\n<\/p>\n
The longest argument I\u2019ve ever had with a Dispatch<\/em> colleague came on a Friday evening a few months ago. And no wonder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Logically, Friday nights are prime time for squabbles among political junkies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For most of the population, it\u2019s the opposite. The last thing a normal human wants to do to unwind at the start of the weekend is talk politics. But nerds like me (and you, dear reader) are a breed apart. We spend all week in mounting annoyance at the news and opinion we\u2019ve been mainlining and then, finally free of professional duties, the resentments we\u2019ve been nursing come spilling out. With help, perhaps, from a beverage or two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our own Steve Hayes maintains he was not imbibing when he touched off a brawl among Never Trumpers last Friday night on Twitter. \u201cGrim moment in our politics,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cSome conservatives embracing a nutty conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. and others fluffing a statist progressive (like) Kamala Harris. What a mess the modern conservative movement is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n Amid the hundreds of frothy replies he received from MAGA types eager to defend the nutty conspiracy theorist\u2019s honor came this one<\/a> from Bulwark<\/em> publisher Sarah Longwell: \u201cHonestly, what are you talking about Steve? The sad state of the conservative movement has nothing to do with some conservatives voting for a Democrat to keep Trump away from power. The widespread capitulation to and ultimate embrace of Trump destroyed the conservative movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thus began a long back-and-forth, with Longwell accusing Steve of being stuck in \u201ctribal muck<\/a>\u201d and Steve countering that he, not she, is the one who\u2019s been \u201canti-tribal<\/a>.\u201d Longwell was indignant. \u201cI\u2019ve read you and (Jonah Goldberg) since I was a young conservative,\u201d she replied<\/a>. \u201cYou were both so influential on me. Watching your tedious rationalizations about why you\u2019ll stand on the sidelines instead of taking a stand against the worst threat to American ideals in our lifetimes has been so deeply disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She went on to call Jonah\u2019s recent G-File<\/strong> gently scolding David French for endorsing Kamala Harris \u201calmost spirit-breaking<\/a>.\u201d To quote George Will: Well<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jonah himself soon replied at length<\/a>, siding with Steve. Atlantic<\/em> contributor Tom Nichols, another prominent anti-Trumper, chimed in<\/a> on Longwell\u2019s side. David, ever the peacemaker, tried to find a middle way over at Threads<\/a>. Andrew Egger, who\u2019s worked for both Steve and Sarah, gave his view<\/a>. Within hours, the Never Trump equivalent of the gang fight in Anchorman<\/em><\/a> had broken out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now I, the Brick Tamland of The Dispatch<\/em>, must step forward and throw my trident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t know whom to throw it at, though. My weaselly yet honest opinion is that both sides in the Hayes-Longwell divide have a point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ultimately, the argument between them isn\u2019t over Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or Never Trump-ism. It\u2019s over persuasion. As pundits and writers, persuasion is the business we have chosen. But in this case, there\u2019s an important difference of opinion on two fundamental questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What, precisely, are we trying to persuade people to do? And what\u2019s the most effective strategy for persuading them to do it?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You wouldn\u2019t know it by listening to some of our critics, but the respective missions of The Dispatch<\/em> and The Bulwark<\/em> are distinct.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The mission of The Dispatch<\/em>, I think, is to promote the sort of traditional conservatism that\u2019s been forsaken by the Republican Party. The mission of The Bulwark<\/em> is to defeat Trump and right-wing authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Those two missions overlap substantially in 2024, enough so for me to have published a newsletter not two weeks ago that ended with a Bulwark<\/em>-ian plea to \u201cVote Harris.\u201d Steve himself reminded his critics<\/a> on Twitter at one point this weekend that in 2020 he voted for Joe Biden.