They were bitter that their preferred presidential candidates were vanquished by Donald Trump. They were apoplectic that the GOP would stoop to actually accepting the bombastic billionaire who ran roughshod over their elite fiefdom. And now, with landmark tax reform in the books, they are in denial - twisting themselves into pretzels to minimize and denigrate what the 45th President has accomplished in his first 11 months in office.
We’re speaking of the Resistance, yes? Well actually, no. It’s those perpetual NeverTrump Republicans. But you’re forgiven if you confused the two because the hail of criticism of this President from the NeverTrump turncoats - despite tax reform they’ve been coveting for years - is increasingly indistinguishable from the hard left. It’s as if they have engaged in a true Vulcan mind-meld with the Resistance.
Inner Socialist?
Exhibit A in the Star Trek phenomenon would be Neoconservative icon Bill Kristol, who actually wrote recently that Trump is “bringing out his inner socialist.” Over-the-hill conservative crank George Will, who has forcefully advocated for tax cuts his entire adult life, wrote, “The 2017 tax legislation might...have managed the minor miracle of making the 70,000-page code more complicated. On a scale of importance from one (negligible) to 10 (stupendous), the legislation might be a three.” David Brooks, the “conservative” opinion writer at the New York Times, weighed in with “I am appalled that Republicans didn’t seek to balance this tax bill with an equal effort to help the people who actually got them elected…. George W. Bush fought a war on terror. Obama devoted his presidency to expanding health insurance. Donald Trump is all talk and no policy.”
These are the people who didn’t stop at legitimately opposing Trump in the GOP primaries, but provided aid and comfort to the left by ramping up their attacks on him as he battled Hillary Clinton in the general election. They are the ones who virulently opposed candidate Trump based on what they thought he would do, but persist with the same script now that we see what Trump has actually done - so much of which is exactly what these stuck-up, virtue-signaling elitist Republicans and conservatives have claimed as the top of their own agenda for years.
Yes, these traitorous, self-important NeverTrump sore losers - many of them refugees from the Bush 43 regime - are just as unwilling to concede Trump has done anything right as they are to admit the Iraq War they championed was an unmitigated disaster which flushed so much of the nation’s talent, treasure and power down a rathole, and gave us eight years of Barack Obama.
Self-Realization
These people are actually more reprehensible than the left for one simple reason: political reality in the strictest sense requires Democrats and the left to stand against Trump, just as Republicans stood against Obama. They would be committing a form of political malpractice to cozy up to this President. But the NeverTrumpers’ attacks on Trump are strictly gratuitous. They serve no political or policy purpose - other than to display their own moral superiority and provide talking points for the leftist-dominated establishment media (.... even Republicans like (fill in the blank) are skeptical about this horrendous tax reform bill...). They claim to fear for the future of the party with this vulgarian in the White House. Their stunning absence of self-awareness makes them the last to realize that it was they who wrecked the party and necessitated the ascendance of an outsider willing to come to DC with a wrecking ball.
But instead of slinking away in shame at what their neocon policies wrought, they have, incredibly, doubled down, defended their indefensible record and bitterly attacked a duly elected President of their own party. Just how bitter are the Bushies? Consider the flabbergasting fact that at least 30 Bush administration officials publicly supported Hillary Clinton (and Bush 41 was also “with her”). They threw a collective tantrum because Trump called out the mistakes and failures of their regime same as he did with the Democrats. That’s one of the reasons he was elected President - despite virulent opposition from every quarter outside the deplorables: the left, the media, the congressional establishment, the permanent federal bureaucracy (i.e., the Swamp) ...and the GOP NeverTrumpers.
Forgetting for a moment even this generational tax reform, one wonders what these conservative Trump rejectionists find unacceptable in Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch and the flurry of constitutionalist federal judges, the roaring economy, the 35 percent rise in the stock market, the dramatic rollback of federal regulations, immigration enforcement, taking on decades-long media bias, calling out UN imperialism ...and all the other things they claimed to desire for years which are now being implemented or accomplished by Trump.
Apparently, these things may only be achieved by a member of their own exclusive club. Deplorables need not apply.
The Bitterness
It is impossible to chronicle the full volume of these people’s anti-Trump vitriol, so allow me to present one textbook example. Though he’s hardly the most famous of the NeverTrumpers, the poster child for the “movement” might well be the former Senior Policy Adviser and “conservative” op-ed writer for The Washington Post, the snarky little twit named Michael Gerson -- who basks in his frequent appearances on the Sunday network talkfests with his leftist friends and fellow swamp-dwellers. Consider that one day after tax reform was signed, sealed and delivered, the headline in Gerson’s op-ed was “The moral authority of the presidency is in tatters” Here is the lead in his rant:
Vice President Pence’s obsequiousness at a recent Cabinet meeting— “Thank you for seeing, through the course of this year, an agenda that is truly restoring this country. . .” and on, and on — might be appropriate at a Communist Party Central Committee meeting or a despot’s birthday party. But it is not the language of any self-respecting republic.
The divestment of self-respect is a qualification for employment in the Trump administration. Praising the Dear Leader in a Pence-like fashion seems to be what the Dear Leader requires — not in the way we might need dessert after dinner, but in the way an addict needs drugs. President Trump divides the world into two categories: flunkies and enemies. Pence is the cringing, fawning high priest of flunkiness. It is hard to know whether to laugh or puke.
Now, if you saw that quote without knowing the author, you might think it came from, say, Elizabeth Warren, or maybe Hillary Clinton herself.
If there was some way to let Hillary actually preside over these people in an alternate reality, maybe then they would realize that...even setting aside what Donald Trump has accomplished, they should be on their knees in gratitude to Trump just for winning the election and allowing America to avoid Mrs. Clinton’s kill shot on our constitutional republic.
Instead, they stew in the juices of their own bitterness, blindness, and self-absorption. What a pathetic spectacle.
