NeverTrump

Remember 'Anonymous'? He — or, of course, she (or 'zhe' or 'they', etc.) — was the person who, back in September 2018, wrote an anonymous op-ed for our former paper of record, 'I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.' 'Anonymous' claimed to be a 'senior Trump administration official'. He took to the pages of the official fish-wrap because he didn’t approve of President Trump. He and 'like-minded colleagues...have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda'. Indeed, according to 'Anonymous', 'many of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.' Who knows whether 'Anonymous' is for real — I mean, just how 'senior' do you suppose he (or, again, she, etc.

Politics, said Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Among other things, that apothegm pays homage to the pressure of the impossible, since deployment of the possible tacitly acknowledges the alternative. Invocation of 'the possible' is what makes Bismarck’s mot memorable; but what gives it teeth (not to mention logical coherence) is the appeal to 'art'. The statesman displays his skill by dancing gracefully among alternatives while avoiding the potholes of mere possibility that would topple him. In this sense, Bismarck’s observation is at odds with Jesus’s claim that 'With God all things are possible' (Matthew 19:26).

When Joe Walsh announced that he’d be running to be the Republicans’ nominee for 46th president of the United States, the phrase 'long shot' came to the minds of more than a few gamblers and political strategists. Regardless of the bookmakers and power brokers, it's more than possible for Walsh to shake up a political landscape dominated by Donald Trump. With the right political strategy, NeverTrumpers, with a Joe Walsh campaign as their representative, could beat Trump in 2020. In the era of Trump, 'long shots' are more than possible. Lest we forget, Trump was once a long shot. The polls said that he could never hit the bullseye. But today, he’s the leader of the free world.

With millions of people unemployed, finding a new job for a well-heeled Washington insider might seem like a low priority for Americans but I still believe it would be sensible and humane to find Bill Kristol another job. The poor fellow has spent years working in politics, and it just isn't working out for him – or anyone else. Mr Kristol is of course the son of neoconservative theorist Irving Kristol. Neoconservative families are unusually rich in political commentators. Irving Kristol's contemporary and ideological comrade Norman Podhoretz produced the columnist and editor John Podhoretz. Right-leaning historian Donald Kagan produced the neoconservative theorists Robert and Frederick. Conservative literary agent Lucianne Goldberg is the mother of conservative columnist Jonah.

A couple of days ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute announced that Donald Trump, pursuing a central campaign promise to cut federal regulations and ‘drain the swamp,’ had during his first two years in office issued the fewest new rules ‘in recorded history.’ In other news, Mitt Romney, the failed presidential candidate and incoming junior senator from Utah, published a stinging rebuke of the President in the Washington Post. ‘[H]is conduct over the past two years,’ Romney wrote, ‘particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.