If they believe the President is a deranged lunatic who’s a danger to us all as many of them claim, how could they not conclude that he should be removed from office as soon as possible and by whatever means possible? If they truly believe that, why do they refuse to advocate for it like like-minded progressives?
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump’s obviously in poor taste tweet about the murder of acclaimed director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele at the hands of their troubled son, set off the usual firestorm of outrage from his progressive detractors and a significant portion of what should be his conservative supporters. The language was the same as ever before, the sort of thing that has accompanied dozens if not hundreds of President Trump’s similarly crass tweets, “appalling,” “disgusting,” “vile,” “unforgivable,” “despicable,” and the like. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty put it the next day, “Yes, we must talk about what President Trump posted on Truth Social about the brutal murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, and how Trump doubled down when asked about it Monday afternoon. We must talk about it because a lot of Americans are embarrassed by the president, and for the president, and a whole lot of Americans would prefer to avert their eyes and pretend it didn’t happen. But it did happen. We must talk about it because there are some Americans still so blinded by partisan animus and cult-like loyalty that their first instinct will be to defend the president’s remarks. We will never become a better or more united country if we cannot point to indecent actions taken and statements made by those we agree with politically and say, ‘This is wrong. This is something that decent human beings do not do. You must do better than this.’” To some extent, I agree with at least a portion of his sentiment. The tweet itself was inappropriate and should not have been sent. In an ideal world, I would prefer President Trump refrain from behaving in this fashion and if I could summon into existence a Serpentor-like hybrid of the perfect President, this portion of his character would be removed. We do not live in an ideal world, however. We live in one where people have strengths and weaknesses, including the President, and an inability to hold his tongue in person and online is obviously one of President Trump’s weaknesses. Given Trump’s challenges in this regard are well established over the past decade, it’s up to each of us as individuals to balance the two, and decide for themselves who they support and why. You either accept this behavior as I and millions upon millions have done, or you don’t. While this doesn’t mean the tweet in question or others of the type are above criticism, beyond pointing it out, what else is there to say or do if you are a supporter of the President, or at a minimum believe he should remain in office throughout his four year term?
Perhaps needless to say, progressives want him removed from office and have made no secret about it. Ten years into the President’s domination of the political scene, they continue to loathe him with a passion unrivaled in the modern era – if not any era – and want him gone by whatever means possible short of violence, and for some at least, violence would be acceptable. There is an entire website devoted to President Trump’s impeachment, impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org, that lists a wide variety of reasons why they feel he should be removed from office. The list includes everything from obstruction of justice to advocating illegal violence to recklessly threatening nuclear war with violations of the emoluments clause and the politicization of the Justice Department in between. As they put it, “From the moment he took office, President Trump’s refusal to divest from his business interests has placed him in direct violation of the US Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and Domestic Emoluments Clause. Since then, his corruption and abuse of power have only increased. The President must be held accountable under the law, through the impeachment process, for these serious violations and for this unprecedented level of corruption of the Oval Office. Free Speech For People and Roots Action call upon Congress to open an investigation to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to impeach President Trump.” There are Democrats in the House of Representatives right now that have already attempted to file articles though they have no chance of passing before they control the Chamber. Last month, Thom Hartmann, writing for CommonDreams.org went one step further claiming that “Trump Should Be Removed From Office and Prosecuted.” In his view, “We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all. Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.” As a result, he was bold enough to conclude, “The Constitution offers a clear remedy for a president who behaves like this. Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago. The only way to restore the rule of law is for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Half measures are complicity. Silence is complicity. Delay is complicity. But impeachment alone isn’t enough. There must also be criminal prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators. Real prosecution, by real prosecutors, following real evidence, for real crimes.”
