Friday, November 22, 2019

Peggy Noonan Reminds Us Why Trump Won

Three years after outsider Donald Trump blew up the political world with his implausible victory over the consummate insider, Hillary Clinton, many establishment Republicans still don't get it.

The grande dame of the disgruntled NeverTrump Republicans has been the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, whose columns on Trump usually sound like a mash-up of the prescriptions of Emily Post and a snobbery redolent of Lady Violet Crawley from Downton Abbey.

As typical of a Noonan column, she starts with some sly preening of her insider-status as a wise political guru: "A young foreign-affairs professional asked last week if the coming impeachment didn't feel like Watergate." Unlike hoi polloi, Noonan knows "Foreign-affairs professionals," and they seek her out for her wisdom.

Noonan goes on to expand on her elevation of "Professionalism" by giving us the res gestae of acting ambassador William Taylor, consisting mainly of his military record.

What infuriates them about Trump, aside from his affrontery of getting elected over the highly credentialed Hillary Clinton, is that though lacking such credentials, and contemptuous of the political decorum of the ruling caste and their advice, he has been remarkably successful both at home and abroad. Moreover, the government agencies Noonan extolls are large, hierarchically organized, public-funded bureaucracies.

Finally, like most NeverTrumpers, Noonan seems to think she can read Trump's mind and discover his unsavory motives: "They know what this story is, and I believe they absolutely know the president muscled an ally, holding public money over its head to get a personal political favor." Talk about a big begged question to go along with her other fallacies like the false analogy and argument from authority.

It's hard to believe Trump "Muscled" or "Extorted" or "Bribed" the Ukrainians when they didn't even know the aid Trump allegedly withheld had been delayed.


https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/peggy-noonan-reminds-us-why-trump-won-bruce-thornton/

No comments: