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It’s no secret I am not a fan of Donald Trump. Having grown up and lived in the NYC area for over 25 years, I was familiar with Trump before he hit the national stage as a reality show host. I didn’t like him when he launched his way onto the national political scene with his birtherism, and I continued to dislike him so much I wrote about conservatives telling him to take a hike back in 2014. I didn’t support him in the primaries, and I didn’t vote for him in the general election (and no I did not vote for Hillary Clinton).
Now that he is President, I am not all that concerned he’s a Republican as the party is simply not reason enough for me to give him a pass whenever he does something stupid. I am going to judge him on the merits. What’s interesting is the criticism I (along with many others in the conservative movement) get for doing so. As if holding Trump to higher standards than Democrats hold their office-holders is something for which I should be ashamed. I always thought we should be better than them. To be fair, some Republicans and conservatives reflexively harp on Donald Trump simply because they don’t like him. Streiff wrote about Jennifer Rubin, a Paris agreement critic until Donald Trump withdrew from the same agreement. She hasn’t stop railing about it since it happened and refuses to acknowledge her flip-flop on the issue and so that sort of criticism isn’t helpful because it’s rooted in a knee-jerk mentality that leaves reason at the door.
That said, much of the criticism Trump receives from me and other like-minded conservatives is fair. The pushback I often receive strikes me as odd because it doesn’t counter the criticism but instead deflects from the criticism.
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That some conservatives were defending Trump for the Comey mess because it made Democrats angry is ridiculous. Democrats freak out about Republican leadership no matter who’s in office. There’s no reason to give them more bullets so they can reload and keep shooting. If your measure of success is how much Trump angers Democrats and liberals, then he’s doing great. But the fact that he’s sitting at 40% job approval should give people a reason to think through their definition of “success.”
Conservatives should demand a higher bar. “Pissing off the libs” and “He’s better than Hillary” is a bar so low, anybody can reach it. There is a tremendous opportunity for the Republican Party and Donald Trump, and I give him credit when deserved. His nomination of Neil Gorsuch and his withdrawal from the Paris agreement are two examples where I agree with him wholeheartedly.
Unfortunately, his impetuousness, inability to deal with criticism, going off half-cocked on Twitter, and inability to make a cohesive case for his policy decisions is causing damage and he’s losing political capital every day. The clock is ticking and making liberals angry just isn’t good enough.
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My latest —> Trump Doesn’t Deserve A Pass Because He’s “Pissing off the libs” https://t.co/v8YhoqotHW
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) June 3, 2017
Excellent. I agree wholeheartedly. It’s frustrating to have people expect so little from their leaders simply because of party politics.
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