NY Times columnist David French is a right-wing religious fanatic and an anti-Choice, homophobic nut from Alabama who was also one of the original NeverTrumpers. As far as I can tell, he never publicly endorsed either Hillary in 2016 or Biden in 2020, although it’s pretty inconceivable that he would have voted for Trump in either election. Yesterday, he announced that he’s voting for Kamala in November “to save conservatism.”
“Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015,” he wrote, “the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as ‘traitors.’ What allegiance do you owe a party, a movement or a politician when it or they fundamentally change their ideology and ethos?… I have never seen a human being lie with the intensity and sheer volume of Donald Trump. Even worse, Trump’s lies are contagious.”
French, being an ardent conservative, is a liar himself.He implied that the Republican would-be Trump assassin was a leftist after he wrote “Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. One of the saddest stories of our time is the way in which even local election officials and local school board members fear for their safety. The level of threat against public officials has escalated in the MAGA era, MAGA Republicans often wield threats as a weapon against Republican dissenters, and every American should remember Jan. 6, when a mob of insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol... “[O]nly one party has nominated a man who was indicted for his role in the criminal scheme to steal an American election, a scheme that culminated in a violent political riot. Only one party nominated a man who began the first rally of his 2024 campaign with a song by violent insurrectionists. He played ‘Justice for All,’ a bastardized version of the national anthem by a group called the J6 Prison Choir. The song features the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ interspersed with excerpts of Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance.
It’s not just Trump’s lies that are contagious, but his cruelty as well, and that cruelty is embedding itself deeply within one of Trump’s most loyal constituencies, conservative evangelicals. It is difficult to overstate the viciousness and intolerance of MAGA Christians against their political foes. There are many churches and Christian leaders who are now more culturally Trumpian than culturally Christian. Trump is changing the church.
And to what end?
It is fascinating to me that there are voices online who still claim that a person can’t be Christian and vote for Democrats, when the Trump campaign watered down the Republican platform on abortion to such an extent that it’s functionally pro-choice. Earlier generations of the pro-life movement would not have tolerated such a retreat. They would have made it clear that there were some principles Republicans simply can’t abandon without becoming a fundamentally different party.
It becomes even stranger to claim that Christians can’t vote for Democrats when the prime-time lineup at the Republican convention featured an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched— and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.
…[H]ow many Republicans would have predicted that voting for a Democrat would be the best way to confront violent Russian aggression and that the Republican would probably yield to a Russian advance? In many ways, the most concretely conservative action I can take in this election is to vote for the candidate who will stand against Vladimir Putin. By voting for pro-life politicians down ballot, I can help prevent federal liberalization of abortion law. But if a president decides to abandon Ukraine and cripple NATO, there is little anyone can do.
While there are voters who are experiencing a degree of Trump nostalgia, remembering American life pre-Covid as a time of full employment and low inflation, there is a different and darker story to tell about Trump’s first term. Our social fabric frayed. It’s not just that abortions increased: The murder rate skyrocketed; drug overdose deaths hit new highs; marriage rates fell; and birthrates continued their long decline. Americans ended his term more divided than when it began.
I’m often asked by Trump voters if I’m “still conservative,” and I respond that I can’t vote for Trump precisely because I am conservative. I loathe sex abuse, pornography and adultery. Trump has brought those vices into the mainstream of the Republican Party. I want to cultivate a culture that values human life from conception through natural death. Yet America became more brutal and violent during Trump’s term. I want to defend liberal democracy from authoritarian aggression, yet Trump would abandon our allies and risk our most precious alliances.
The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life.
A better way to do it:
Someone (french) still has access to that "bad brown acid" from woodstock.
the (now) nazi party has NEVER been a force for "genuine good". It's always been a force for greed and hate (in either order). Well, once Lincoln was snuffed, that is.
But I suppose someone as purely evil as french actually feels that hate and greed are what this shithole needs more of and liberal altruism is contraindicated in a democracy? who the fuck knows?
trump didn't change the nazi party. he stumbled along at the perfect time for a party that had run roughshod over 'america the shithole' for 50 years with zero opposition in 2016. He was adopted as the white christian caliphate's messiah. And, b…