George Will Endorses Nancy Pelosi For Speaker of the House But Does Anyone Care?

If there was ever a sign that the coalition that Reagan assembled in 1980 is completely and irreversibly ruptured it came this week. Earlier in the week, long time Republican check-casher operative Steve Schmidt earlier withdrew from the Republican party calling the idea of enforcing immigration laws immoral. Yesterday, George Will, long a fixture in Beltway conservative circles, went one step further. He actually endorsed Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House:

The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.
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Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As explained in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.
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In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him. A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House. And to those who say, “But the judges, the judges!” the answer is: Article III institutions are not more important than those of Articles I and II combined.

If you’ve followed Never Trump commentary for the past year, and sadly I really had no choice, you know that the unifying force there is not principles or political philosophy or the faux-religious outrage, it is simply a visceral dislike of Trump. I don’t have a problem with visceral dislikes of people, but don’t try to piss on my leg and tell me its raining. Don’t tell my you oppose Trump on principle when it is obvious that is simply not the case.

George Will joins people like Steve Schmidt and Tom Nichols in taking the position that they’d rather see progressives win than to be personally offended by Trump’s success.

There were two interesting threads on this on Twitter. One is probably more of interest to Never Trump people who aren’t interested in going full metal progressive just to be able to say I’m a righteous man. The second is a very insightful threat by former RedState contributor Dan McLaughlin.

Democrats have made no effort to gain a conservative vote, but we’re supposed to just hand it to them. https://t.co/gxktjM1HzK

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 22, 2018

It’s like 2016, we were just expected to vote for Clinton just because. No concessions or compromise. Just expected to fold.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 22, 2018

This is a point I’ll return to in a future post, but the raw classism in this shows the degree to which movement conservatism has stopped being something that can be embraced by working class voters and has been turned into a political circle jerk for would-be pundits who think they are better than most everyone else…in other words, the flip side to the wet-behind-the-ears douches writing at Mother Jones, The New Republic, or Vox whom we’ve mocked for years.

We were supposed to give up everything for nothing, and all the while they would continue to call us racists and sexist and so on.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 22, 2018

And they guaranteed that a vote for them meant killing unborn babies. That was absolute. They required a submission, and a violation of conscience.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 23, 2018

Give up everything for nothing. It never changes.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 23, 2018

Well, if you call “strange new respect” nothing, sure.

Show me the Democratic Party’s argument to conservatives that goes beyond “but Trump” and calling them nazis.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 23, 2018

For that matter, show me the Never Trump argument that does the same.

Remember how the Never Trump faction was welcomed with open arms by the Democrats? Me neither. Bc instead, the Democrats blamed them for Clinton losing.

— Dan (@danieltobin) June 23, 2018

And they won’t be for a simple reason that the British didn’t welcome Benedict Arnold. For the same reason that Genghis Khan executed the men who betrayed his arch enemy and delivered him to Genghis Khan (there is a lesson there for how we should treat the remaining Never Trump faction in the future). In the words of Julius Caesar, “I love treason but hate a traitor.”

Dan McLaughlin offers up why cutting off your nose to spite your face is not a great political strategy.

1. Let’s tease this out. Most of what the GOP Congress has actually passed (legislation, judges) under Trump has been conventional conservative policy. Will is asking conservatives to give that up – ie, the redeeming features of being stuck with Trump.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

2. Many of the worst aspects of Trump are the things Congress has the least control over, like his mouth. Dumping the GOP Congress won’t change that.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

3. The most vulnerable in the GOP House & Senate are from the Ryan/Rubio wing, or establishment Rs, or liberal Rs, or in some cases Cruz-style conservatives. Wipe them out, Trump & the MAGA faction are ascendant within GOP.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

This is the real point. The only representatives that are going to survive a real bloodbath are those in districts carried by Trump by large margins. The “moderates” and, in some cases conservatives, who are winning fairly narrow victories are going to be wiped out as Democrats vote against them and Trump supporters don’t turn out to vote.

4. GOP offered a check on Obama & Clinton because GOP Congress could stop them passing liberal legislation. But conservatives don’t want a check on conservative legislation.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

5. Did Bill Clinton have less influence within the Democratic Party in 1995-2000 than in 1993-94? Quite the contrary! The base rallied around him bc he was the only one left. Ditto Obama after 2010. I don’t want Trump to be like that.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

6. Arguing for running the GOP Congress out of town is telling conservatives “keep all the worst parts of Trump, get rid of all the parts you like.” Of course we are not gonna jump at that.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

Here is where I think Dan gets it wrong. Of course a large number of Never Trump people are going to vote Democrat because, again, their opposition is not really anchored in anything but personal animosity towards the guy. And if they think electing a Democrat House will hurt Trump they will jump on it in a minute.

7. Now, there *are* policy areas where I want Congress to stand up more to Trump, especially on tariffs. But I don’t see much prospect for that actually changing with the Democrats in charge.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

8. Last time Democrats took over was 2006. Was America really that much better off in November 2008 than in November 2006?

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

9. And yes, I take George Will’s advice on this less seriously because he was effectively siding with Obama against McCain in the fall of 2008, which to me is a permanent disqualifier of your judgment of the consequences of elections.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

10. GOP Congress checked Bill Clinton on taxes, healthcare, energy – ie, liberal policy. It was unable to stop him from diddling interns, abusing the pardon power, or shaking down foreigners for campaign cash.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

11. In short: divided government will give us less conservative policy, and more liberal policy. It will *not* give us less of the things that Never Trump and Reluctant Trump conservatives dislike about Trump.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 23, 2018

I would even go a step further. With a Democrat House, Trump is in very real danger that a bill of impeachment will be voted on. The trial in the Senate will go nowhere but the asterisk will always be by his name. How do you think Trump will react to that possibility? By continuing his current policies or by making an accommodation with the Democrats on judges and appointments?

The real problem with Will’s idea is that a minority party is powerless to do even the things that you like. If you don’t like the way the GOP is acting, the real question is do you think the Democrats will act more to your liking?

In the end, I don’t suspect that very many people will listen to Will because not very many people listen to Will. And those that do listen to him, for the most part, aren’t going to act to put a Democrat in charge of the House.

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