From her stateroom aboard the stately True Conservative dirigible that floats high above the petty concerns and quotidian realities of time, space and causality, Peggy Noonan spotted the real problem with True Conservatism: some damn fool had failed to severe the last of the mooring lines that kept the ungainly and blowing-up-prone ship tethered fitfully to objective reality.
Noonan -- a veteran of such crises -- knew exactly what to do. Girding herself with several gallons of Gallo Brother's gallantry from her emergency bug-out bag, she inched along the catwalk that ran the length of the bucking, heaving ship, to do what needed to be done. Finding the knot that secured the line was too heavy and intricate to simply be untied, she shipped out her keyboard and began hack, hack, hacking away...
Imagine a Sane Donald TrumpHoly crap. Really? This is where Peggers is wandering off to now? Really?
You know he’s a nut. What if he weren’t?
Really.
Slowly, Noonan felt the knot beginning to give way...
Mr. Trump’s great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its own base really thinks about the big issues. The party’s leaders didn’t know! They were shocked, so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn’t happening.Okay. "What, pray tell, would Sane Donald Trump look like?" he asked, knowing full well that it is folly to argue with drunks or crazy people. But...
...
The Republican Party will now begin the long process of redefining itself or continue its long national collapse. This is an epochal event. It happened because Donald Trump intuited where things were and are going.
Since I am more in accord with Mr. Trump’s stands than not, I am particularly sorry that as an individual human being he’s a nut.
Which gives rise to a question, for me a poignant one.
What if there had been a Sane Donald Trump?...
Sane Donald Trump would have looked at a dubious, anxious and therefore standoffish Republican establishment and not insulted them, diminished them, done tweetstorms against them...
Sane Donald Trump would have given an anxious country more ease, not more anxiety...
Sane Donald Trump would have explained his immigration proposals with a kind of loving logic...
Sane Donald Trump would have spoken at great and compelling length of how the huge, complicated trade agreements created the past quarter-century can be improved upon...
Sane Donald Trump would have argued that controlling entitlement spending is a necessary thing but not, in fact, this moment’s priority...
Sane Donald Trump would have known of America’s hidden fractures, and would have insisted that a healthy moderate-populist movement cannot begin as or devolve into a nationalist, identity-politics movement...
Sane Donald Trump would not treat the political process of the world’s greatest democracy as if it were, as somebody said, the next-to-last episode of a reality-TV series...
Wow! You know, I am kinda digging this "Sane Donald Trump" fella.
And yet my admiration for this wholly fiction candidate invented by a blithering liar to lead a wholly fictional Republican Party that is somehow, suddenly not overflowing with bigots and imbeciles is somewhat tempered by the fact that these character traits -- giving the GOP leadership more benefits of the doubt than they deserve by a factor of 1000, offering the country hope instead of fear, proposing a humane and comprehensive immigration policy, trying to fix our trade problems and prepare our people for the realities of tomorrow, standing up to the Republican obsession with shredding the social safety net and an overall reverence for the democratic process -- all sound remarkably like this guy:
You know, the guy you and the rest of the actual Republican Party and it's actual candidate have spent the last eight years trying to obstruct, slander, sabotage and in every other way nail to a cross with a belt-fed bullshit gun?
Oh my God, Sane Trump would have won in a landslide...But Barack Obama did win in a landslide, didn't he? And you never forgave him for it. Instead, you and the rest of the filth on the Right just crawled deeper into your cups and went right on dreaming your demented little dreams.
So you see, it's not hard for us Liberals to imagine such a person at all.
But what we cannot imagine, no matter how hard we try, is a Sober Peggy Noonan.
Take it away Tengrain, who owns clear title to the Noonan beat:
Anatomy of a Column
Peggy Noonan came to somewhere in the garment district, in a shopping cart, wearing a vermillion factory second prom gown with an enormous fuchsia sash and puce bow that was some how caught in the small pushed vehicle’s wheel. Out of her reach on a ledge down the alley was her trusty first aid kit (a Christofle flask, hopefully full of her daily minimum allowance of Vitamin M-T, to prevent scurvy, don’t you know).
