In an apparent reaction to the Senate’s 51-49 decision not to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump, essentially ending the current impeachment saga, longtime Republican pundit Bill Kristol declared himself a Democrat in a Saturday tweet. The announcement came as a surprise to precisely no one.
And not only has Kristol left the GOP, he believes that all of us need to be Democrats — for the time being, at least.
On Saturday, the capricious former editor-at-large of the defunct Weekly Standard tweeted, “Not presumably forever; not perhaps for a day after Nov. 3, 2020; not on every issue or in every way until then. But for the time being one has to say: We are all Democrats now.”
So, through the next presidential election, at least, people who have held more conservative viewpoints on policy should abandon those views and vote for a candidate who doesn’t share them in order to rid the country of a personality Mr. Kristol doesn’t like?
Many GOP and conservative pundits don’t agree with Kristol’s viewpoint.
National Review Staff Writer Alexandra De Sanctis tweeted: “No, one really doesn’t.”
Former Fox News columnist Todd Starnes declared, “[Kristol] finally came out of the political closet.”
Even Kristol’s friend and colleague Charlie Sykes took exception with Kristol’s announcement. Sykes, who along with Kristol founded the neocon news site The Bulwark in 2018, said, “Not me.” Then, in a follow-up tweet, Sykes explained, “Self-identify as a political orphan and contrarian conservative.”
The Washington Examiner’s Kimberly Ross, another Trump contrarian, shot to the heart of Kristol’s madness in a tweet: “Not even close. I’ve been an independent conservative since before the 2016 election and take plenty of issue with Trump and any uncritical supporters, but am no more sympathetic to the Democrat cause than I was before. This ‘Democrat by default” mindset is sheer nonsense.”
And that’s what Kristol seems to be suggesting. Conservatives and Republicans ought to abandon their core principles on abortion, gun rights, taxation, education, climate change policy, and any other conservative and constitutional issues simply to get rid of Trump.
While many of us harbored doubts regarding Trump in 2016, his governance, to this point at least, has largely erased many of the worst concerns about him. Trump is not perfect, of course (his signing of the USMCA is proof of that), but, in general, he’s been a decent conservative president to this point. Deregulation, constitutionalist judges and tax cuts are some examples.
A Democrat victory in this year’s election means that a Bernie Sanders or a Joe Biden picks possibly multiple Supreme Court justices. A Democrat victory in 2020 would virtually assure a return to the inane Paris Climate Accord. And with the Democrats’ leftward policy surge, urged on by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), it would mean an even further erosion of national sovereignty, submission to global governance, and abandonment of constitutional principles.
The Republicans and Trump are far from perfect. But they’re a great deal better than the Democrats on key cultural and constitutional issues such as abortion, LGBT “rights,” and gun control.
But Kristol, apparently, doesn’t care about such things. Or maybe, his switch of political parties just tells us exactly what he believed all along.
With his tweet, Kristol swung for the fence of profundity, but not only did he miss, the bat wrapped around behind him and smacked him on the back of the head.
Photo: AP Images
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects, with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected].
