A Long Good Bye to Trump

By Charles C. W. Cooke,

Getting over the former president

Seven years ago, it was forgivable to shout “Forward! Charge for the guns!” when trying to prevent Trump from becoming the nominee. Today, such a blunder would represent a refusal to survey the field; a refusal to recognize that American politics, like politics everywhere else in the world, is grubby and unkempt and complex; and a refusal to grasp that, if the GOP’s Trump era is to be brought to an irrefutable close, it will be because the architects of his removal choose to embrace the same amoral political reality that Trump has used to his advantage, and thereby to meet the dissenters on their own terms.

Perhaps, in an ideal world, American politics would not be grubby and unkempt and complex. Perhaps, in an ideal world, American politics would instead be clean and tidy and simple. But we do not live in such a world, and, if one’s aim is to change that world, one is obliged to acknowledge as much at the outset. There is nothing “unconservative” about doing so. To remain moral, conservatism must, indeed, care about what should be. To remain vital, however, it must also care about what is. And what American politics is, I’m afraid, is grubby and unkempt and complex. The project to remove Donald Trump from his position at the head of the Republican Party is no exception to this rule.

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