{"id":12214,"date":"2020-02-24T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T18:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12214"},"modified":"2020-02-24T15:54:49","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T23:54:49","slug":"neversanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/neversanders\/","title":{"rendered":"NeverSanders?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost everything the Democratic Left said about Donald Trump causing a Republican Party implosion proved untrue\u2014and yet is proving true this year of the Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump\u2019s agenda, for the most part, was Reaganesque, with a few important exceptions\u2014closing the border and enforcing immigration law, getting tough with China\u2019s unfair trade policies, restoring assembly and manufacturing jobs to the hollowed-out interior, avoiding optional wars abroad, and trying to drain the proverbial federal swamp of its careerist bureaucrats and revolving-door apparatchiks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those wrinkles from the Republican agenda, in fact, were consistent with traditional conservative values, and thus even among establishment and mainstream Republicans still polled well enough. That reality later was empowered by Trump\u2019s effort to keep his campaign promises, by an economy at near-record employment, and by foreign policy recalibrations that are starting to win grudging, if unspoken, bipartisan support on China, given news coverage of the Hong Kong crackdown, the reeducation camps, the coronavirus debacle, and the Orwellian surveillance state apparat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even before Trump\u2019s governance, the NeverTrump Right was emasculated, largely because its pundits and politicians could offer no alternative party agenda superior to Trump\u2019s. Moreover, they had spent much of their lives advocating most of the very policies Trump was advancing, and increasingly was getting results. Nor before or after the election could they ever convince Republicans that Trump\u2019s crassness and uncouth tweets were quite unlike the White House crudity of past presidents (e.g., Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton) rather than in part attributable to the Internet\/social media age and the new tabloid media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All those facts explain why Trump in 2016 received nearly 90 percent of the Republican vote, at par with, or better than, previous Republican nominees. Polling suggests that in 2020 Trump will do as well with Republican voters, or even better than four years ago. Certainly, the current NeverTrumpers, for all the \u201ccharacter is king\u201d lectures, remain inert, and without influence. Again, they have never squared the circle of opposing the implementation of agendas they spent their careers promoting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2020\/02\/23\/neversanders\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Almost everything the Democratic Left said about Donald Trump causing a Republican Party implosion proved untrue\u2014and yet is proving true this year of the Democrats. Trump\u2019s agenda, for the most part, was Reaganesque, with a few important exceptions\u2014closing the border and enforcing immigration law, getting tough with China\u2019s unfair [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3b0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10229,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nightmares-and-the-realities-of-never-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":0},"title":"The Nightmares and the Realities of Never Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely in the last half-century have so many elite conservatives and intellectuals been so estranged both from a Republican administration and from those who voted for it\u2014neither have they become so animated in their antipathy and disgust for a sitting president. During the 2016\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;McMaster&quot;","block_context":{"text":"McMaster","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/mcmaster\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10839,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-trump-an-island\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":1},"title":"Is Trump an Island?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review \u00a0 If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides. No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10423,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-circular-firing-squad\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":2},"title":"Trump\u2019s Circular Firing Squad","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Trump and his critics are attacking each other, failing to focus on the only story that counts: the welfare of the United States. The American political system has never quite seen anything like the current opposition to President Trump and his unusual reaction to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10485,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-anti-trump-bourbons-learning-and-forgetting-nothing-in-time-for-2020\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":3},"title":"The Anti-Trump Bourbons: Learning and Forgetting Nothing in Time for 2020","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson| American Greatness Just seven months into Donald Trump\u2019s administration we are already bombarded with political angling and speculations about the 2020 presidential race. No one knows in the next three years what can happen to a volatile Trump presidency or his psychotic enemies, but for now\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Conservatives&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Conservatives","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/conservatives\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amgreatness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/louisbourboncropped.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9415,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillarys-neoliberals\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":4},"title":"Hillary\u2019s Neoliberals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Some Republicans have cultural and political affinities that are pulling them away from Trump and toward Clinton. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/National Review Online Many elections redefine political parties. The rise of George McGovern\u2019s hard-left agenda in 1972, followed later in the decade by Jimmy Carter\u2019s evangelical liberalism, drove centrist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Campaign 2016&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-once-and-future-scandal\/","url_meta":{"origin":12214,"position":5},"title":"The Once and Future Scandal","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Now that the four-and-a-half-month-long Ukraine impeachment bookend to the 22-month Mueller charade is over, it clearly accomplished nothing other than substantially raising the polls of both Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The public was reminded that Representative Gerald Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12215,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12214\/revisions\/12215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}