The beginning-of-2018 take on DJT: He's facilitated a lot of good things, but being his slavish cheerleader is still an unhealthy thing

For starters, let's retire the term "#NeverTrumpers."  Actual conservatives who strongly opposed Trump and still find him objectionable on many if not most fronts - most of the writers for National Review, The Weekly Standard, Red State, and, of course, LITD - understand that the guy holds the office of President. The only crowd refusing to acknowledge that is those who turn any topic of discussion to him, however strained the rationale, just so they can vent their blind hatred.

The slavish devotees seem not to have noticed, but those of us in the still-find-him-objectionable category are in the vanguard of putting forth the argument that one can acknowledge two facts at the same time.

Joe Cunningham at Red State puts it thusly:

Trump doesn’t make something less conservative or less good simply because he takes part in it. As much as his supporters might tell you otherwise, Trump is not the movement, and the movement is not Trump. However, at times there is overlap, and we must celebrate when it occurs and good things happen. To refuse to acknowledge this fact is absurd.

Rich Lowry at NRO articulates it this way:

I really don’t get how Trump critics think it is scoring a point against Trump to say that any Republican would have done the same things Trump has in the first year. If you are an orthodox conservative, this should be something to be celebrated and redound to Trump’s credit. If you are a populist supporter of Trump’s, you have more cause to be disappointed, especially given how Trump — besides the foolish pull-out from TPP — hasn’t yet done anything substantial to follow up on his campaign rhetoric on trade. (That will likely change in the year ahead.) For my part, Trump’s record so far is more orthodox than I expected, and I think it’s not something to be churlish about, but to gladly acknowledge and praise.

But then there are those slavish devotees. Last night, I subjected myself to about ten minutes of FNC's Hannity, just because what he was doing caught my attention as I was channel-surfing. It was a first-year-of-Trump review in the form of highlights from his rallies over the past twelve months, with ridiculously grandiose music in between each bit of footage. It was so over the top, it could have been parody. Or there's this Townhall column today from a guy associated with Liberty University named Larry Provost. It's entitled "What We Owe Trump in 2018." Seriously. As is typical of slavish devotees, the writing is devoid of flourish and long on cliches. He calls DJT "the gutsiest politician in America" and reiterates the line that they all include in their slobber-fests: "He is fighting for us." But that title is downright creepy. I don't owe any president anything. One in my lifetime has had a sufficiently satisfactory combination of principle and character to earn the kind of admiration I otherwise reserve for people in other occupations, but I can readily point to the decisions that even he made that disappointed me.

Look, the list of what's been accomplished is great:

• judicial appointments
• pulling out of the Paris Accord
• oil drilling on federal lands
• 86ing the admission of transgendered people into the military
• pushing for a lowered corporate tax rate
• moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
• supporting the groundswell of opposition in Iran
• speaking sternly and candidly to Pakistan, China, and North Korea

But he remains the boor, the narcissist and petty man-child he's always been and that is having its impact as well.

His presence on the scene provides us all the opportunity to look at whether we are participating in the national discourse based on tribalism or a coherent set of timeless principles.

SIDE NOTE: Speaking of One-Note-Johnnies who are so obsessed with something they'll work it into completely unrelated discussions, a comment underneath Lowry's post (actually underneath a Hot Air reprinting of it) reveals that at least a certain kind of slavish Trump devotee has something significant in common with hard-left Trump-haters: antisemitism:

Conservative Supremacist like Lowry need to go away. Why don't you NeoCons just burn a star of david on the white house lawn?

You really miss the point of Trump. He did not start any NEW PROGRAMS or WARS. Its not what he did, it's what he's not doing.

No Child left behind. Free Drugs for seniors, Iraq War, Afghanistan War......

Talk about missing a point. This guy is clearly so ate up with his obsession about "neocons" (another term that needs to be retired post haste; Lowry is not a neocon; most actual neoconservatives are either dead or getting on in years) that he cannot see that Lowry is coming to the commenter's hero's defense. Such is the incoherence that gains a foothold when tribalism holds sway in our national discourse.