In an op-ed earlier this week, I explained why, despite having not pulled the lever for Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, I fully intend to do so in 2020. I offered three primary reasons for my change of heart: (1) the results are in, and the reality is that Trump governs as a conservative president; (2) to the extent there is a moral stain on the conservative movement and the Republican Party, that is now a sunk cost; and (3) it is impossible to overstate the extent to which the Left has become full-on crazy. At the Trump-skeptical site, The Bulwark, Andrew Egger has written a partial criticism of my piece. I say “partial criticism,” because Egger effectively concedes my first point and does not respond to my third point. He focuses, instead, on my second argument that the moral stain on the conservative movement and/or the GOP from the nomination and election of Trump is now a sunk cost.
Egger’s piece is fair. I do not object in the slightest to his framing my argument as “realist, even cynical” — indeed, that is our role, as conservatives. Idealism, by definition untethered to reality, is for the Left. And I even concede that the “sunk cost” point is likely the weakest of my three reasons for aligning with Trump in 2020.
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