a Sports Center anchor that the Committee’s announcement provoked spontaneous demonstrations in State College, Pennsylvania.
After the anchor supposedly commented on the “extraordinary display of Big Ten Conference unity,” the reporter replied, “Not really. The streets here are full of Penn State fans chanting, ‘ROLL, TIDE!’”
No doubt, quite a few Big Ten fans want conference teams to win bowl games, but, for many, rivalries and regular season results undoubtedly influence post-season sentiments.
That fable has real-life political parallels, but with far higher stakes.
How, you ask — and, believe me, I’ve been asked — can anyone support President Donald Trump? After all, “He’s (…fill in the blanks…)!” That question typically comes from Democrats and establishment Republicans, liberals mostly, but occasionally from professed conservatives, convinced an “outsider” isn’t on “their” team and probably not even in their conference.
Left-wing opposition to a Republican president is understandable, but residual opposition to President Donald Trump among conservatives only makes sense if snobbery and personal animosities trump policy. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto posits that “NeverTrump is more about taste than about policy.” Granted, Donald Trump doesn’t score very high on style points, but, as NeverTrump conservatives should, I’ve concluded that style-aversion is less important than the president’s policy initiatives.
Some people change; some never will, but David French, one of National Review’s most intransigent NeverTrumpers, finally confessed that “Trump’s polices aren’t nationalist populist but rather conventional and conservative.”
For many Republican primary voters who didn’t favor the president, the general election alternative was unthinkable. It was an easy call: Donald Trump is not Hillary Clinton. Over decades, Clinton has proven herself to be thoroughly corrupt. She was – and is — unfit for the presidency. Rather than the Democratic nominee, Hillary should have been indicted and prosecuted for willfully compromising national security – at least. Additionally, the Trump/Russia collusion narrative is backfiring on Hillary and the FBI.
Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party stands in active opposition to most conservative core values, including fiscal and personal responsibility, individual freedoms and the sanctity of life. With the approval – indeed, the complicity — of its leadership, the Democratic Party’s alt-left base despicably engages in divisive, bigoted, anti-e pluribus unum identity politics.
Generally, Trump backers and NeverTrump conservatives agree that Democrats cannot be trusted to run America.
Donald Trump will remain president. He won’t be impeached. So, while conservatives may apply the same standards to a Republican president as they do to Democrats, while it’s acceptable to criticize the president when he’s wrong, it’s essential to support him when he’s right, and focus on the larger, more important conservative objectives in President Trump’s policy portfolio.
Before the midterm election – preferably immediately – NeverTrumpers and Trump backers must unite and embrace common goals – promote conference unity — to preserve already-won policy gains and continue winning.
http://www.ldnews.com/story/opinion/2018/01/09/nevertrumpers-get-over/1019071001/
