One need only look at the titles of Mona Charen’s books to see how right-wing her views are — titles like “Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First” and “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)” as well as “Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love and Common Sense.” But Charen is no fan of President Donald Trump, who she believes has been terrible for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. And in a biting July 29 article for The Bulwark, the 63-year-old opinion columnist/author and former Nancy Reagan speechwriter argues that the more victories Democrats enjoy in November, the better off conservatism will be in the long run.
Charen is not only hoping that former Vice President Joe Biden will defeat Trump by a “landslide” in November — she is also hoping to see Democrats retake the U.S. Senate and increase their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. That doesn’t mean that Charen is turning liberal or progressive or even centrist, contrary to what Trumpistas claim; rather, Charen shares The Lincoln Project’s view that Trumpism has been so toxic for conservatism that a massive blue wave is needed to repudiate it.
Republicans in the Senate and House who refused to stand up to Trump, Charen stresses, were “enablers” — and they need to pay a price for it politically in November.
“Donald Trump undermined the institution of the free press, urging his followers to disbelieve everything except what came from the leader,” Charen writes. “And Republicans were silent. He weakened respect for law enforcement and the courts…. And Republicans were silent. He enriched himself and his family, and Republicans were silent. He introduced doubt about accepting the results of elections. He scorned allies and toadied to dictators. And Republicans were silent.”
Charen, in her article, takes issue with fellow Never Trump conservative David French — who is vehemently anti-Trump but disagrees with The Lincoln Project’s “burn it all down” approach and believes that getting rid of as many GOP senators as possible is akin to shooting the hostages. GOP senators who are afraid to stand up to Trump, as French sees it, are his hostages. But Charen sees them as complicit in Trump’s abuses.
“Voting against a candidate or even a whole party is not nihilism,” Charen emphasizes. “It’s not ‘burning it all down.’ It’s the legal, constitutional way to express approval or disapproval. The current Republican Party has itself chosen to become the arsonist party. It has decided to go along with undermining faith in institutions, shredding norms, elevating conspiracy theories, disregarding laws and tossing aside truth whenever the leader dictates. The most demoralizing aspect of the past four years has not been that a boob conman was elected president, but that one of the two great political parties surrendered to him utterly.”
Charen expresses no sympathy for Republicans who are only willing to criticize Trump behind closed doors, stressing that a Democratic landslide is the fate they deserve.
“If more Republicans had shown a willingness to stand for basic political hygiene, for elemental human decency earlier in this awful era, it might have become contagious,” Charen argues. “But since that did not happen, the only thing that will send a message to the Republican Party commensurate with its moral abdication over the past four years is to lose in a landslide — not just Trump, but his silent enablers too.”
