Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best of culture. Sign up here.

Today, Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review (the flagship conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr.), published an article arguing that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election on character.

No, really. But bear with me, the title wasn't quite right.

Trump could beat Kamala Harris, Lowry wrote, not by attacking her character but by attacking his. One of Trump’s communication talents, Lowry argued, is sheer repetition, which, when he finds something that works, achieves a certain power. So, he argued, Trump could crush Harris if he called her weak enough times—50 a day should be enough, Lowry said—and especially if he gave her a funny nickname, like the ones he’s managed to pin on crooked Hillary Clinton and little Marco Rubio.

All this was presented in the pages of the American newspaper of reference, the New York Times.

What's going on here?

Many journalists are reluctant to report on Trump’s obvious instability and disordered personality—a penchant for consistency that The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg has warned against. But Lowry’s piece was different. I can’t know the Times’ true opinion, though I suspect the paper accepted the piece in order to feature a pro-Trump contributor to showcase a diversity of views. The plunge that Lowry and others have taken into the muck of Trumpism, however, is not new, and has origins that will be important to consider in the months ahead of the 2024 election.

When Trump decided in 2015 to run for president as a Republican (after years of being a Democrat, an independent, and a Republican), the Republican establishment reacted with horror. At the time, they expressed dismay at Trump’s character, as decent people should, and dismissed him as an egomaniac who would only get in the way of Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Lowry’s National Review even commissioned about 20 well-known conservative figures to devote an entire issue to arguing against Trump.

In reality, much of the conservative opposition to Trump in 2016 was shameful, because it came from people who thought they could safely assert that Trump couldn’t win. For many on the right, criticizing Trump was easy and useful. They could assert their principled conservatism and political wisdom while criticizing Trump’s inevitable defeat. They could then denigrate President Hillary Clinton while deflecting accusations of partisan motivation: after all, their opposition to Trump—their own candidate!—proved their bona fides as ideologically honest powerbrokers.

It was a win-win situation as long as Trump lost and left.

But Trump won, and a reckoning had to be made, so to speak. The Republican base and many of its biggest donors had spoken. Some of the conservatives who had rejected Trump stayed the course and became the Never Trump movement. Others, apparently, decided that never did not mean never. Power is power, and if getting the right judges and cutting the right taxes means trampling on the rule of law and endangering American national security, well, that’s the price the stoic right-wingers in the Washington, D.C., and New York metropolitan areas were willing to pay.

Lowry and others in this group never became full-fledged MAGA fighters. Many of them hated Trump, as Tucker Carlson, now a born-again Trump supporter, admitted in 2021; they just hated Democrats more. But they also hated being reminded of the demoralizing deal they had made with a distasteful suburban real estate developer they wouldn’t have talked to a year earlier. As Charlie Sykes wrote in 2017, they adopted a new fetish: hating people who hate the president. A rabid anti-anti-Trumpism.

These conservative tugs at each other would not matter, except that the anti-anti-Trumpists, in order to justify abandoning their principles, are driven to poison the well of public debate for everyone else. They never anticipated having to deal with Trump for this long; they never anticipated that they would double, triple, and quadruple in size to the point where they would have to politely look away from the crimes, the attacks on America’s alliances, and the promises to pardon the insurrectionists. Lowry and others are smart people who know better, but their decision to bend the knee to Trump, even with a very small bow, requires them to stand in the pages of America’s national newspapers and say that Trump may be terrible, but the Democrats are worse.

For example, Lowry’s colleague at National Review, Dan McLaughlin, has argued for years that he could never vote for Trump, but he also could not vote for Clinton, Biden, or Harris. Harris’s sudden reversal of the electoral race could change that. McLaughlin wrote yesterday on X that Harris is not as bad as he could be on almost every political issue—even deep life-and-death questions of conscience—she is a threat to the survival of the constitutional order.

This is a case of massive, panicked projection. McLaughlin may hate Harris’s views on abortion (among other things), but Trump is a proven threat to the survival of the constitutional order, and McLaughlin certainly knows it.

The anti-anti-Trumpers must now define Harris and all Democrats as evil beyond words. How else would they explain the horrible compromises they have made? How could they oppose the vote to stop Trump? When other conservatives, like the famous retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, enthusiastically support Harris, it takes a certain amount of skill to explain why your principles are more consistent than theirs. Unfortunately, when Trump raises the bar on idiocy, cruelty, and anti-Americanism every day, that skill is more like Raygun than Fred Astaire.

