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David French’s current New York Times column is the manifesto of a self-described Never Trumper. French recounts the four lessons he claims to have learned from his nine years of opposition to Trump. They seem to me to be deeply deluded.

Lesson number one is that “Community is more powerful than ideology.” French’s point here is that Trump is not a Reaganite purist, but nevertheless has been embraced by the Republican Party. But French completely fails to acknowledge the many ways in which Trump aligns, ideologically, with the Republicanism that has been mainstream since the 1980s. He calls Trump a “big government” politician, but Trump pushed through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which drove economic growth throughout his term. Trump also launched the largest and most successful attack on federal over-regulation in decades. And he consistently appointed principled conservatives to the federal bench.

French also, here as elsewhere, fails to acknowledge the binary nature of our politics. Trump was not a conservative purist, but was Hillary Clinton? Joe Biden? Kamala Harris? It is not unreasonable for those of us who are more purely conservative than Trump to support him enthusiastically when those are the alternatives.

Finally, it is worth noting that many conservatives have changed their ideology, in some respects, in response to events. Pretty much all of us grew up as doctrinaire free traders, but events since the 1980s have convinced many–including me–that while free trade is the default assumption, it is not the whole story. National security considerations demand that exceptions be made. Recognizing this reality is not an abandonment of conservative principles.

French’s second lesson is that “We don’t know our true values until they’re tested.” His point here is that evangelicals and others, like the Southern Baptists, who were critical of Bill Clinton’s moral lapses have taken a more indulgent attitude toward Trump. French thinks this is sheer hypocrisy, but in truth it represents a reasonable scale of moral judgment.

French calls Trump a “libertine,” apparently referring to allegations of sexual impropriety that are several decades old, and in most cases, probably false. But it is not unreasonable to criticize Clinton more strongly for getting oral sex in the Oval Office and while on the phone with foreign dignitaries, than Trump for infidelities long before he entered political life.

And, on broader issues of morality, most Republicans think that Joe Biden’s taking tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests in exchange for access to his supposed political influence is a far more serious issue than whatever Trump did with Stormy Daniels.

French’s third lesson is that “Hatred is the prime motivating force in our politics.” This one is simply bizarre: French thinks it was Trump’s “vitriolic speech [that] planted a seed of hatred in the American body politic.” If French hasn’t noticed the insane level of hatred that the Democrats have directed against Trump since 2015, and toward many other Republicans since long before then, one can only wonder where he has been. But here, too, there is a broader point.

French characterizes Republicans’ support for Trump in these terms:

[I]f the Republican view of Democrats is that low, then there are no normal Democrats. Instead, they’re a collection of depraved zealots, Marxists who are actively trying to destroy the United States. And desperate times require desperate measures — like nominating Trump again — to defeat this mortal threat.

Well, yes. Most Republicans do believe, with good reason, that today’s Democratic Party poses a grave threat to the future of our country. And we want a presidential candidate who understands the seriousness of that threat and will fight like Hell against it. Do most Republicans believe that the ability to fight effectively against attacks on free speech, wokism, open borders, grotesque levels of fiscal irresponsibility, etc., is more important than either moral foibles or occasional departures from ideological orthodoxy? We certainly do, and rightly so. French seems completely unable to understand this perspective, even though it is shared by most members of the political party to which he long belonged.

French’s final lesson is that “trust is tribal.” Here he is talking about trust in media:

Central to MAGA culture is the idea that its rage and anger against the so-called mainstream media is completely justified by the media’s bias and the media’s mistakes.

Yes. Bias, mistakes, and deliberate falsehoods.

When I tell people here in Tennessee that I work for The New York Times, I often get a visible negative reaction. Sometimes, the negative reaction is verbal and I’m condemned to my face as “fake news.”

I try to respond with a spirit of curiosity. I know that we make mistakes and I’m curious as to what specifically made them angry. Rarely do I get a precise answer. There is simply a sense that we can’t be trusted, that we’re on the other side.

French wants specifics? This could be a book, but let’s just name two big, and recent, things that made us angry: First, the Russia collusion hoax, in which French’s paper participated enthusiastically. That was the most significant political scandal in our nation’s history. Second, the coordinated suppression of information about Joe Biden’s political corruption in the weeks before the 2020 election. Again, that was a deception in which the New York Times was a key participant. If French wants more specifics, he can call me.

And no one, including the Times itself, doubts that that newspaper is “on the other side.” If French really doesn’t understand that, despite having worked at the Times for years, he needs to learn at least one more lesson.

Readers of this site know that I have both praised and criticized Donald Trump many times. I think he should be judged like all other politicians, with a balanced view of his strengths and weaknesses. But Never Trumpers like David French refuse to do this. They obsessively blame Trump for all that is wrong with our body politic, while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the many successes–conservative successes–for which he deserves credit. That is, in my view, a warped mentality that is hard to explain, and impossible to justify.