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The David French column<\/a> that inspired Jonah\u2019s allegedly \u201cspirit-breaking\u201d G-File<\/strong> was essentially an exercise in marrying Dispatch<\/em> and Bulwark<\/em> Never Trumpism. I\u2019m voting for Harris this year, David wrote, because we must defeat Trump to promote traditional conservatism. In the short term, he argued, a Harris victory will mean having a president whose foreign policy is closer to Ronald Reagan\u2019s than Trump\u2019s is. In the longer term, it\u2019ll mean discrediting Trump\u2019s brand of boorish populist authoritarianism among the American right as electorally unviable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The staffs of both publications would be happy to see David\u2019s prediction come true, I\u2019m sure. But given the difference in our respective missions, it\u2019s inevitable that Dispatch<\/em>-ers won\u2019t feel the same enthusiasm for a Harris victory as Bulwark<\/em>-ers do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And enthusiasm is key here. The most important word in Steve\u2019s tweet that set this brawl off was \u201cfluffing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I didn\u2019t take him to mean that conservatives shouldn\u2019t vote for Harris. (If he did, it\u2019s weird that he hasn\u2019t fired me.) And I certainly didn\u2019t take him to mean, as Longwell seems to, that Republican enthusiasm for Harris is a major cause of why the modern conservative movement is \u201ca mess.\u201d His point, I thought, was that the cult of Trump has polarized supporters and opponents on the right so intensely that each has twisted the things they once believed beyond recognition to accommodate their feelings about him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Steve is reflecting the ethos of this publication: If you\u2019re trying to persuade people that conservatism is the best governing model for America, how do you do that by evincing earnest excitement for a San Francisco progressive? Vote for her as the lesser of two evils if you must. But if you\u2019re enthusiastically \u201cfluffing\u201d her, you\u2019re sending a decidedly mixed message<\/em>, shall we say, about the supposed importance of small government and traditional values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And by doing so, you may end up getting more than you bargained for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We can all name people formerly of the right who have moved towards the left so enthusiastically in their strident Never Trumpism that they\u2019re now almost indistinguishable from Democratic partisans. Morning Joe.<\/em> The Lincoln Project. George Conway. Ana Navarro, who parlayed her \u201cRepublican who hates Republicans\u201d stature into a guest-hosting slot<\/a> at the Democratic convention last week. If Trump were to be crushed in November and the right were to revert to traditional conservatism in 2028, some or all of them might conceivably come marching home to the GOP, but would anyone bet on it at this point?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maintaining an ideological allegiance to the right is psychologically difficult once you\u2019ve enthusiastically aligned yourself with a party of the left, especially if that alliance has been reinforced with praise and (in some cases) financial opportunity. And it\u2019s asking a lot of middle-aged adults who uprooted their careers by abandoning their party once before to uproot their careers again by returning to that party once it\u2019s \u201cseen the light.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What Steve fears, I think, is that the conservative marriage of convenience with Democrats for the mutual goal of defeating right-wing populism will, in many cases, become a love fest. When Trump is gone and the smoke clears, all that\u2019ll remain on the right is his proto-fascist base and \u201cconservatives\u201d clinging to the Republican label who\u2019ve let their antipathy to Trump seduce them into becoming dependable cheerleaders for liberals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s not a problem if your mission is simply to defeat Trump and authoritarianism. When Steve was interviewed on The Bulwark<\/em> podcast<\/a> some months ago, for instance, host Tim Miller admitted that he was willing to \u201cgild the lily\u201d a bit in spinning events favorably for Joe Biden. And why not? Good press for Biden serves the goal of beating Trump. Ditto for Longwell, who often excitedly praises the Democrats\u2019 deep gubernatorial bench on Bulwark<\/em> podcasts. I understand that: Unless there are some dramatic changes in the GOP within the next decade, odds are good I\u2019ll be voting for Josh Shapiro or Wes Moore someday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But if your mission is to advance traditional conservatism, you shouldn\u2019t be gilding the lily for any Democrat. (If Never Trump is about truth-telling, Jonah pointed out<\/a>, it can\u2019t just be truths that hurt Trump.) And just in case Republicans do regain their moral bearings soon-ish, you shouldn\u2019t be excited at the prospect of sustained Democratic rule.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Steve wants to persuade readers to support traditional conservatism, and the Bulwark<\/em>-ers want to persuade them to defeat Trump. Both goals are noble, but one is obviously more conducive to enthusiasm for Democrats than the other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And the other, I think, is more likely to actually convince conservative voters. If you hope Nikki Haley\u2019s Republican primary supporters will flip to Harris in the general election, as I do, my guess is that you\u2019ll do better to persuade them by acknowledging the reasons for their reluctance than by broadcasting a sense of excitement about Harris (\u201cfluffing,\u201d let\u2019s call it) that will seem foreign and suspicious to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Democrat\u2019s campaign is vacuous to the point of