She began rocking the cart until it lurched forward a few inches, and stopped.
“I was at the Al Smith dinner, and now I’m here, dressed like this” she mused as she lurched the cart closer. “Life is funny that way.”...
9 comments:
Noonan is just the rising curl of the GOP post-mortem. This time, instead of advocating "comprehensive immigration reform" only to do the opposite of that recommendation, it will be "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Racism!" If, as now seems likely, Hillary wins by less than 4%, i.e. less than Obama 2012, perhaps even a narrow win in which she loses Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina & Florida (possible according to Nate Silver), they are going to conclude "anybody but Trump wouldda won!"
They are going to unilaterally surrender to the bigots and embrace their agenda. They are doing this because there's no practical way forward without over 1/2 of their base voters. Like bankers pushing the envelope on crazy derivatives until the bubble burst and left them stranded, they will forget the long-term and concentrate on maintaining their hold on power today. And over 1/2 their base voters are Deplorables.
Answer: Just nominate Little Marco next time, let him soft-pedal the crazy, and then pass Go, Collect $2,000,000 from the Koch brothers. Proceed to White House. Pass really Yuuuge tax cuts for the rich! Yay!
In short, if it's close, they are going to conclude "this Trump fellow is really onto something! Did you see how many bigots, xenophobes, misogynist, morons Trump was able to turn out? If we just neutralize a portion of the Democratic base with more voter suppression laws, block everything Hillary tries to do and investigate and attack her endlessly we'll set ourselves up for 2018 and 2020 when we will finally take our country back!
We'll turn out the crazies again, depress the Democratic base through endless scandal mongering, and it will totally work this time!"
"Once more unto the breech dear friends!"
Why is it that whenever Republicans start talking about their ideal candidate, they sound like centrist Democrats?
"Imagine a Sane Donald Trump"
I am beginning to see a bit of trend here -
A little while ago Cardinal Ross writing in the NY times was saying that if W and company had not hurried into the Iraq war and had planned things better then ... well it's all of a piece isn't it? If the GOP wasn't what it is, it would be so much better.
of course not even coming close to asking how and why it is like it is now.
I can't wait for the election to be over - my gin is mysteriously vanishing as I try to remain sane.
As two people smarter than me who have a weekly podcast pointed out last week....Noonan et al. would have absolutely ZERO problems with Trump if he were leading. I'd extend that truth to if Trump and Clinton were statistically tied and the Senate was secure.
Noonan et al. know that if Hillary does NOTHING else in the next four years but put one more liberal justice on the Supreme Court, the plans of the fascist conservative oligarchs who sign her checks to break this country will be set back for decades.
Instead, Noonan et al. are relying on Republican operatives in the FBI to ratfuck the election in hopes of closing Clinton's margin and saving enough down ticket races so she can scream NO MANDATE! while cheer leading Congress violating their Constitution duties and praying for another 2010-eque midterm.
PSSSST!
Hey, kid ... wanna buy a big shiny Hotel?
It's got A/C ... the very best A/C anywhere EVER.
Sane Donald Trump would not have won the nomination.
What steeve said.
-Doug in Oakland
GW Bush, for all his dumbitude & ineptitude & smarmy fratrat ways, attempted to do something sort of realistic vis immigration, and he angered his previously simpering fans beyond belief. That's when they started ranting about how liberal he was. And that was partly how the Koch's convinced the rubes that they thought up the TeaBAG Party all on their own. Sure they finally got pissed about the clusterfuck in Eye-rack, but they were also pissed about W attempting to work out an immigration solution.
As Steeve said: a sane Trump would've never been nominated. As indicated, when these tools wank about how IF ONLY Trump coulda should woulda been a ... Centrist Democrat...
It's a load of shit that these grifters are peddling as shinola. Once Clinton is installed, they'll go after her hammer & tongs. And in 2020 someone worse than Trump will be nominated by these white supremacists, and these hacks can just cut & paste their nonsense "columns" from this year.
Same old, diff'rent day.
"Sane Donald Trump" is much like "Benevolent Pol Pot". I
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