For MAGA media soldiers, Fox News primetime shows, talk show hosts, podcasters, and others, the outlandish (and ugly) accusations against Harris and other Democrats about Marxism, communism, and postnatal abortions are easy to hear because they are aimed at people already dumbed down by a steady diet of rage and weirdness. But conservative intellectuals who once opposed Trump are reduced to dressing up these outlandish arguments as reasonable criticisms. They often seem to sigh heavily and regret having to side with Trump, but that doesn’t stop them from making the laughable claim that Trump and Harris are equally terrifying candidates.

Breaking out of longstanding partisan tribal affiliations has professional and social consequences (and for politicians, electoral consequences). But principles can be burdensome; that’s part of what makes them principles. The behavior of the anti-anti-Trumpers continues to be an inexcusable betrayal of the values ​​they once claimed to defend. Many of them spoke out, even passionately, against Trump, and then fell into line. And for what? Another federal judge? A few billion dollars more in a donor’s account?

It's one thing to sell your soul cheaply. It's another to keep taking second and third mortgages on it until all that's left is debt and shame.

Related:

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Today's news

Special counsel Jack Smith appealed Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to dismiss the classified documents indictment against Donald Trump, but Smith did not request a different judge for the case. Israel and the militant group Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire yesterday, which appeared to end around noon Sunday. French prosecutors said Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, was arrested Saturday in connection with an investigation into an unnamed person allegedly complicit in criminal activities including distributing child pornography and selling drugs on Telegram.

Dispatches

Discover all our newsletters here.

Evening reading

Illustration by Haley Jiang

Young adults are in crisis

By Faith Hill

What if I told you there is an age group that is more depressed, more anxious, and more lonely than any other in America?

You might think I'm talking about teenagers or older people, often portrayed in popular culture and news commentary as isolated and unhappy, with declining health and drifting friends.

You might be surprised to hear the results of a Harvard Graduate School of Education survey on mental health in the United States: young adults are the ones most in crisis.

Read the full article.

More from the Atlantic

Cultural break

J Studios / Getty

Find out. These five books changed the minds of Atlantic writers and editors.

Read. Spit, a short story by Ruby Opalka:

Frankie met Lucia during that summer of graves and storms, when the tomato plants were blighted and the bean plants were fruiting early.

Play our daily crossword game.

Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

When you purchase a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

What Are The Main Benefits Of Comparing Car Insurance Quotes Online

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / June 24, 2020, / Compare-autoinsurance.Org has launched a new blog post that presents the main benefits of comparing multiple car insurance quotes. For more info and free online quotes, please visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/the-advantages-of-comparing-prices-with-car-insurance-quotes-online/ The modern society has numerous technological advantages. One important advantage is the speed at which information is sent and received. With the help of the internet, the shopping habits of many persons have drastically changed. The car insurance industry hasn't remained untouched by these changes. On the internet, drivers can compare insurance prices and find out which sellers have the best offers. View photos The advantages of comparing online car insurance quotes are the following: Online quotes can be obtained from anywhere and at any time. Unlike physical insurance agencies, websites don't have a specific schedule and they are available at any time. Drivers that have busy working schedules, can compare quotes from anywhere and at any time, even at midnight. Multiple choices. Almost all insurance providers, no matter if they are well-known brands or just local insurers, have an online presence. Online quotes will allow policyholders the chance to discover multiple insurance companies and check their prices. Drivers are no longer required to get quotes from just a few known insurance companies. Also, local and regional insurers can provide lower insurance rates for the same services. Accurate insurance estimates. Online quotes can only be accurate if the customers provide accurate and real info about their car models and driving history. Lying about past driving incidents can make the price estimates to be lower, but when dealing with an insurance company lying to them is useless. Usually, insurance companies will do research about a potential customer before granting him coverage. Online quotes can be sorted easily. Although drivers are recommended to not choose a policy just based on its price, drivers can easily sort quotes by insurance price. Using brokerage websites will allow drivers to get quotes from multiple insurers, thus making the comparison faster and easier. For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ Compare-autoinsurance.Org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc. "Online quotes can easily help drivers obtain better car insurance deals. All they have to do is to complete an online form with accurate and real info, then compare prices", said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company. CONTACT: Company Name: Internet Marketing CompanyPerson for contact Name: Gurgu CPhone Number: (818) 359-3898Email: cgurgu@internetmarketingcompany.BizWebsite: https://compare-autoinsurance.Org/ SOURCE: Compare-autoinsurance.Org View source version on accesswire.Com:https://www.Accesswire.Com/595055/What-Are-The-Main-Benefits-Of-Comparing-Car-Insurance-Quotes-Online View photos