being intellectually insulting. Social conservatives will get\u2014and should expect\u2014nothing from her presidency. There\u2019s nothing to recommend her agenda on fiscal grounds either except, perhaps, that Trump\u2019s pro-tariff psychosis might plausibly prove worse. But Harris is neither crazy nor a coup-plotter, and the right deserves a brutal beating for what it\u2019s become. Hopefully, such a shellacking would knock some sense into the movement, which is why conservatives should cross party lines in spite of everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n They might listen to that. If nothing else, they\u2019ll (hopefully) respect you as an honest broker for being frank about Harris\u2019 weaknesses. But if you sound enthusiastic<\/em> about voting for her, that\u2019s when they\u2019ll start to suspect that you\u2019re not so much trying to beat Trump as you are trying to convert them into Democrats. That\u2019s why our friend David took so much flak for his recent column: Right-leaning voters are used to \u201clesser of two evils\u201d arguments, but when you tell them that real conservatism means voting for a progressive, many will think you\u2019re selling them something.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t think Longwell much cares about conservative enthusiasm, though.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She and Steve ended up talking past each other because she mistook his original tweet as an attempt to \u201cboth sides\u201d the moral decline of the right by blaming crazed populists and Harris-supporting conservatives for it equally, which he wasn\u2019t doing. (The Dispatch<\/em> exists for a reason!) As to his actual point, about some Never Trumpers losing their ideological bearings, I suspect Longwell is indifferent: If Republicans want to wear hair shirts and flog themselves while reciting Reagan\u2019s \u201cA Time for Choosing\u201d speech as they trundle to the polls to vote for Harris this fall, she\u2019s fine with it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What she wants is for Steve and Jonah to say that Republicans should<\/em> vote for her. She\u2019s trying to persuade people to vote against Trump, in keeping with the mission of her publication, and she believes their endorsements could help marginally\u2014if only in clarifying for right-leaning voters that Trump is the greater of two evils.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cGenuine question (Steve): Which scenario is more dangerous for our country and for our allies abroad?\u201d she tweeted on Friday<\/a>. \u201cTrump winning or Harris winning? I don\u2019t believe for one second you think Kamala Harris is more dangerous than Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s all about so-called permission structures, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. The reason I feel obliged to endorse Harris and why, I assume, our friend David felt obliged at his much bigger perch at the New York Times<\/em> is because parties inspire powerful tribal loyalty and it takes a lot<\/em> of persuasion to get partisans to consider leaving, even for just one election. The more conservative commentary there is out there encouraging support for the Democrat this fall, the more comfortable conservative voters will feel about it (in theory).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There might be some Haley Republicans who are weighing their options right now and could be moved by a cumulative nudge from people they respect, including Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Longwell is trying to build a permission structure for those voters and can\u2019t understand why Steve and Jonah don\u2019t want to participate, I think, especially when she\u2019s willing to forgo the \u201cfluffing\u201d part. They don\u2019t need to be enthusiastic about Harris, merely forthright about Trump being the greater evil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Instead, they\u2019ve been reluctant to explicitly take a position on that question. And in this case, not explicitly taking a position amounts to taking a position, no?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Steve and Jonah may intend it that way (the latter called the election<\/a> \u201ca hard choice\u201d on Saturday, with which I respectfully disagree) but readers might understandably interpret their ambivalence as a comment on just how freakishly unfit for office they believe Harris to be. If the founders of a publication as righteously anti-Trump as The Dispatch<\/em> can\u2019t bring themselves to endorse Trump\u2019s opponent post-January 6, however reluctantly, the alternative on the ballot must be really\u2014like, really really<\/em>\u2014bad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And if she\u2019s that bad, those readers might conclude, maybe they shouldn\u2019t turn out in November to try to beat Trump after all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n More than that, neutrality between Trump and Harris implies that conserving the constitutional order isn\u2019t an important priority of conservatism. Or at least no more important than, say, fiscal responsibility or restricting abortion is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We conservatives should feel a little<\/em> excitement that Captain Coup is no longer on the glide path to reelection that he was five weeks ago, no? We don\u2019t need to \u201cfluff\u201d Harris by ignoring her policy flaws to feel relieved that she\u2019s made the race competitive and hopeful that we might avoid another Trump administration bent on \u201cretribution\u201d and full-spectrum abuse of executive power. I can muster a degree of enthusiasm as a conservative<\/em> for the prospect of a presidency in which that\u2019s not a concern and the government functions traditionally, without monthly constitutional crises.