A common and growing concern of many former Trump voters is, while they support his policies and like his accomplishments while in office, they now believe the former president lacks the ability and discipline to deliver on his promises and priorities, due in large part to his continual unforced errors.
So suggested the Wall Street Journal editorial board — not exactly a “fake news” bunch — on Monday, saying: “Those voters might consider the warning from Mr. Trump’s second Attorney General, William Barr.”
As transcribed by the WSJ, Barr told the City Club of Cleveland on Friday:
If you believe in his policies, what he’s advertising as his policies, he’s the last person who could actually execute them and achieve them. He does not have the discipline. He does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking, setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system. It’s a horror show, you know when he’s left to his own devices.
Barr continued:
And so you may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies. He will deliver chaos, and if anything, lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be.
“Barr should know,” wrote the WSJ editorial board, “having worked for President Trump for 22 months.”
This was far from Barr’s first rodeo in which he warned Republican voters about the perils, as he sees them, of a second Trump presidency. As I reported in June 2022, Barr said he was “all in for restoring America, but warned that “Trump is not that man.”
I’m all for restoring America. That’s what I’m all about, is restoring the greatness of this country. And the principle threat is this progressive agenda. The only way to do that is not to speak about some other election and continue this trench warfare but instead, a breakthrough election that will create and usher in an era just like Reagan did.
Rationality suggests Barr was right in 2022, and he’s right in 2023.
The potential problem is, a large bloc of GOP voters have replaced rationality with loyalty to one man — vs. loyalty to conservative principles as a whole and best positioning the GOP to kick Joe Biden and his far-left handlers the hell out of the White House in 2024.
Here’s more, from the viewpoint of the WSJ editorial board:
Most GOP opponents of nominating Mr. Trump for the third straight time for President say he can’t win. The Republican election record since 2018, including his loss to President Biden, suggests that’s right. But events are unpredictable, including the pace of Mr. Biden’s physical and mental decline.
Mr. Barr’s point, and it’s more powerful than the electability argument, is that Mr. Trump won’t be able to govern successfully even if he did somehow win a second term. He wouldn’t be able to deliver the conservative policy victories that most Republicans want.
The rebuttal from the Trump establishment will be to cite his first term, but that record supports Mr. Barr’s point. We also agree with many of Mr. Trump’s policies, and we backed them during his Presidency. But his most important policy victories were conventional GOP priorities delivered by people he now denounces as “RINOs.”
Incidentally, the WSJ put quotation marks around “RINO” because Donald Trump and Trump loyalists have bastardized the intended definition of RINO — Republican In Name Only — in an attempt to summarily dismiss conservatives who refuse to walk lock-step with Trump in a negative light.
Finally, the WSJ weighed in on Trump’s first term, as well:
The Federalist Society delivered his list of judges that then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell guided to Senate confirmation. Paul Ryan and House Republicans spent years building policy and political capital for tax reform.
Vice President Mike Pence supplied some of Mr. Trump’s best policy advisers. While Mr. Trump deserves credit for embracing these people and policies, his second term would be filled by much lesser lights.
The record on Mr. Trump’s signature ideas isn’t as successful. He failed to build the border wall, and even with a GOP majority in Congress in his first two years, he never passed an immigration bill that reformed the “credible fear” standard of persecution for migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. All the dysfunctions of U.S. immigration law were there for Mr. Biden to exploit.
Mr. Trump’s trade agenda also achieved little other than higher costs for Americans. China’s behavior hasn’t improved, while the U.S. is out of the successor deal to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Mr. Trump walked away from. He failed to negotiate a new bilateral deal with the United Kingdom.
Welp, let’s wrap this one up, shall we?
After years of conservative takes from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who’d a thunk that the WSJ is nothing more than “fake news” run by a bunch of “RINOS”? Heh.
2024 matters. Let’s not screw it up.
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