OPINION:
Perennial anti-President Donald Trumper and prolific writer George Will has penned a new book, “The Conservative Sensibility” — and guess what: It’s about the dire direction the Republican Party has taken post-Trump.
It’s not as if his distaste for Trump era politics is a surprise. The guy left the party in 2016 due to — you guessed it — Trump.
“I left it for the same reason I joined it in 1964,” Will said then, on his party departure, “I’m a conservative.”
The not-so-subtle message? Neither Trump nor his millions of followers are — true conservatives like Will, that is.
So of course, Will’s been the darling of the left-leaning media — the voice of the True Republicans, the consciousness of the Real Conservative — for some time. But expect to see even more of his face in the coming weeks. What says news cycle like a new book bashing Trump?
On MSNBC, hostess Stephanie Ruhle spoke of how “the conservative party has become the party of Trump.”
And Will, as Mediaite noted, said in response: “It’s become a cult. It’s become a cult because of an absence of ideas.”
In other words: Trump supporters are nothing but a basket full of deplorables.
Will suggests John Delaney and John Hickenlooper — Democrats — as better presidential candidates to pick than Trump in 2020 because, in his view, they “know where the public’s pulse is.”
Not so. So, so not so. Will’s a smart guy with a solid command of vocabulary and history and contextual politics. But on this, on Trump, he’s been off-course, off-chart, off the reservation from the get-go.
If the tea party was the warning, Trump was the final stroke. Traditional conservative voters tried for years to tell Republicans that they were failing to listen to the wills of the people — that they weren’t giving voice to the very pressing, very real burdens and problems of the very people who gave them their cushy Capitol Hill spots and who paid their cushy salaries.
The established Republicans ignored the warnings, even mocked and scorned the warnings.
So Trump came along and said, hey, America First — let’s tighten borders, let’s rekindle our friendship with the all-important Israel, let’s cut out the crappy trade deals, let’s reel back the ridiculous climate change regulations, let’s quit driving out business and dinging production with growth-inhibiting economic plans, let’s stop the silly social justice programs taking precedence in our military, in our schools, in our society.
And he’s been winning. And so, too, the American people, conservatives and liberals, both.
If Will calls that cultish — well then, where do we sign for membership?
Fact is, the Republican Party, post-Trump, doesn’t have an absence of ideas. The Republican Party has an infusion of action, a flurry of activity, that’s put in place the very ideas heartland Americans have been begging to see for years. That’s not cultish. That’s comfort and relief.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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