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t think Steve or Jonah would disagree. But a cynic could read their refusal to endorse Harris in November as ambivalence about whether an administration with conservative policies that operates outside the law is preferable to an administration with liberal policies that operates within it. That\u2019s what drove Longwell to the pathos about \u201cspirit-breaking,\u201d I assume: Treating a right-wing policy agenda as a higher (or equal) priority as respect for the American civic tradition is the hallmark of anti-anti-Trumpers, not The Dispatch<\/em>. There are other publications where you can find that viewpoint but it\u2019s not supposed to be here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And it isn\u2019t. This is why Jonah has been tearing his hair out lately over critics treating his vote as a mirror into his soul: People infer waaaay<\/em> too much about one\u2019s political preferences from the simple fact of preferring one candidate over another in a binary choice. But that\u2019s the problem, Longwell would presumably say. If preferring one candidate over another doesn\u2019t mean much, why the reluctance to clearly prefer Harris over Trump, grudgingly or not?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lurking beneath all this agita<\/em> is one more important difference between The Bulwark<\/em> and The Dispatch<\/em>. The former is an activist site in a way that the latter is not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Longwell was a political operative before becoming a publisher, and she still is. The PAC she runs, Republican Voters Against Trump, has embarked on a $50 million effort<\/a> this year to persuade right-leaning voters to cross the aisle for Harris by circulating dozens of video testimonials from average-joe Republicans who\u2019ve already made a commitment to do so. (Now that\u2019s<\/em> a permission structure.) As Tom Nichols<\/a> put it, she has a specific definition of what it means to be Never Trump: \u201cIt means not only criticizing him, but stopping him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Dispatch<\/em> is different, as Jonah made clear by framing his defense of Steve and opposition to \u201cfluffing\u201d in terms of journalistic ethics. \u201cI have no problem with journalists writing favorably or unfavorably about candidates they\u2019re voting for,\u201d he wrote on Saturday. \u201cBut the idea that they are required to write, report, and argue in ways consistent with how they\u2019ll vote is the purest horses\u2014t. \u2026 Journalists aren\u2019t supposed to be de facto party hacks.\u201d In fact, as a matter of company policy, The Dispatch<\/em> doesn\u2019t endorse candidates as an institution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Right, I know: No one is asking Jonah or Steve to spend the rest of the campaign propagandizing for Harris, just for a simple \u201cshe\u2019s bad but still better than Trump\u201d affirmation. But if Never Trump journalists are morally obliged to approach the race as activists, given the high stakes for the country, shouldn\u2019t<\/em> they propagandize for her? What sense does it make to endorse her as the only feasible alternative to a dangerous man and then to go on criticizing her unsparingly, knowing how that criticism will undermine the endorsement?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If your highest priority is to beat Trump, not to promote conservatism, your attempts at persuasion will inevitably reflect that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is what Steve was worried about with \u201cfluffing.\u201d Once you\u2019re an activist more so than a journalist, you\u2019re destined to pull your punches. \u201cI admit I\u2019m not harping on Harris\u2019 faults because I think it\u2019s important to beat Trump,\u201d one Never Trump conservative<\/a> said on Twitter this weekend, which is fine for the average voter but not fine for a commentator at a publication like this one that aims to hold politicians of both parties to honest account. Start down that road and soon you might find yourself, well, gilding the lily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then again, I endorsed Harris and don\u2019t seem to have any trouble maintaining my objectivity toward her. (Although, as Anchorman<\/em> fans know, Brick Tamland is \u2026 \u201cspecial.\u201d) Last week, when writer Jeryl Bier wondered<\/a> why there are so few conservatives willing to endorse Harris while continuing to criticize her on conservative grounds, a Twitter pal retorted<\/a>, \u201cWhy is it so hard for people to believe that Allahpundit Republicans exist?\u201d Why indeed, my friend? Why indeed?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\nConservatism versus anti-Trumpism.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Permission, reluctant or not.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n