{"id":9495,"date":"2016-10-12T09:44:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-12T16:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9495"},"modified":"2016-10-12T09:44:57","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T16:44:57","slug":"the-so-called-trump-supporterdefenderendorser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-so-called-trump-supporterdefenderendorser\/","title":{"rendered":"The So-Called Trump Supporter\/Defender\/Endorser"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Corner<\/div>\n<div>The one and only.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/<em> National Review Online<\/em><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I think we at National Review have to be very careful in blanket condemnations of Trump \u201cendorsers,\u201d \u201csupporters,\u201d \u201cdefenders,\u201d and scare-quote \u201cconservatives\u201d as if they were a monolithic group of mindless extremists or utter fools. Many or perhaps even most, who for years have supported National Review, did not support Trump in the primaries. Many saw the Trump phenomenon not as melodrama, but as tragedy \u2014 given eight years of Obama, the sense that the so-called \u201crules\u201d are not applied equally to an elite in Washington, the past failed centrist campaigns of McCain and Romney, the perceived inability of the Republican party to address open borders, staggering debt, Obamacare, and the trajectory of social extremism, along with the ineptness of what had been billed as \u2014 and what we thought would certainly be \u2014 an especially gifted Republican primary field. Into that void, Trump barreled in with searing heat where in the past sober and judicious light were perceived to have failed. The rest is history.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The challenge for Republicans \u2014 whatever the election result and to the extent that it is fixable \u2014 will be to bridge the gaps between the diehard Trump core, the so-called conservative media and political establishment, traditional-minded independents, and the conservative base. Key will be discovering what were the conditions that created Trump (especially that undeniable strain of supporter that saw losing with Trump as preferable to possibly winning with a more marketable Republican candidate), both the candidate and the message, and the avoidance of self-righteous disdain that will only be perceived as the sort of elitism that empowered the Trump phenomenon in the first place.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Many National Review readers (as well as those who we all hope will return to NR) are hardly fanatics in their support for Trump. Their common bond is a deep and existential fear of what four, and likely eight, years of Hillary Clinton will do to the country on top of eight years of Obama\u2019s hard progressivism. It is sometimes true that they overlook Trump\u2019s glaring flaws, most recently his gross language, and that has and will have more consequences, but mostly they are frustrated with the double standards of the Left, which poses as morally superior on matter of gender, sex, and feminism, and yet has had for a half century no problem, for political reasons, canonizing the fatally negligent Ted Kennedy or the serial sexual groper, philanderer, and perhaps sexual assaulter Bill Clinton.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Finally, it would be wiser before rather than after the election to seek common ground. And one way to do it is to be careful in all but writing off millions of conservative voters and thousands of loyal National Review readers who will vote Trump as somehow beyond the pale, and whose support, and the expansion of that support, are essential to finding ways of unifying conservatives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Corner The one and only. \u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online I think we at National Review have to be very careful in blanket condemnations of Trump \u201cendorsers,\u201d \u201csupporters,\u201d \u201cdefenders,\u201d and scare-quote \u201cconservatives\u201d as if they were a monolithic group of mindless extremists or utter fools. Many or perhaps even most, who [&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":[1092,1091,1090,31],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2t9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trump-land-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":9495,"position":0},"title":"The Trump Land Mine","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency. 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When Trump was elected in 2016, the Washington establishment lost its collective mind.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11271,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reciprocity-is-the-method-to-trumps-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":9495,"position":2},"title":"Reciprocity Is the Method to Trump\u2019s Madness","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The president sends a signal: Treat us the way we treat you, and keep your commitments. Critics of Donald Trump claim that there\u2019s no rhyme or reason to his foreign policy. But if there is a consistency, it might be called reciprocity. Trump tries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11157,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/revolution-and-worse-to-come\/","url_meta":{"origin":9495,"position":3},"title":"Revolution and Worse to Come","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what\u2019s next? The Resistance wants Trump\u2019s head \u2014 on the chopping block. On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;North Korea&quot;","block_context":{"text":"North Korea","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/north-korea\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11697,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/episode-236-the-case-for-trump-by-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":9495,"position":4},"title":"Episode 236: The Case for Trump by Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review John J. Miller is joined by Victor Davis Hanson to discuss his book,\u00a0The Case for Trump. Watch the full interview here.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/qa-podcast-victory-davis-hanson-1.jpg?fit=1183%2C690&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/qa-podcast-victory-davis-hanson-1.jpg?fit=1183%2C690&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/qa-podcast-victory-davis-hanson-1.jpg?fit=1183%2C690&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/qa-podcast-victory-davis-hanson-1.jpg?fit=1183%2C690&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/qa-podcast-victory-davis-hanson-1.jpg?fit=1183%2C690&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9906,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-metaphysics-of-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":9495,"position":5},"title":"The Metaphysics of Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Paradox: How does a supposedly bad man appoint good people eager to advance a conservative agenda that supposedly more moral Republicans failed to realize? We variously read that Trump should be impeached, removed, neutralized \u2014 or worse. But until he is, are his appointments,\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9495"}],"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=9495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9496,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9495\/revisions\/9496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}