These days the term ‘conservative’ in political discourse has taken on a whole new meaning and the far-right radicals have hijacked the term for their own greedy purposes. Therefore, it is not unusual for those of us who are more, shall we say, liberal-minded, to dislike and distrust anyone who wears that ‘conservative’ label. But last night I was reminded that there are still true conservatives who are not part of the cult that has become known as the ‘Trump cult’. Those more sane, level-headed conservatives may be a dying breed, but there are still a few around, and one of those is George Will, a conservative writer and political commentator. While I don’t always agree with Mr. Will, I have long respected his more nuanced views, and never more so than today. Mr. Will is a harsh critic of Donald Trump, left the Republican Party to become an Independent in 2016, and voted for President Biden in 2020. His latest column in The Washington Post is spot on in more ways than one. See what you think …
As ominous threats rise, the U.S. is mired in moronic, clownish politics
By George F. Will
13 October 2023
A sign on Capitol Hill in D.C. on Sept. 29. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Bilious rhetoric pours from members of Congress presiding over their dilapidated institution. Never has there been such a disjunction between the seriousness of the nation’s problems and the irresponsibility of its political class.
About the latter, look around. There is turmoil in the party that controls only one congressional chamber and cannot control itself. The unfolding presidential campaign is doing nothing to elucidate intelligent responses to two regional wars abroad and fiscal incontinence at home. About the nation’s peril, consider this:
“The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time — Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran — whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own. Not since the Korean War has the United States had to contend with powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia. And no one alive can remember a time when an adversary had as much economic, scientific, technological, and military power as China does today.”
That is from a Foreign Affairs article (“The Dysfunctional Superpower”) by one of the nation’s wisest foreign policy practitioners, former CIA director and former defense secretary Robert M. Gates. He knows military preparedness is jeopardized by Congress’s inability to perform its most basic function, budgeting. Since 2010, it has failed to pass defense appropriations bills before the next fiscal year begins. “Continuing resolutions” continue the planning difficulty.
The war Hamas launched against the United States’ most important Middle East ally underscores a lesson from Ukraine: War remains a matter of mass — artillery, armor, air support. And much of the U.S. defense industrial base has atrophied. This cannot be rectified quickly. One thing, however, can be.
Senate rules, which allow maximum individual latitude, presuppose minimal maturity. To protest a Defense Department policy pertaining to abortion, a caricature — Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who says the three branches of government are “the House, the Senate, and the executive” — is blocking confirmation of hundreds of senior military promotions. This, says Gates, is “making the United States a laughingstock among its adversaries.” The Senate should immediately end this moronic behavior. Senators should either change Tuberville’s unfurnished mind (“My dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe from socialism”) or change the rule he is abusing.
Russia’s attempted annihilation of Ukraine has become an attritional war. As Johns Hopkins University foreign policy scholar Hal Brands says, “The U.S. and its allies need to start equipping Ukraine now for operations in 2024 and after.” And they need to ponder this: “Without nuclear weapons and nuclear threats, Russia might well have lost the war by now.” China’s President Xi Jinping might believe that Vladimir Putin’s nuclear arsenal has made U.S. assistance to Ukraine timid and hesitant. Brands says:
“If Ukraine is a precedent for how America handles crises with nuclear-armed great powers, the U.S. is in big trouble in the Western Pacific. … It’s not clear why the U.S. would be more willing to risk nuclear war for Taiwan — another strategically important but distant democracy — than it was for Ukraine.”
All but one of the Republican presidential aspirants should stop tiptoeing around the crucial fact about the other one: Donald Trump is an unexampled threat to national security. He is unambiguously supporting Putin, as is a growing cohort of congressional Republicans who, by opposing material aid to Ukraine, are preparing to enable Trump to keep his promise to end the war “in 24 hours.” This would consign Ukraine to eventually losing the 82 percent of its territory that Putin has not yet seized.
As the world becomes more ominous, clownishness among Republican presidential aspirants — let’s attack Mexico! — becomes more insufferable. Ron DeSantis promises gas at $2 a gallon — cheaper in inflation-adjusted terms than when the price was 26 cents in 1948. At a July event, a crazed New Hampshirite told Vivek Ramaswamy that the Federal Reserve is “adding zeros to the bank accounts to the media or maybe your political opponents.” Ramaswamy’s response included this: “You’re correct to point out what very few people are aware of. Absolutely, that happens.”
In the world beyond Iowa and New Hampshire, events are turning and turning in a widening gyre. Chaos, the métier of the Republican front-runner, is rising. Last week, the world spun into a new level of dangerousness. This coming week, any Republican aspirant worthy of the office she or he seeks will at last forthrightly stand against Trump’s siren call of isolationism.
Elizabeth Warren announced her entry into the 2020 presidential campaign this morning. While I respect Ms. Warren’s political views, believe she is as well-qualified as any, and while a year ago I would have considered her as my choice, I have to wonder at her decision today. Given the very public controversy that she stirred over her Native American heritage, or lack thereof, she doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the democratic nomination, much less the presidency. Frankly, I don’t relish the thought of listening to Trump and his faithful followers shrieking “Pocahontas” for the next 21 months! The more candidates who throw their hats into the ring, the more it dilutes the party unity, and that unity is going to be essential to winning an election next year. I wish Ms. Warren had put country before ego.
Long time ago, July 2016, to be exact, I awarded Trump’s buddy Roger Stone (and his wife) my coveted 
His points made sense, as Will’s points most always do, and I had added her to my list of potentials. Then today comes the news that Ms. Klobuchar has a history of mistreating her staff. It is even said it caused such concerns that in 2015, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid spoke to her privately and told her to change her behavior, though Reid neither confirms nor denies. Sigh. Another one bites the dust. It becomes apparent to me that there will be early and multiple attempts to discredit any and every democrat who plans to run in 2020. Somebody, republicans and/or Russians, has already begun a concerted campaign to sling as much mud, to dig up as much dirt as possible on every candidate who appears to present a challenge to Trump. It is gonna be ugly, folks. I have to wonder if there will be any whose past won’t come back to haunt them over the next 21 months. Shoot me now.
Pulitzer Prize-winning George Will is a columnist for The Washington Post, with whom I rarely agree, yet I have more respect for him than for most any other columnist today. Will is politically conservative, while I am moderate-liberal, but he is respectful, intellectual and above all fair. He is an “equal opportunity” pundit who criticizes whichever side deserves it. And this campaign season, he has taken issue with none other than Trumpty=Dumpty! I knew I liked George! According to Will, Trump’s rhetoric about limiting freedom of the press will be comparable to a re-enactment of the Sedition Act of 1798. The act made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people.”
newspaper, or to see the online news sources reigned in such that they cannot report on the actions of the Trump administration? And what about us? Those of us who write blogs, who write op-ed pieces for newspapers would also be silenced. The reality, of course, is that even if Trump were to somehow win the election and become president, he could not change the 1st amendment easily, I suspect not at all. But the very fact that he wants to, that he is willing to trash what is arguably the most important right we are granted by the Bill of Rights, is troublesome, to say the very least.
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