On Court Pick, Never Trumpers Should Give Trump His Due
Recently, Bill Kristol took to Twitter to make it clear that Trump’s Supreme Court pick will be “a product of the intellectual, educational, and organizational efforts of serious conservatives in recent decades,” and not a “product of what Trumpism could produce.” The goal here is to deny the president credit for his Supreme Court pick, which most agree is likely to be a solid conservative that constitutional originalists will be happy to support.
In a sense, Kristol is correct. Trump will have a good deal of assistance from astute conservative legal minds in making his pick. But at this point of Trump’s presidency, comments like Kristol’s serve less to inform the debate and more to confirm the worst assumptions of the president’s most ardent supporters.
Such comments cut to the heart of what the #NeverTrump movement was about. For some, it was based on the president’s non-conservative temperament in rhetoric and personal behavior. But for many others, it was based on a fear that Trump as president would not push forward a conservative agenda. This subset of Trump skeptics set themselves up as the conscience of the movement, standing athwart the wave of populism that threatened to undermine American conservatism.
Some of those fears have indeed been realized. For instance, on trade policy, Trump is pushing policies that are less Milton Friedman and more Bernie Sanders. But in many other areas, Trump’s record has been a positive one, with his previous Supreme Court pick of Gorsuch being a prime example. To slight the president because he’s getting advice from serious conservatives on his Supreme Court picks is the height of absurdity for those who also question Trump’s conservative credentials.
If Trump skeptics still truly desire the mantle of the conscience of the movement, it is vital that they be as ready to praise the right decision as they are to tweet against the bad ones.
Perhaps the Trump skeptics’ biggest complaint is that his supporters blindly follow him even when he takes positions inconsistent with the traditional ideology of the Republican Party. This can be seen in polls, where Republican support for free trade has fallen dramatically over the past two years. But Trump skeptics exhibit the same kind of blindness in their opposition to everything that Trump does. They seem to care less about the conservative movement than seeing Trump fail; and more about their new popularity with the liberal media than the conservative causes to which many of them have devoted substantial portions of their life.
Kristol denies that a solid Supreme Court pick could be the product of Trumpism, but the reality is that Trumpism is still yet to be defined. As it crystallizes, there are pieces of it that are doubtless concerning to those that hold true to the principals Adam Smith or Edmund Burke. But rather than taking their proverbial ball and going home, Trump skeptics should recognize that they can still play a role in shaping the story of the Trump presidency. Denying credit for good moves only serves exclude them from the debate: an outcome that is assuredly worse for the party in the long run than swallowing one’s pride and giving credit where credit is due.
Will Flanders is Research Director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
