George Will Goes Over the Side - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
George Will Goes Over the Side
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And I like George Will.

But I have to say, the Washington Post columnist is exhibiting a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. As here, in a column titled:

If Trump is nominated, the GOP must keep him out of the White House

In which Will goes further (if that’s possible) than earlier screeds by writing:

Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.

Ted Cruz’s announcement of his preferred running mate has enhanced the nomination process by giving voters pertinent information. They already know the only important thing about Trump’s choice: His running mate will be unqualified for high office because he or she will think Trump is qualified.

… this is a time for prudence, which demands the prevention of a Trump presidency.

Were he to be nominated, conservatives would have two tasks. One would be to help him lose 50 states — condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic life. Second, conservatives can try to save from the anti-Trump undertow as many senators, representatives, governors and state legislators as possible.

… If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power.

Got that? George Will is going over the side to, whether he admits it or not, the “I hate Hillary but she’s better than Trump” crowd. Why? Because among other things Trump’s damage to the Republican Party is “already extensive.” Really? Here’s this story over at CNN written after Super Tuesday in March:

Voter turnout shows Trump, not Sanders, leading a revolution

The story reads in part:

Bernie Sanders talks extensively about revolution, but it appears that it’s actually Donald Trump who is driving record numbers of voters to the polls with his fiery populist message.

Republicans voted in unprecedented numbers on Super Tuesday, setting record numbers in contests throughout different regions of the country.

Every state holding a Republican contest Tuesday — with the exception of Vermont — reached a new high for participation….

Texas, home to a battle royale between Trump and native son Ted Cruz, saw a whopping 2.7 million voters show up for the Republican contest — 1.2 million more than the previous record in 2012.

In Virginia, 1,013,000 voters — almost 350,000 more voters showed up than the previous record-setting year, 2008. And in Georgia, 1,273,000 voted Tuesday — more than 300,000 above the record set in 2008.

That continue a trend this cycle of record-breaking Republican contests, beginning with Iowa and continuing in South Carolina, where Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore praised the 730,000 people who showed up a little more than a week ago, well more than the 603,000 South Carolinians who voted in the 2012 Republican primary.

All of which helps explain why Trump was crowing about a “movement” in his victory speech Tuesday night.

… Republican officials… were astonished by the Trump effect.

‘It is just phenomenal. We are roughly 50% higher than our next highest turnout in our history for an election like this,’ Alaska Republican Party Chairman Peter Goldberg told CNN’s Paul Vercammen, regarding the 21,930 who caucused there Tuesday.

And so it has gone since. Here is the Wall Street Journal on the subject:

GOP Turnout, Already Strong, Is Getting Stronger

It begins:

Republican turnout this primary season is up 64% over 2012 levels, new data show, with participation accelerating in recent months as voters in big states got a rare shot to play a meaningful role.

… The lengthy competition, combined with the high interest in front-runner Donald Trump, is likely why turnout in New York’s April 19 primary was up more than 430% from 2012, according to data compiled by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm.

The analysis found that turnout was up more than 250% in Connecticut, 320% in Rhode Island and 97% in Pennsylvania, three of the five states that voted on April 26, compared with turnout in 2012.

According to the Public Opinion Strategies tally, some 25.1 million Republicans have cast ballots this year, compared with 15.3 million in 2012. Some 3.5 million more Republicans than Democrats have voted.

So. What we have here is a Washington columnist, a card-carrying Establishment member whose complaint includes a fierce devotion to those who, unlike Trump, have “manners and grace.”

I confess, Trump’s “manners and grace” are not the best. When asked about Trump a number of friends and contemporaries replied that he told “dirty stories” no matter how “coarse” or “outright nasty.” There is an admitted sense of “disgust and humiliation” that he could be president. Nothing, it seems, according to one friend keeps him from saying things of the “grosser sort.” One House member declared bluntly of Trump that the front-running billionaire was “vain, weak, puerile, hypocritical, without manners, without moral grace.”

Oh wait. Sorry. My mistake. These comments weren’t made about Donald Trump. They were made by friends, associates, and contemporaries of… Abraham Lincoln. Which means that the 16th president, the man who founded the Republican Party George Will says is in such mortal danger, the man whose memory dominates not merely the Washington skyline but the nation’s soul, has been so eternally honored in spite of having been found by his contemporaries to be — oh no! — a teller of “nasty stories” of “the grosser sort” and who was “vain, weak, puerile, hypocritical, without manners, without moral grace.”

If Shirley MacLaine is right — she the actress who legendarily believes in reincarnation — then clearly George Will has been in Washington before. And judging from his current sentiments, one suspects it was 1860s Washington where, clearly, the 19th century George Will couldn’t abide the real Abraham Lincoln for obvious reasons. After all, Old Abe had no manners and no grace.

Oh, my.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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