Posted on 07/07/2017 10:25:18 AM PDT by pgkdan
The frustration of many Trump critics on the right, or MTCRs, is palpable and growing. Some are becoming more elitist by the day and utterly out of touch with rank-and-file conservatives, which is a particularly bitter pill to swallow because they believe they are the main arbiters of what conservatism means.
Some are obviously disgusted with everything about Trump — his demeanor, his tweets, his combativeness, his bigger-than-life personality, his egotism and tons more. Their revulsion blinds them to anything positive. They are so invested in Trump's failure that they can't stomach rooting for him even when he's advancing conservative policies or fighting those dedicated to obstructing them. Their unhealthy Trump obsession compels them to present evidence every passing hour to justify their opposition.
I've seen their ire and experienced their snobbish condemnation on social media. It has become personal for many because they apparently view conservative Trump supporters as frauds and sellouts. They attack our character instead of considering that our calculus is that Trump may advance a conservative agenda more successfully than presidents ostensibly more conservative than he.
What MTCRs don't seem to grasp is that rank-and-file conservatives largely support Trump. They aren't mortified by his every tweet. They refuse to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Most Trump supporters are not cultists who are blind and indifferent to his faults and indelicacies, but nor are they soiling themselves in agony over them. They have not betrayed their principles in supporting and defending Trump. They are not hypocrites for cheering him on against the plethora of leftist assaults. They don't root for Trump because they seek revenge against the left, as some have wrongly supposed. The left's war on America, as founded, is ongoing, not some one-off offense for which we seek redress.
Trump supporters see a bigger picture here — greater stakes, bigger hills to die on. They support him as the last best hope to save America — or at least to return it to the right path. They're behind him because they believe he is attempting to turn the country around and, in many cases, succeeding. They are ecstatic that he is standing up to the political left and firing back — so they aren't going to be overly exercised over his every fault. He is filling the enormous void in Washington created by feckless politicians and commentators on the right who have refused to show the will to strike back against the left.
Rank-and-file conservatives are convinced that America and Western civilization are imperiled. They understand the damage done to our founding principles, values, traditions and mores and the harm inflicted on the Constitution and rule of law by generations of leftist assaults.
For them, politics is not a Beltway parlor game or a matter of petty partisanship. It's about saving the nation for themselves and their children. They see the urgency, and no amount of highhanded judgmentalism from smug conservative elites about their alleged hyperbole and hysteria is going to shame them into denial.
When parents in this country refuse to specify their newborn babies' gender on their birth certificates, we know that postmodernism and moral relativism have made their marks. We recognize intellectual and moral anarchy. Dismiss this as anecdotal irrelevancy if you will, but honest observers of the American scene witness such absurdity every day. Our culture is rife with it — from our universities to Hollywood to the media.
Some of the most indignant MTCRs cautioned restraint in criticizing President Obama, telling us either that we were exaggerating the horrors of his crusade to radically transform America as founded or that our opposition would backfire. They were pragmatic, and we were dogmatic and reactionary.
The author is confused. The “Elite Critics” he speaks of are not conservatives, they are the GOP establishment.
Commenting on my own post,
David, You couldn’t have been more WRONG!!!
You couldn’t have been more WRONG about Trump!!!
Better late than never, welcome aboard! (I still don’t trust you)
Get far enough to the Right and you can lose sight of reality just as badly as those on the Left.
Mostly they’re just a bunch of purse clutchers. Trump is the the first “modern day” conservative President. There are new rules of engagement, many of them now being written by Trump himself. The Never Trumpers are basically like the Redcoats of our era, outdated strategies and tactics.
GOP-e Rino’s are swamp critters also.
Primary and Replace.
Well put!
O.K. Mitch McConnell. We’ll keep doing it your way. Seems to be working out so far.
Trump really does get it. His Republican faux Conservative detractors operate at a clearly lower cerebral level. They simply do not get it, and hence run scared of their own shadows--that is the part of them that realizes that what the PC crowd have foisted on America is a path to destruction.
A distorted, lying insinuation.
And like most university and reference texts, they are written by communist academics. I have bristled at that bigoted definition for decades.
Like many common terms, there are multiple legitimate definitions, but I have never seen my lifelong conservatism accurately defined by any such propagandists.
What’s being conserved and how and why?
The balanced, God integrated life may be impossible to classify as either Conservative or Liberal. Centrist may be the closest mortal term.
We need to return to the status quo of the pre-New Deal period.
I think God let the New Deal and other secular liberalism partly fill the vacuum left by fading genuine Christianity.
Displace secular liberalism with Christian benevolence and then such a political move will prove possible.
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