![]() ![]() It must be painful to have the movement that’s defined your life turn against you. But apostate conservatives also deserve admiration for the sacrifices they’re making. Everyone who helped build that party bears some responsibility for him. I agree with progressives who argue that Trump is the apotheosis of the modern Republican Party, not a departure from it. Even ex-Republicans who do call for Trump’s impeachment and removal are regularly pilloried on the left. Democrats, said a recent NBC News report, “tend to dismiss Romney as ineffectual because he has stopped short of calling for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.”įormer Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who gave up his political career to speak out against Trump, was similarly dismissed. He’s been widely mocked for the once-secret Twitter account he kept under the pseudonym Pierre Delecto, which he used to like anti-Trump tweets that he’d probably never endorse publicly. In recent days, as Senator Mitt Romney of Utah has staked out a lonely role as Trump’s most prominent Republican critic, many progressives have rolled their eyes. When the president announces a plan to unilaterally naturalize every DACA recipient, what progressive wants to be the one carping about executive overreach? Deep down, liberals agree, but they love her appointments and don’t want to be tarred as privileged reactionaries. Conservatives scream that she’s a self-dealing demagogue. She spends a third of her time at her network of wellness centers, bringing much of the government with her and putting tens of millions of dollars into her family’s company. ![]() It’s obvious to all but true believers that the president is unhinged there’s an increasingly messianic, Jim Jones quality to the revival-like rallies she presides over. She orders the government not to do business with any company that advertises on Fox News. Declaring a national health emergency, the president takes $3.6 billion from the military and gives it to Planned Parenthood. Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s district attorney and an icon of criminal justice reform, replaces Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. Then she sets about trying to make progressive dreams come true. She pledges to expropriate investment banks and to turn Mar-a-Lago into a homeless shelter.Īt first Democrats freak out - her movement seems like a cult - but she wins the primary, and then the presidency, perhaps with an assist from China. Her pronouncements are at once shocking and thrilling. She enters the Democratic primary to elite mockery, but her rallies are huge and rapturous, and she holds crowds spellbound promising to cleanse America of its demonic legacy of racism and sexism. Picture an amalgam of Marianne Williamson and Hugo Chávez, a charismatic ideologue able to speak to the spiritual hunger of lonely, atomized masses. There’s no left-wing analogue to Trump in American life, but it’s possible to imagine such a figure. So I’ve tried to envision a situation in which I might be tempted to do the same. ![]() I’ve struggled to understand how people who’ve spent a lifetime chest-beating about patriotism can be so willing to burn liberal democracy to the ground to protect a man they wouldn’t trust to sell them a used car. I’m often incredulous at Republican servility to Donald Trump. ![]()
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