Thread by @bansisharma

@DavidAFrench David, you are right on the facts (other than abortion which I will address below) and yet wrong on the sentiment. The battle in America between conservatism and liberalism is not one of ledgers, it is a battle of the spirits. 1/

@DavidAFrench Allow me to dispense your "abortion victories" argument with a simple observation that the decline in the number of abortions in the U.S. has mirrored the declines in Europe and in all developing countries. There has not been a more dramatic decline in the U.S. comparatively. 2/

@DavidAFrench Be that as it may, it is undeniable that both conservatism and liberalism have had significant wins in the U.S. prior to Trump and will continue to do so after Trump. Any factual accounting, like the one you did, would reveal that. 3/

@DavidAFrench What many/most conservatives feel sore about, however, is how lousy they have been made to feel about themselves for having done nothing wrong. In that sense, the conservative wins never felt like wins because the traditional "conservative leaders" never quite celebrated them. 4/

@DavidAFrench Let us look at the day-to-day impact on individual conservatives' lives from the conservative victories you listed, very important as they are. If you don't carry a gun, don't have any abortions in your family, and don't home-school your children, what impact do you feel? 5/

@DavidAFrench Tens of millions of conservatives go through their entire lives without feeling any immediate impact from any of the conservative victories you listed. Don't get me wrong. I totally agree that those things are extremely important. I am just saying their impact isn't immediate. 6/

@DavidAFrench Yet no conservative can go through a single day in their life without feeling the immediate impact of liberal victories shoved into their face. Turn on the TV, bam! Visit your child's school, bam! Open your internet browser, bam! Watch sports, bam! Attend a concert, bam! 7/

@DavidAFrench Still, people got used to a lot of that abuse as part of the zeitgeist. And then came Obama and his apology tours. Now the President of the United States was going around the world telling everyone that Americans weren't worthy. They had done wrong! 8/

@DavidAFrench To liberals, Obama was a Messiah, so they couldn't care less about it. Heck, most of them felt the same way anyway. They are always ashamed of America for one reason or another. But for conservatives that was the last straw. 9/

@DavidAFrench Upstanding conservative Americans who had made sacrifices all their lives for their families, for their nation, and for the world (Americans are among the most generous people in the world), were now being made to feel guilty just for being Americans, by their own President. 10/

@DavidAFrench This did not feel like any goddamn victory of anything conservative ever. This felt like utter loss and humiliation in the face of crass liberalism run amok. 11/

@DavidAFrench And no "conservative" leader with presidential aspirations had the guts to effectively beat back this assault on the decency of heartland Americans. Along comes Trump and says: Friends, let's Make America Great Again! BAM!!! The rest is history. 12/

@DavidAFrench If you can't understand this, you can't understand why the mainstream conservatives support Trump. They owe him. He stood up for them when no one else could. Not that others didn't want to. They didn't know how to. No one else could win against the Clinton machine. 13/

@DavidAFrench It needed a street fighter who didn't give a damn about his reputation, who had no compunction to sound Ivy League, who couldn't be taken down by the urbane, elegantly spoken, baritone voices on NPR and PBS, and erudite but deceitful columns in NYT and WaPo. 14/

@DavidAFrench Trump is his supporters' collective middle finger to their tormentors in the media, academia, Hollywood, Democrat Party, and so many other crevices of our society at large. 15/

@DavidAFrench Trump is the mainstream conservatives' attempt to restore some semblance of a cultural power balance between the liberal and conservative strains in the body politic of America. Your ledger-entry-accounting column fails to capture that. Other than that, you nailed it! 16/end