Lately, however, much of the conservative movement exists only to advance President Trump. It is no longer distinct. Many of the institutional and outside voices of conservatism have abandoned their distinct credibility to serve as cheerleaders for Trump in ways they would never have dared less than two decades ago when George W. Bush was President. In 2008, conservatives mounted efforts to fight President Bush’s bailouts of General Motors and American financial institutions arguing, among other things, that to bail them out would create moral hazards.
Fast forward just over a decade and many of the same conservatives who stood up to Bush and fought President Obama for sequestration have bent over backward to add multiple more trillions of dollars to the national debt under President Trump. Deficits and debt no longer matter to an intellectual movement that, less than a decade ago, forced the first real spending cuts by holding hostage a debt ceiling increase even as the Republican Party elite excoriated conservative stalwarts.
The fact that EE can string a phrase together like excoriated conservative stalwarts and not do it because he is trying to be more than he is is inspiring to me as a writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment