You will be shocked to learn that David Brooks and Matt Bai have both gone anti-anti-Trump and, thus, are now effectively pro-Trump. Here’s how being anti-anti-Trump works: yes, Trump isn’t perfect but the dirty hippies and the elites in their Accela Corridor bubble are worse.
In other words, Trump changes nothing. We’re back to square one. We’ve always been at war with the Oberlin College student council.
The anti-anti-Trump coinage comes from the Weekly Standard, and it’s noteworthy that, for whatever reason, conservative writers are more likely these days to recognize that the American right is now unified primarily by its list of enemies. Tom Nichols, for example, nails it:
There is a more disturbing possibility here than pure ignorance: that voters not only do not understand these issues, but also that they simply do not care about them. As his supporters like to point out, Trump makes the right enemies, and that’s enough for them. Journalists, scientists, policy wonks — as long as “the elites” are upset, Trump’s voters assume that the administration is doing something right. “He makes them uncomfortable, which makes me happy,” Ohio Trump voter James Cassidy told the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale. Syria? Korea? Health care reform? Foreign aid? Just so much mumbo-jumbo, the kind of Sunday morning talk-show stuff only coastal elitists care about.
Cleek said it even better, of course:
today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today: updated daily.
And it’s not just mythical Trump voters drinking Buds in a bar next to the shuttered auto factory, it’s establishment media types like Bai and Brooks.