Anti-Trump conservatives want to reverse the GOP's destruction. But they helped light the fuse.
Bomb squad
Anti-Trump conservatives want to reverse the GOP’s destruction. But they helped light the fuse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2018/12/14/feature/anti-trump-conservatives-want-to-reverse-the-gops-destruction-but-they-helped-light-the-fuse/?utm_term=.3a6ae212b2ed
It is a requirement of the political exile to write a book decrying the forces that drove you away. The task becomes a bit awkward, however, when you’re exiled not from your old country but just your old green room; when your former comrades are not in hiding but in power; when you insist that you’re the same while everyone else has suddenly changed, even if the changes began long ago and you chose not to notice.
When, that is, you’re a Never Trump conservative trying to survive in Trump’s America.
The Never Trumpers — that dwindling band of conservative intellectuals, journalists, campaign hands and elected officials who’ve opposed Donald Trump since the 2016 race — have earned the right to name names. They assail the president’s values and impulses, and they pillory his Republican enablers for discarding their long-held, or at least long-proclaimed, conservative principles. Though they worry about Trump’s impact on democratic norms and the rule of law, the Never Trumpers are especially concerned about the fate of their party and movement. Their book titles give it away: “The Corrosion of Conservatism” by Max Boot. “Everything Trump Touches Dies” by Rick Wilson. “How the Right Lost Its Mind” by Charles J. Sykes. “Conscience of a Conservative” by Jeff Flake.
It’s not an easy perch. Trump supporters loathe them, anti-Trump liberals don’t trust them, and the pressures to give in are real. In their books, the Never Trumpers express both outrage and disillusionment; they revel in their excommunication and bemoan their newfound isolation.
Yet they often falter when reckoning with their own role, witting or not, in what came to pass. If conservatism has been hijacked by Trump, as they argue, who left it so vulnerable? These writers pose the question, but their answers feel like mere feints at accountability, more meh culpa than mea culpa. The Never Trumpers hold everyone culpable for the appeal of Trumpism except, in any worthwhile way, themselves.
<<snip>>
= new reply since forum marked as read
Last edited Sun Dec 16, 2018, 10:46 AM - Edit history (1)
It led to consolidation of news and media outlets to take place under only a few corporations, and to the rise of things like Faux News.
And the telecom bill was signed by a Democratic POTUS. 
