Bret Stephens is one of the New York Times’ token conservatives, but “token” is far too kind a word.  Not only is he no William Safire, he has been the worst kind of NeverTrump.  Now he’s repenting:

It’s been more than nine years since I first denounced Donald Trump as a “loudmouth vulgarian appealing to quieter vulgarians.” I’ve called myself a Never Trump conservative ever since, even when I agreed with his policies from time to time. I also opposed him throughout his run this year. [snip]

Could his second term be as bad as his most fervent critics fear? Yes. Is it time to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement — and that rendered it politically impotent and frequently obtuse? Yes, please.

Who, and what, is Trump? He’s a man and the symbol of a movement. The man is crass but charismatic, ignorant but intuitive, dishonest but authentic. The movement is patriotic — and angry.

Some of that anger is intensely bigoted and some of it misplaced. That side of the anger gets most of the media’s attention. But some of it, too, is correctly directed at a self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better but often doesn’t, whether the subject is Covid restrictions, immigration policy or how to get our allies to pay more for their defense.

You get the idea.  With friends like that, who needs enemies?

It’s not just that Stephens believed that only someone from the elite establishment is qualified to be president.  It’s that he never gave more than lip service to conservative values.  In fact, most of the time, he cravenly acceded to the mainstream media’s narrative while our country’s survival was at the edge of the precipice, willing to let its values and protections go down the abyss forever.

It was obvious for some time that Trump-Russia collusion was a Democrat and Deep State plot to bring Trump down.  Where was Stephens, really?

Hunter Biden laptop: Where was Stephens, really?

The 51: Where was Stephens, really?

J6 grandmas sentenced to years just for walking through the Capitol building after being invited in by the Capitol Police: Where was Stephens, really?

Censorship: Where was Stephens, really?

I could go on, but you know this list too well.  If he had vigorously defended conservative values, expressed common sense when called for, and taken some real heat for his stances, including from his immature, hating, snowflake colleagues at the New York Times, that would be one thing.  But now, barely apologetic and still hurling insults, he wants to do a Jennifer Rubin — albeit in the other direction — after witnessing a revolt by half the country.

I realize that if we give the Bud Light treatment to most of the media, to leaders of countries who were anti-Trump, to every company that went along with wokeness and censorship and has now backtracked after public backlash and is now donating to Trump’s inauguration, to every professional athlete who kneeled during the anthem, and so on, there wouldn’t be much room to build bridges, and that could be counterproductive.  I personally have trouble forgiving any of them, and an argument can be made that not forgiving them is the only way to give pause to the next set of companies and personalities pondering trying something like that again.  (I do take some solace in Trump’s picks — e.g., Jay Bhattacharya for NIH after being censored and pilloried by NIH, when all he did was advocate through the Great Barrington Declaration what was essentially existing U.S. coronavirus policy of targeted protection for those at higher risk but no lockdowns.  The lapdog press derogatorily called it “let ’er rip.”  The schadenfreude with this pick is too good to be true.)

But Stephens’s position as a writer was to vigorously and eloquently defend conservative principles even if he wasn’t fond of Trump.  That was his whole job.  He failed miserably and is changing now only due to the prevailing winds.

I will never trust anything he says.  I won’t read his columns.  And if there are enough people like me, the New York Times should consider finding a new token conservative.  To Bret Stephens: apology not accepted.

W.A. Eliot is a pseudonym.

Image: Adam Jones via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).