The Bumpy Ride of Our Flight 93

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The Bumpy Ride of Our Flight 93

https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2016/09/10/the-bumpy-ride-of-our-flight-93

Roger Kimball
September 10, 2016

There is a scene in the first episode of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s Jeeves and Wooster series that bears on the current presidential election. Bertie Wooster, at the direction of his Aunt Agatha, has motored down to Ditteredge Hall, seat of Sir Roderick and Lady Glossop, to cozy up to their hearty daughter Honoria. The former head-girl at Girton is not keen on the match: “He doesn’t shoot, he doesn’t hunt, . . . he doesn’t work even.” But Lady Glossop points out that Honoria will be twenty-four the following week. “He is not all your father and I would have hoped for you, I agree, but . . .”

But consider the alternative.

Regular readers know that I have not been part of the Donald Trump Cheerleading Cavalcade. I first wrote about him a year ago July. After saying that I didn’t think he would be the candidate, I concluded with this advisory:

He has raised some issues that the high and mighty dispensers of conventional wisdom would do well to ponder. Moreover, he has done it in a way that, though terribly, terribly vulgar, is catapulting Trump to first place in the polls. What does that tell us?  That the people are stupid and need to be guided by the suits in Washington?  If you believe that, I submit, you are going to be profoundly disappointed come November 2016.

Well, as Samuel Goldwyn remarked in another context, we’ve passed a lot of water under the bridge since then.

{.. snip ..}

 

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There is a fair amount of hysteria among NeverTrumpers about “The Flight 93 Election,” which I guess underscores just how potent its argument is. (The fact that Rush Limbaugh read it aloud on his radio show redoubled that potency.) As I say, I’ve come around to thinking that there are plenty of good reasons for someone of conservative principles to support Trump. I know, and have repeatedly rehearsed, the standard litany of criticisms about Trump.  But they fade if not into insignificance then at least into near irrelevance in the face of his actual program (see above) and, most of all, in the face of the horror that is his opponent.

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A good analysis of the recent essay, “The Flight 93 Election,” which appeared a few days back in that indispensable journal, the Claremont Review of Books.

[INVAR]

I’ve come around to thinking that there are plenty of good reasons for someone of conservative principles to support Trump.

Only if they are not Conservative at all, and/or their "principles" are just malleable guidelines that can be discarded at whim, making them as worthless as used sopping wet toilet paper.

Which is what Trump is turning the Conservative movement into.

By design.