While I strenuously disagree with this assessment, we can at least give Mr. Hartmann and others credit for being clear about their goals. If they had their way, President Trump would be leaving office long before the end of his second term on January 20, 2029, but frequent conservative critics, generally known as Never Trumpers, have so far refused to be nearly as clear. Instead they make bold proclamations about the President, and then pretend they are simply pointing a few things out for their readers and listeners. In this case, Mr. Geraghty wasn’t content to limit his criticisms of the tweet to embarrassing and indecent, he went on to conclude that the “president of the United States is a hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer.” Later in the same article, he added some additional doozies, including “I’ll let you decide whether the term psychopath or sociopath better describes the president’s actions” and this “president cannot discern moral right and wrong through a person’s actions, like a normal human being. Donald Trump’s entire worldview of whether someone is a good person or a bad person depends entirely on whether that person offers praise or criticism of Trump. This is the person who runs the executive branch of the U.S. government, and this is a formula for disaster.” In other words, he feels pretty much the same about the President as progressives, except he ends his diatribe merely be noting that “this is another edition of the newsletter where a decent number of people will be much angrier at me for noticing what the president said and did than they will be at the president for what he said and did,” as though he merely pointed out that President did something objectionable and limited his criticism to the objectionable act at hand rather than proceeding to calling him a lunatic and his time in the Oval Office a formula for disaster. If you are concerned he might be going more than a little further than what the response to an off-color tweet demands, the onus is on you, not him to explain himself. To be clear, my intention is not to pick on Mr. Geraghty. There are countless examples of other right-leaning, self-described conservatives who said similar things about this tweet, and many others, but generally speaking, what they will not do is explain what they want to happen. If they believe the President is a deranged lunatic who’s a danger to us all, how could they not conclude that he should be removed from office as soon as possible and by whatever means possible? If they truly believe that, and I’m pretty certain that a majority of them do, why aren’t they actively advocating for impeachment, the 25th amendment, or some other as yet unknown remedy rather than insisting they’re just noticing things and commenting on them?
Obviously, I cannot know for certain what’s in their heads or their hearts, but I can attempt to posit a few reasons why they insist on making bold claims without advocating for any remedy based on their conclusions. First, they know that a reasonable percentage of their readers remain President Trump’s supporters, albeit some of the softer, less comfortable kind, and they are seeking to maintain a veneer of objectivity without alienating their audience, positioning themselves as moral arbiters while fearing that actively seeking his removal would be going too far, what we might call the too cute by half approach. Second, they know President Trump’s removal from office simply isn’t going to happen. No President in the history of the country has been removed and only one has resigned. The effort is likely to be futile, they are aware of it no matter what they say, and prefer to simply dance around it, suggesting why he’s unfit for office without actually doing anything about it because that would open them up to much broader criticism. Third, removal is not without its own risk. Even if we assume President Trump could be forced to resign or somehow get convicted in the Senate, the fallout is likely to be dramatic to the Republican Party, the conservative movement such as it is, the country as a whole and the world out large. The President isn’t a baseball player you can simply pinch hit for without any significant blowback. Removing him would come with huge costs, politically, economically, and internationality. Politically, the Republican Party would be completely destroyed, set back for at least a generation as various constituencies battle over the rubble. During this period, Democrats would be ascendant, essentially doing whatever the please knowing they have no serious opposition. Economically, the stock market would almost certainly plummet, uncertainty would remain supreme, and the challenges we have with the job market now would look puny by comparison. Internationally, who knows what might happen, except you could be sure our adversaries would take advantage of the chaos, similar to how they exploited President Joe Biden’s time in office in mostly absentia, except worse. None of these are costs they do not really want the country to bear, much less be seen as responsible for, even tangentially, bringing us once again to too cute by half.
The reality here is simple, at least in my mind: President Trump isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He got where he is for a second time with everyone knowing who he was, running the most in your face, no holds barred, Presidential campaign in history. While this doesn’t mean tweets like Monday’s shouldn’t be commented on or that any other behavior should be beyond reproach, they shouldn’t be surprising to anyone either and we should be well past the point of carrying like it was 2015, back when he could be stopped. The Never Trumpers have lost the war twice now; refusing to accept it and continuing to fight these battles as if President Trump didn’t prevail only sets back the conservative cause they claim to care about even further, giving credibility to our adversaries. In addition to being a pointless exercise, it’s also a damaging one, especially given that it will almost undoubtedly go on for over three more years, but I guess if it makes them feel better, so be it.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 