The anti-anti-Trump boys are enjoying seeing me argue with liberals today. It's a regular thing. But since I am procrastinating and avoiding work, I think I'll say something about how you liberals are now "my people" and you're stuck with me and all that jazz. /1
I'm not sure who my people are. My comrades at @ProjectLincoln, the #NeverTrump OGs, the @RVAT2020, @StandUpRepublic, many others. Mostly, conservatives, in a way that used to mean something in America. Before it was all just for the lulz and watching it all burn. /2
I am a conservative. I've said what I think that means in a long thread elsewhere. Liberals, for most of my life, drove me insane with their privileging of emotion over intellect, of radical change over incrementalism, their double-standards, their dismissal of prudence. /3
But that kind of screamy emotionalism is now also the hallmark of the *Republicans*. Anti-everything, with an extra helping of would-be theocrats and reckless gun nuts. They're nihilists who care about nothing but their cult and they are hypocrites beyond measure. /4
Liberals still make me crazy. @CharlesPPierce and I will argue when we're stashed in the Home for Old Massholes forever. I do not share most of the policy aims of progressives. Some I do, some I can live with. Some I detest. That's all for another time. /5
I always assumed the Left was more dangerous to the Constitution than the Right. Some *are*, in fact, short-pants totalitarians. But the entire GOP has become an anti-constitutional cult of personality. So I'm with liberals now; this threat is bigger than marginal tax rates. /6
Yes, it means being in the same boat with a lot of people I don't like. (Hi, AOC and Bernie.) But these people are mere pikers compared to the ice-cold anti-constitutionalism of people like Barr and the naked opportunism of people like McConnell. I am conservative, not stupid. /7
America needs a center-right party. It will have to be built after the current GOP is reduced to ashes. Then I'll go back to bitching about taxes and political correctness, because I still care about that stuff. But not as much I care as the Constitution. /8
I don't fear the irrevocable victory of the Bolsheviks or any of that crap. I *do* fear the GOP shredding the Constitution. You can roll back bad policy; you can't reestablish the Constitution and its norms. So here we are. /9
So I'll be voting to empower the Democrats as the opposition for as long as it takes for the GOP to collapse and a center-right alternative to emerge. (Maybe even out of the Dems, once their crackup comes.) I'll accept that it means allies who make me itch. No alternative. /10x
