George Will's a funny guy.  He is willing to aid our ideological foes for our own good.  He will teach us how wrong we've been to support President Trump by facilitating Marxist socialism's stranglehold on what's left of America's Constitution.  After fighting for Democrats to win everything this November, he will turn around and help us rebuild a Republican Party in his image for the miserable decades to come.

When we voted for Donald Trump in 2016, weren't we rebelling against not only Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but also the shriveled and putrid corpse of a Grand Old Party that had long since given up being grand while doubling its daily dosage of everything staid and old?  Twenty sixteen was a repudiation of the whole political system, including the dainty, impotent brand of conservatism that George Will has spent a lifetime peddling while the hard socialism he pretended to fight grew thicker and more resilient with each passing year.  He misdiagnosed what Republican voters wanted in 2016.  He has spent four years actively working against us.  Now he believes that his conservative creed — one that insists we retreat from the ideological field of battle while preserving the institutional integrity of whatever new monstrosities the socialists erect in the name of America — should pick up just where it left off before Donald Trump knocked him off his stool, stuck a wet finger in his ear, and gave him a long overdue wedgie.

Everything Will has written since the end of 2015 falls into one of three categories: (1) Donald Trump is not a traditional conservative (yep!); (2) it is so important to conserve conservatism that we must elect Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and the Marxist Millennials taking up Bernie Sanders's mantle (huh?); and (3) since Trump's support comes purely from a "cult of personality," once he is gone, traditional Republican voters will begin marching to the Will-Kristol-Romney Triumvirate of Timidity beat once again (no way!). 

In every essay dedicated to taking down President Trump, Will bemoans the president's vulgar name-calling by engaging in multisyllabic name-calling of his own.  In fact, Will seems particularly fond of calling supporters of President Trump vile slurs; he just prefers to do so behind allusions to Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More.  Apparently, it is not the president's tendency to insult his political opponents that bothers Will, but rather his insistence on using language that replaces the grace and sophistication of a witty barb with the blunt force of a traditional playground taunt.  Will's problem with the president isn't so much his appetite for combat as his flagrant disregard for the rules of the upper class.

Will is so adamant that his version of conservatism be represented by one of the two major parties that he has no tolerance for what Republican voters might actually desire.  If the Democratic Party represents the Marxist socialists, and the Republican Party concerns itself with making sure that only the "right" people rule while protecting our institutions at all costs, then what choice is left for the average American who puts personal freedom and our original constitutional protections ahead of marble halls and titles of eminence?  

Republicans had a smorgasbord of options in 2016 and chose Donald Trump.  Instead of reflecting on the meaning of that unexpected choice, Will has spent four years choosing to ignore it.  He still does not understand why it happened and why it will happen again in 2020.  By waving Trump voters away as little more than brainwashed and easily duped pawns, he clings to an image of the Republican electorate that no longer exists.  If George Will had tried to understand Trump voters with even a modicum of anthropological interest, if not basic human empathy, he would have realized that Donald Trump is president today because the American people found in him an escape hatch from a sinking and imploding federal government hull that seems intent on running itself aground.  That George Will and the hoity-toity bunch can't stomach Donald Trump is exactly what millions of American voters had in mind.  The more that D.C. insiders insist President Trump is unfit for office, the more fit for office President Trump proves to be.  And the more that NeverTrump conservatives ignore the accomplishments of the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan, the more disingenuous the "True Conservative" brand becomes.

How can a man who proudly burnishes his "Reagan Revolution" bona fides so fundamentally misunderstand the revolution taking place today?  He and the Washington resistance around him have been missing in action for too many years while the rest of us have been fighting back a socialist siege, and they are now aghast that the troops they have long purported to lead have bolted, leaving them stranded on the field to chase whatever fanciful windmills pique their interest.  For them now to show more backbone in fighting us than they ever have in fighting the socialist authoritarianism of the Democratic Party only strengthens our determination that the Republican Party never return to the days when conservatism meant voting for Hillary Clinton.

That George Will so misconstrues support for the president as nothing more than a flight of fancy reveals how little he thinks of Republican Party voters.  That he believes that the revolution of 2016 can be so easily erased from history reveals how little he's learned in the last four years.  That he believes that America is better off with the socialism of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders reveals that he has allowed his personal animosity for Donald Trump to crowd out any other principles worth conserving.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.