Conservative Think Tank Fellow Rips Don Jr. As ‘Crude 1 Dimensional Figure’ Without A Single Redeeming Quality

This would be some hellfire and brimstone coming from anywhere, but for a conservative to rain this down? Wow. But it does stand to reason and follow a pattern. Some of the most insightful commentary about the MAGA madness has come from Republicans who have either deserted the ranks or seek to rebuild the GOP along traditional conservative lines.

And I wish them well. Democracy is not about warring tribes, it is about the pendulum of power swinging back and forth. Sometimes one party is in power sometimes it’s out. Bipartisanship is founded on the realization of this truth and the most successful politicians have been the ones who build bridges across the aisle for that time when the other party is in power.

Donald Trump doesn’t recognize these bridges, or if he does he thinks that blowing them up is a good idea. His spawn go along with him and they lend unintentional comedy as they “play government” as John Kelly characterized Jared and Ivanka’s role in the White House.

Peter Wehner has penned a scorching analysis of Donald Trump Jr. Junior will of course call him a RINO, he can do nothing more. If Junior had a shadow of a scintilla of self-awareness, he would read this and let something sink in, for his own betterment. But I doubt that that can take place.

This is a scorcher. Enjoy.

Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting. He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably good job of keeping from public view any redeeming qualities he might have.

Following that opening, Wehner goes on to say that Junior is worth ignoring but for the fact that he’s popular in the GOP and influential with powerful Republicans. That makes his stunt at TPUSA AmFest even more egregious.

Trump spoke at a Turning Point USA gathering on December 19. He displayed seething, nearly pathological resentments; playground insults (he led the crowd in “Let’s Go, Brandon” chants); tough guy/average Joe shtick; and a pulsating sense of aggrieved victimhood and persecution, all of it coming from the elitist, extravagantly rich son of a former president.

But there was one short section of Trump’s speech that I thought was particularly revealing. Relatively early in the speech, he said, “If we get together, they cannot cancel us all. Okay? They won’t. And this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs because—I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does, folks, we better be playing the same game. Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for half a century while they’re playing hardball and cheating. Right? We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference—I understand the mentality—but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.”

Throughout his speech, Don Jr. painted a scenario in which Trump supporters—Americans living in red America—are under relentless attack from a wicked and brutal enemy. He portrayed it as an existential battle between good and evil. One side must prevail; the other must be crushed. This in turn justifies any necessary means to win. And the former president’s son has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.

It’s really not surprising that Junior had no problem dismissing Jesus and taking a swat at the religious faction of the GOP. The belief in Trump world is that Trump is Jesus. Never forget that this is all reality TV to these people. They’re just looking to push on to the next climax and get another episode going so that they can stay in the spotlight and keep the donations coming in. But Junior went too far this time. He doesn’t realize it, he’s insensible, but that crack of his will come back to haunt the cause in political ads in Fall of ’22 and ’24.

There are GOP governors and others in the Republican Party who embody a very different ethic, and for the sake of their party and their country, I hope they gain influence. But it would be naive and irresponsible to pretend that what we have seen since Donald Trump left office is the revivification of ethical standards and demands for moral excellence within the Republican Party.

Liz Cheney voted with President Trump more than 90 percent of the time but is now persona non grata in the GOP because she is willing to defend the Constitution and the rule of law and stand against a violent assault on the Capitol and an effort to overturn a free and fair election. When Liz Cheney is more despised in the party than the crazed Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Madison Cawthorn, or Donald Trump Jr., you know that the GOP has lost its moral bearings.

And that is the issue, there is no other. The question is whether Marjorie Taylor Greene was right and she represents the base and not the fringe or whether the above-named crazies are the new face of the GOP and that’s that. This is the existential question the Republicans must answer. This is their to be or not to be moment. Because if in fact the inmates have taken over the asylum and the top end of the Republican party is now gone, and there is no intellectual or philosophical component of the party any longer, just the nut jobs doing photo ops and fundraising, then we are likely looking at a repeat of the Whigs melting down in the mid-1800’s and a new party rising from the ashes. Or, we are looking at three parties.

How long the new party(ies) would take or form or what that would look like in modern terms, I have no idea. But we may actually be looking at that.

Time to take out the history books and start studying.  Let’s see where the Whigs went wrong. History may not repeat itself but it definitely rhymes, and past is prologue. Especially in politics.