No, Conservatives Haven't Abandoned Character Thanks To Trump | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

    Since Senator Mitt Romney's (R-UT) brutal Washington Post op-ed tearing into President Trump two days ago, the commentariat has been buzzing about how to judge Trump's character - and what such a judgment means about our view of the presidency and the Republican Party. Judgment of Trump's character seems to have broken down into three main categories: those who believe Trump is of good moral character; those who believe Trump is of poor moral character, and that this necessarily disqualifies him from the presidency; and those who believe Trump is of poor moral character, but that other considerations militate against his disqualification from the presidency.

    In my view, those who believe that Trump is a man of good moral character are wrong. He serially cheated on his wives, he cheated people in business, he's vulgar, he's a habitual friend of untruth, and he attacks anyone who crosses him in the most scurrilous terms. Now, that doesn't mean that he doesn't have qualities that can be utilized in good ways - for example, the same stubbornness that leads him to grossly label General Stanley McChrystal a scare-quoted "General" also leads him to dismiss those who insist that he kowtow to European public opinion. Some character traits can cut for both good and ill. Trump's aggressiveness makes him a hammer in search of a nail - and sometimes he hits the nail on the head. But overall, Trump isn't a man you'd want your children to model themselves after.

    Furthermore, attempts to read Trump's conservative policies back into his character are performing a moral sleight-of-hand. When Roger Kimball, a scholar I respect, states that Trump's conservative judicial appointments are "evidences of what sort of character Donald Trump is," this seems ass-backwards. It's a pure ends-justifies-the-means act of moral incoherence - so if Trump gives us tax cuts, this somehow justifies him paying off porn stars and attacking the fathers of fellow candidates as presidential assassins? Trump deserves character criticisms as much as any other human being, no matter his position on regulatory reform.

    This brings us to a more interesting and important question: should a man of poor moral character be disqualified from the presidency? Americans themselves don't seem particularly bothered by the question - after all, Bill Clinton had no moral character, and he remained popular to the last day in office; one would be hard-pressed to find a definition of moral character by which Lyndon Baines Johnson would be considered sterling. But conservatives contended in the 1990s that character mattered. Now many conservatives seem not to care, at least according to their critics, who allege that unless conservatives stand for Trump's ouster, they've abandoned all moral high ground politically.

    But I don't think that's correct. I think most conservatives still care about character. But most conservatives also recognize that moral standards must be commonly shared in order to be upheld - conservatives cannot hold themselves to a higher standard on character in politics while assuming in good faith that those on the Left will do so as well. This, I believe, is what Henry Olsen is getting at when he writes this:

    Romney ends by deploring division in our country. He's right to do so, but Republicans and TIGRs would differ with him regarding who's causing the division. Evangelicals and other traditional Christians feel they are under assault from a progressive Democratic Party that seeks to curtail their religious liberty. Conservatives are afraid of another progressive president who will expand government beyond all imagination, forever sundering America from its moorings in limited government.

    Now perhaps conservatives make the calculation that standing on principle means preserving a future path to victory as well as upholding a valuable standard - that was my position in 2016. But it's also understandable for conservatives to acknowledge that while character matters, resigning the field to those who both disdain character and promulgate far-Left politics isn't a good option. It's also understandable for conservatives to calculate that the field has shifted post-2016 to the point where the damage has already been done - the standards have already been collectively lowered, and won't be restored through inaction.

    This is a conversation that should be had. But it's simply simplistic to suggest, as Jonathan Chait does today, that the conservative movement has lost any semblance of morality. That's a self-flattering argument meant to justify sneering at those whose political priorities Chait doesn't share.