Not With a Bang, But a Limerick

Matt, and Musk, and Melania, Oh my.

Dec 30, 2024

As we stumble to end of this annus horribilis, some thoughts on the failure of Never Trumpism, some year-end dog pictures, and a gift you had no idea you wanted so much.

Happy Monday.

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Some Limericks of 2024

Feel free to entertain your fellow revelers tomorrow night with some of these limerick tributes to the year that was. They come from one of our exceptionally talented readers, who for modesty’s sake, prefers to remain both mysterious and anonymous.

Matt
There once was a guy named Matt Gaetz
Who often would pay for his dates
So his life came unglued
Because everyone knew
That his morals were not his best traits.
**
Steve
There once was a guy named Steve Bannon
Who shot off his mouth like a cannon
But the feds caught a whiff
Of the gentleman's grift
Which displayed his addiction to Mammon
**
First lady
Melania married for money
And thought that the outlook was sunny
But the man that she chose
Is a blow hard, God knows,
And her life with him's really not funny.
**
Vivek
We all know Vivek Ramaswamy
Whose logic is like origami
He creases and folds
With inventions so bold
Our heads start to pound like...tympani.
**
Elon
We did not elect Elon Musk
Who isn't a guy you can trust
But his manner with Trump
And his cadre of chumps
Makes them think that he's David Dean Rusk
**
RFK
Trump's nominee RFK junior
Pretends to defend the consumer
But a worm in his brain
Seemed to drive him insane
Now his intellect's only a rumor
**
He says he is anti-vaccine,
And that immunization's obscene
His polio plan
Is to impose a ban
Making iron-lung tech more routine.
**
Melania
Of glamorous dreams she had many,
But of love felt Melania not any
Still, her life became fraught
when despite what she'd thought
She really had earned every penny

(If you are inspired to write your own — or think you can do better — send them to me or simply post them in the comments. The author of the Winning Limerick will receive a lifetime paid membership to “To the Contrary.”)

"Real Never Trumpism has never been tried"

My friend and fellow Cheesehead James Wigderson offers a rebuttal to my recent comments about the fate of Never Trumpism.

I was cheerfully listening to a conversation between Never Trumpers Charlie Sykes and Adam Kinzinger when Sykes casually let slide:
"Actually, I'm really glad you asked me that question because you and I should have a conversation, an off-the-record conversation sometime, about why Never Trump failed so completely. And let's be honest about it - completely."
Wait. What? Did Never Trump fail?
Well, objectively speaking, former President Donald Trump did make a triumphant electoral return despite our best efforts….
My first reaction to Sykes' comment was both a nod and a sarcastic, "Real Never Trumpism has never been tried."
It was an intentional reference to the political left's "True Communism/Socialism has never been tried," a remark that conservatives have correctly mocked since at least the 1980s.
But... has true Never Trumpism been tried? Did I accidentally identify the problem?
Let's look at the history. In 2015, Trump came down the escalator promising the destruction of the Republican Party, and the political system, as we knew it. We went from being told by those "in the know" that there was no way Trump would win to an all-out panic when he surged to the top of the polls. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker even dropped out of the presidential race and called upon the rest of the party to unite behind an alternative.
In "Popular Front" style politics, that's what would have happened. It almost happened after the Wisconsin Republican primary election in 2016 when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) defeated Trump and National Review published its "Never Trump" edition.
But then Republicans continued to embrace Trump, including many in Congress and Republican institutions. Many of the Republicans that expressed their opposition to Trump either retreated from the affray or joined the Trump coalition.
After four years of Trump in the White House, including the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the violence of January 6, Never Trump among Republicans lasted three weeks.
On the other side, our potential coalition partners in the Democratic Party never seemed to understand the threat Trumpism posed to our Democratic system. We saw it in Wisconsin, the birthplace of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, when Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) dragged his feet on charging any of the participants. He was following the example of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. It was as if the Democrats were hoping Trump and his supporters would just fade away after January 6 - just like the "normie" Republicans….
We can't even get the Democrats to take the threat of Trumpism seriously enough to run candidates that can appeal to moderate Republicans. In 2022, Wisconsin Democrats cleared the way for former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes to win the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate to run against Senator Ron Johnson. Despite warnings from Never Trump Republicans about Barnes' numerous flaws as a candidate, Democrats decided they would rather cry "racism" (in a state that voted for President Barack Obama twice) when Barnes lost rather than run a candidate that could win….
The Barnes-Johnson Senate race would be a foretelling of the 2024 presidential race when an unpopular incumbent president, widely perceived to be too old to serve another term, skated through the Democratic primaries without any substantial opposition. When the Democrats finally bowed to the inevitable and replaced President Joe Biden as their nominee, they chose without any opposition a candidate who ran for president as a Progressive in 2020 and flopped badly, Vice President Kamala Harris, when there were more capable and more appealing Democrats sitting on the bench.
Harris' campaign did provide a brief period of Never Trump "Popular Front" politics by seeking the endorsements of prominent conservatives who opposed Trump, but it was too little, too late, and even generated scorn within the Democratic Party.
"In fact, the entire conservative Never Trump industrial complex should just sit down, shut up, and watch the oncoming parade," Charles Pierce wrote in Esquire after the election. "Hell, they’re some of its original founders."
It's those kind of mixed signals that make Never Trump conservatives feel almost unwanted.
So let's concede that Never Trump did not stop Trump from returning to the White House. Never Trump did not organize opposition within the Republican Party and within institutions of the right against Trumpism. Never Trump did not prevent the Republican Party from jettisoning its conservative ideology in favor of fear, nativism, paranoia, statism, and authoritarianism. Never Trump even watched as Republican politicians, one by one, defected from a Never Trump conservative position to one of accommodation (if not outright enthusiastic support) for Trumpism.
Yes, Never Trumpism failed.
But on the other hand, when Republican politicians failed to live up to their stated principles, when the Democratic Party fails to adjust to the threat to the Constitutional order posed by Trumpism, when conservative elites cannot bring themselves to defend their beliefs, when other potential coalition partners cannot even bring themselves to choose a side between good and evil, the problem is not Never Trumpism.
The problem is Never Trumpism has never been tried.

You can subscribe to Wigderson’s excellent newsletter here.

But None Dare Call it Rape?

So much losing. On Monday: “An Appeals Court Upholds a $5 million Award in a Sexual Abuse Verdict Against Trump.”

“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings," the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”

This is what the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump, Docket No. 23–793–cv:

“Mr. Trump ‘immediately shut the door’ and ‘shoved [her] against the wall … so hard [that] [her] head banged.’
“Ms. Carroll pushed Mr. Trump back, but ‘he thrust [her] back against the wall again,’ causing her to ‘bang[] [her] head again.’
With his shoulder and the whole weight of his body against her, Mr. Trump held her against the wall, kissed her, pulled down her tights, and stuck his fingers into her vagina—until Ms. Carroll managed to get a knee up and push him back off of her.’
She immediately ‘exited the room’ and left the store ‘as quickly as [she] could.’ The encounter lasted just a few minutes.
“Within a day, Ms. Carroll told two friends, Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin, about the sexual assault.”

And….

“The jury could reasonably infer from Ms. Stoynoff's testimony and the Access Hollywood tape that Mr. Trump engaged in similar conduct with other women - a pattern of abrupt, nonconsensual, and physical advances on women he barely knew.”

You can read the court’s ruling here. And perhaps forward it to ABC’s lawyers.