This may shock you, but it turns out Max Boot opposes Trump, won’t vote for him, and won’t vote for the GOP.
In a column two days ago, Max Boot wrote, “Much of my journalism for the past four years has been devoted to critiquing President Trump and opposing the spread of Trumpism. But no matter how many columns or sound bites I produce, he remains in office, acting (as Sharpiegate shows) more erratically than ever. Sure, he’s not terribly popular — but he could still be reelected. I am left to ask if all my work has made any difference.”
If you define the success or failure of your life solely by whether you have removed a president from office outside of an election, then no, you have not made much of a difference. But at least Boot is self-aware that he’s been relentlessly focused on one argument. If he feels like people aren’t listening to him anymore, perhaps it is because they feel like they already know what he’s going to say.
Max Boot, on Twitter, February 29, 2016: “I’m a lifelong Republican but Trump surge proves that every bad thing Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true.”
Boot, in a signed letter, March 2, 2016: “As committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head. We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”
Boot, March 3, 2016: “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump. I would far more readily support Hillary Clinton, or Bloomberg if he ran.”
July 28, 2016: “I wasn’t an Obama voter, but he makes you feel good about being an American. Trump makes me ashamed.”
November 6, 2016: “I’m voting for Hillary Clinton, and real Republicans should, too.”
July 4, 2018: “I join Will and other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November.”
August 22, 2018: “The voters of the United States must now say to this Congress what Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament in 1653: ‘Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. . . . Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. . . . Go, get you out! Make haste! . . . In the name of God, go!’”
Sometime in October 2018, in an interview with David Corn in Mother Jones magazine: “For the health of our republic, I think we need to destroy the Republican Party.”
October 8, 2018: “I’m urging everybody to vote straight-ticket Democratic in November, because I think it’s imperative to get some checks and balances.”
October 11, 2018: “The next day I knew what I had to do which was after a lifetime as a Republican, as a movement conservative, I re-registered as an independent because I knew — I just knew at that point — I could not be part of this Trump-ified Republican Party.”
October 31, 2018: “Vote for Democrats on Tuesday. For every office. Regardless of who they are.”
February 25, 2019: “I am worried about the Democrats’ drift to the left, but I can never imagine voting again for a Republican Party that represents a clear and present danger to democracy in the United States.”
March 9, 2019: A return to the Republican Party is “hard for me to imagine.”
April 23, 2019: “We should not be voting for the Republican party,” and Trump’s defeat is “imperative,” or else “our democracy would be badly damaged.”
August 26, 2019: “Since Republicans are blindly following the naked emperor, the political reality is that we will have to wait 14 more months for an election to remove him from office — and hope that the United States survives his hallucinations until then.”
August 31, 2019: “I will vote for any Democratic nominee, even Warren or Sanders, despite my profound disagreement with their far-left agendas.”
September 9, 2019: “The electorate wants more, not less, engagement in the world. The public’s rejection of Trumpism gives me some hope that we can recover from this disastrous presidency — especially if it ends on Jan. 20, 2021.”
It’s a free country, and Boot can write whatever he likes about the president and the GOP. But at some point, don’t his editors get tired of him turning in columns that declare he won’t vote for Republicans and that no one else should vote for Republicans, over and over again?
Preemptively rejecting the likely responses:
“This is a personal attack!” All I’ve done is quote Boot’s own words.
“My critics are obsessed with me!” I believe this is the second time I’ve written about Boot ever, and the last one was a brief observation in early March.
“This is a personal vendetta!” If I’ve ever met Boot, I can’t recall.
“This is another sign National Review has become Trumpified!” Dude, have you read me lately?