The Never Trump Foxtrot

There's an old spinning wheel in the parlor, 

Spinning dreams of the long, long ago...

-- "The Old Spinning Wheel",  1933.

For your edification, the former-Republican dance in four easy steps.  

Step 1:  Reagan!  Sigh.

Sarah Longwell, from this podcast, beginning around the 7:00 minute mark:  People [are] always like, "Well, you guys were Republicans and so back then, how could you have done this?" I can't tell you.. Ronald Reagan used to have this whole bit about and and [George H.W. Bush] they talked about immigration...Uh Ronald Reagan would say the greatest thing about America is...

Step 2.  It was never like this in the Before Time.  

Longwell:  It was never like this coming up...

Now we have to strap on the seven-league boots and jump all the way over the actual history and actual trajectory of the actual Republican Party during Ms. Longwell's entire adult life.  Because, fun fact, Ms. Longwell was born the same year Reagan was elected.  

She was eight years old when he left office.  

She was 12 when Bush Sr. got whupped by Bill Clinton.  

So her "memory" of what the Republicans were like back in the day is based entirely on myths and fairy tales passed down by people whose political, social, and economic viability depend on the curation of Reagan myths and legends. 

Step 3.  If you look under the surface of the GOP, you'll find all these "good" Republicans, just waiting to be shown the light!

Longwell:  Like that's [the myth of Reagan] who we are.  And I still think there's a lot of that in there. And so we have to show them what they [the real villains] are doing.

Step 4.  Yes, there are real villains, and they need to be held accountable.  But they're all of relatively recent vintage, and they're not like all those "good" Republicans.

Longwell:  And the Stephen Miller of it all, the masked thugs of it all, like that. Exactly.  Let them keep putting that ghoul on Fox News. Like, that guy's not mainstream.

Then...repeat Step 3.

Longwell:  And so we have to show them [those] people. This is where you can start to turn Americans who even voted for Trump, but people of good conscience against what is happening here.

And there it is.  The Never Trump thesis right there on the table.  Endless digging and sifting and pawing through the Mount Everest of shit that is the Republican Party, cocksure that there are scads of "people of good conscience" in there somewhere who voted for Trump over... and over... and over again and yet somehow had no idea what they were doing or what was going on -- and still don't 

And all they need to be redeemed is The Bulwark to gently remove the scales from their eyes.  You know, like Paul on the road to Damascus!  Which is why you should subscribe, why you should Buy!Her!Book!, and why Democrats should focus lots of our limited time and energy and money on persuading these "good" Republicans to vote for us baby-killing, commie scum.

Hey, it's still a notionally free country, and you're free to buy her book if that's your thing.  But before you take anything she, or any other Never Trumper, says about Reagan or the history of the Republican Party during the Before Time at face value, may I suggest you read about it from actual historians who have done decades of painstaking original research, and not from the publisher/PR flack for a media corporation staffed with former Republicans. 

An actual historian like, say, Rick Perlstein.  

I realize that the notion of summarizing Rick's scholarship in a few paragraphs is ludicrous, but if I were to do so, I think it would be fair to say that Rick argues that Reagan was the genial, affable spokesman for a political machine that successfully turned cultural grievance into a governing philosophy. By fusing white backlash, conservative evangelical activism, free-market fundamentalism, anti-feminism, and sophisticated conservative organizing, Reagan helped create the modern Republican Party. His real legacy was making the conservative movement the dominant force in American politics for decades and normalizing ideas and tactics that eventually culminated in Trumpism.

One recurring theme across his four monumental histories of the modern Republican Party -- Before the Storm, Nixonland, The Invisible Bridge, and Reaganland -- is that Reagan didn't conjure these forces from scratch; he successfully united and legitimized them, and gave disparate right-wing anti-government factions a charismatic leader and a winning electoral strategy.

Trump didn't overthrow the Reagan Revolution. 

He completed it.

Burn The Lifeboats