The strange rigidity of those always against Trump

For four years, many of us critics of former President Donald Trump took flak from a certain class of former conservatives that I’ll call the always-only-ever-anti-Trumpers.

A wide array of people on the Right refused to vote for Trump in the general elections of 2016 and 2020 and regularly declared in public that Trump was fundamentally unfit for the job.

Some of us, however, also pointed out when Trump did something right — such as appointing good judges, cutting middle-class taxes, stopping former President Barack Obama’s war on nuns, and managing to avoid starting a war of choice in the Arab world. Also, we tried to correct Trump’s critics when they were wrong or dishonest. For that, and for our criticism of Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, we were called “anti-anti”-Trump or even criticized as “the balls and strikes crowd” — as if that were a bad thing.

The next step in this particular strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome has been to declare that we are pro-Trump if we won’t vote for Biden. I got ratioed twice for that in 2020.

This year, even after 3.5 years of Biden, the always-only-ever-anti-Trumpers are clinging to the same bizarre line: If you understand Trump is unfit for the presidency, you need to vote for Biden.

It should be obvious why this makes no sense. Trump being unfit doesn’t make Biden fit any more than Iraq being bad in 1980 made Iran good.

Paul Ryan, like me, is a conservative. Biden isn’t only unconservative — he is virulently anti-conservative. He hates us, makes that known, and sics the federal government on us.

Not only has Trump adopted the most extreme abortion positions of any president in history, but his Justice Department also launched a crusade against pro-lifers, trying to criminalize opposition to abortion.

Biden has declared publicly and repeatedly that anyone to the right of Charlie Baker is an extremist who is a threat to democracy. If Biden believes what he says about all pro-lifers being MAGA extremists, it means Biden hates Ryan and thinks Ryan is a threat to democracy. Why would Sarah Longwell ask Ryan to vote for someone who considers him outside the bounds of permissible dissent?

It makes no sense to argue as those like Longwell do, that everyone who believes Trump is unqualified must, therefore, support an overaged, intolerant extremist who causes inflation and a border crisis through pure policy stupidity.

But this “vote-for-Biden-or-you’re-a-Trump-lover” argument is now old and busted. There’s a new, even more ridiculous argument thrown at anti-Trump conservatives: You have to support every bad policy of Biden’s, or you’re a Trump lover.

The argument here, from the most prominent snarky left-wing pseudonymous dog account on the website formerly known as Twitter, is that the people who criticize Biden’s Israel policy are, therefore, pro-Trump.

It’s almost too stupid to argue against, except to say this: By this definition, everyone who disagrees with Biden on anything substantive is pro-Trump, which means a vast majority of the country is pro-Trump.

Is that a useful definition?