even Bret Stephens - NYT "The Conservative Movement Needs a Reckoning"

[NRaleighLiberal]

(David Brooks, now Bret Stephens - hell is freezing over, pigs are flying, etc)

Just as ignorance was strength in George Orwell’s “1984,” shamelessness is virtue in Trump’s G.O.P.

Bret Stephens
By Bret Stephens

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/opinion/donald-trump-conservatives.html

There will be more than a few conservatives who will spend the next 30 years trying to prove the election was stolen. Others will insist Donald Trump would have won save for a deep state, the liberal media and disloyal Never Trumpers. And many will argue that Trump was a successful conservative president who scored important policy victories and broadened the G.O.P. base, only to run aground on a once-in-a-century pandemic that would have wrecked any presidency.

snip

Trump lost for two main and mutually reinforcing reasons. The first is that he’s immoral — manifestly, comprehensively and unrepentantly.

snip

The second reason Trump lost is that conservatives never tried to check his immorality. They rationalized, excused, enabled and ultimately celebrated it. For Trump’s presidency to have had even a faint chance of succeeding, he needed his allies and fellow travelers to provide reality checks and expressions of disapproval, including occasions of outright revolt. What he mainly got was an echo chamber.

snip

The historic irony here is that these permission slips for Trump served the master ill. Who in the White House had the clout of someone like James Baker to set the president straight and serve as something more than a yes-man? And who in the broader conservative world — someone Trump might have seen on Fox, for instance — could explain that attempting to fool all of the people all of the time was a losing strategy? Did Rupert Murdoch or Mitch McConnell ever put in an admonitory word?

snip


yes, it is a "water is wet" type of article, but coming from someone who has been part of the problem. sorry about the paywall - I picked out 4 key paragraphs

[underpants]

1. Many factors but the core he got right. I saw it put differently in not the NYT

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016276249

Why Donald Trump lost, when the rest of his party did well, is because he is an all-time, world-class, singular asshole. He has used the power of the United States presidency as a means of ensuring you cannot go an hour without being reminded that he is an asshole, because being an asshole is the most efficient way to get attention. Joe Biden was a strong match against Donald Trump because, whatever you think of his policy views, he is straightforwardly not an asshole

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. yup!