Today we find Tom Nichols (who swears he never noticed that his Republican Party was full of Republicans because, no kidding, he lived in Massachusetts but now boasts in this article that "For one thing, I am a conservative—and I know my former tribe.") stopping by the offices of The Atlantic to collect his portion of the largess which all Never Trumpers feel is their due: a safe space from which he can wag his Finger of Righteousness at Both Sides.
My greatest fear, aside from an eventual Trump victory over the coming days, is that no matter the outcome, both parties will rush to draw the wrong lesson from this close election. The Republicans will conclude that just a bit more overt racism (but less tweeting about it) will carry the day the next time. They will see the exit polls that called for a “strong national leader,” and they will replace the childish and whiny Trump with someone who projects even more authoritarian determination. They will latch on to the charge that democracy is a rigged game, and they will openly despise its rules even more than Trump has.The Democrats, for their part, might look at this near-death experience, and, as they sometimes have in the past, conclude that moving left, including more talk of socialism and more social-justice activism is just the tonic they’ll need to shore up their coalition. Some Democrats tend to believe that almost every election confirms the need to lurch to the left, when in fact the 2020 election should be a reminder that Trump would have beaten anyone left of Biden.
I would respond to Tom more directly, but as readers of this blog know, like virtually every Never Trumper, he is a very fragile man who cannot abide being slobberknockered around on social media by some nobody, non-coastal, non-celebrity Libtard.
Burn The Lifeboats
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>>> The Republicans will conclude that just a bit more overt racism (but less tweeting about it) will carry the day the next time. They will see the exit polls that called for a “strong national leader,” and they will replace the childish and whiny Trump with someone who projects even more authoritarian determination. They will latch on to the charge that democracy is a rigged game, and they will openly despise its rules even more than Trump has.
Bloody hilarious. Republicans have despised the rules of democracy for decades. And I think we may all be quite sure they will conclude that more overt racism (and misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia and xenophobia) are absolutely their win-ticket going forward, so they'll simply put a less Trumpy face on the same shit sandwich. I figure Tom Cotton did a nice audition with his lovely little paean to jackbooted fascism in the NYT. I expect he'll be one of the runners in 2024.
With the Never Trumpers is it naivety, arrogance, a sense of entitlement, obliviousness, or do they have some other hidden con lined up that makes them believe they will be welcomed back into the GOP? Already the Lincoln Project has announced that they will be rebuilding the GOP … the only issue is it hasn't been demolished yet.
Trumpism will still be the driving force and they will still be considered traitors to it.
And by jumping off the Lifeboats and starting the swim back to the good ship Deplorable they may have just sacrificed their chance (thankfully) to influence the Democratic Party from "the inside".
Of course they will still try and make coin as the Republican Party's Decency Translator (the name Luther is already taken, and it wouldn't be appropriate anyway - perhaps Digby?), but that may become a harder sell as they will no longer have the aura of being expats, but will be forced to excuse the actual current GOP, not the imaginary one of their selective memories. Still if their only goal is the Pundit circuit they may still survive, but as an irrelevance…
The best case scenario for them is that Trump is completely destroyed by criminal investigations and his followers see him metaphorically stripped naked and marched through the streets to cries of shame. But still a good portion will hold true and they may be more angry at the traitors than at the enemy (I hope so, and it should be encouraged - setting the crazies after the GOP establishment would be as karmic as suicide bombers detonating during training).
But personally, I'm glad they are climbing back aboard the USS Deplorable, may there be a civil war. A ship with the crew mutinying won't be as effective in battle.
And with them going, their "be Republican lite" advice may have lesser impact. Already in the Democratic bloodletting it's the corporate Dems who are having to defend themselves, as evidenced by the simple fact that a lot of the moderate Dems didn't win while the Progressives romped in.
Now would probably be a good time to submit your CV to a media outlet looking for a occasional Pundit from the actual Liberal side of fence, now that the game Liberals of convenience have ripped off their mask.
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