Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. occupies the Oval Office solely because he is not Donald Trump.  He has no qualities to recommend him as POTUS beyond that.  Arguably, it was the support of NeverTrumps that provided his margin of victory in the scandal-ridden 2020 election.  Now that his presidency is collapsing due to his complete ineptitude, those NeverTrumps owe us an explanation for their support of this disaster.

Former Reagan speechwriter and prominent NeverTrump Peggy Noonan indicated that she had broken with President Biden over his voting rights speech in Georgia, June 11, in her January 15 Wall Street Journal column.  It would not, I think, be unfair to conclude that with this speech, President Biden has lost Peggy Noonan, who wrote, among other things: "The speech itself was aggressive, intemperate, not only offensive, but meant to offend."  Clearly, the speech was intended to provoke former president Trump, with its invidious references to him — references, however, that Ms. Noonan happened to overlook.

To have a sense of where Peggy Noonan stands on the issue of Donald J. Trump, two of her many columns on or about Mr. Trump shed some light, I think, on her problem with Trump Derangement Syndrome.  There are, as examples, her column extolling the courage of Rep. Liz Cheney, seeing her as facing down her GOP colleague/cowards  — and her July 2021 column attacking President Trump for being "weak and sniveling."

Early in this demagogic speech, Biden stated, "The violent mob of January 6th, 2021 empowered and encouraged by a defeated former president, sought to win through violence what he had lost at the ballot box, to impose the will of the mob, to overturn a free and fair election, and, for the first time — the first time in America's history, they — to stop the peaceful transfer of power."   By omitting this vicious calumny, Ms. Noonan did not have to denounce it for the lie it is.

Or consider this lie, not cited by Ms. Noonan: "The goal of the former president and his allies is to disenfranchise anyone who votes against him. ... That's the kind of power you see in totalitarian states, not in democracies."  It should be no surprise that Biden, in the course of his extreme remarks urged mail-in voting and drop ballot boxes for Georgia voters, while accusing George Republicans of placing obstacles in the way of free and honest elections.

Biden also included an anecdote about a civil rights worker in Mississippi who was taken off a bus, arrested, jailed, brutally beaten, and visited by friends the next day.  He could only whisper the word "freedom."  What did Biden intend by that anecdote — to say Georgia Republicans will treat Democrat voters this way in coming elections?

Interestingly, Ms. Noonan cited the remarks of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell rebuking Biden, in the Senate, January 12.  McConnell (another Trump-loather) was quoted by the columnist, in part, as saying: "Mr. Biden's speech 'was profoundly unpresidential,' 'deliberately divisive,' and 'designed to pull our country farther apart.'"

Another McConnell quote, courtesy of Ms. Noonan, "In less than a year, restoring the soul of America has become: Agree with me or you're a bigot."

Where has Mitch McConnell — and Peggy Noonan — been since June 2015, when Donald J. Trump announced his presidency?  Have they not heard the calumnies directed at Mr. Trump from the likes of the Bidens: vote for him and you're a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, and whatever other group they left can think of for purposes of assailing Mr. Trump?  And didn't McConnell denounce President Trump for January 6 in terms not unlike the convenient lies of the Trump-loathers?

There was, of course, one great omission in Noonan's column, and also in McConnell's reply to Biden: an apology to Donald J. Trump for falling for the false and vicious leftist denunciations intended to tar and feather the true, patriotic nature of the former president.

Noonan concluded her column with a long paragraph that merits attention in its own terms, and for ironic instruction:

When national Democrats talk to the country, they always seem to be talking to themselves. They are of the left, as is their constituency, which wins the popular vote in presidential elections; the mainstream media is of the left; the academics, historians and professions they consult are of the left. They get in the habit of talking to themselves, in their language, in a single, looped conversation. They have no idea how they sound to the non-left, so they have no idea when they're damaging themselves. But this week in Georgia Mr. Biden damaged himself.  And strengthened, and may even have taken a step in unifying, the non-Democrats who are among their countrymen, and who are in fact the majority of them.

The irony is obvious.  Who joins Democrats in Beltway talk if not the media and the Republican Senate leadership?  As for Biden's speech, it could have been delivered by an AOC, a Bernie Sanders, a Hillary Clinton — or a Barack Obama.  That the words were delivered by Biden should not be a surprise.  The only difference is that some years back, he was forced to leave the presidential race because of plagiarism.  As president, he just reads the words of others put in a teleprompter for purpose of trying to fool the people.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 license.