Two recent posts on NRO perfectly illustrate the point that, like the little girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme, President Trump can be very good indeed — but also horrid.
This presents a uniquely frustrating case for me and, I suspect, other conservatives. It’s not just that he’s a mixed bag, a Republican president who is sometimes good and sometimes not. That’s probably inevitable and in any event unremarkable. And on some issues — such as taxes, deregulation, and crime — he’s good in normal Republican ways.
No, the thing about Trump is that sometimes he is off-the-charts great — and sometimes literally sickening.
For example, in his anti-DEI, anti-woke policies, he is practically perfect. Better than Reagan, let alone the Bushes. He has been breathtaking in his Supreme Court appointments and his support of Israel. And you have to hand it to him on physical courage, too.
But in his contempt for legal principles of almost any sort, and for the truth; his personalization of everything; his preference for Putin over Zelensky; his frequent indifference to free-market principles generally and support for indiscriminate tariffs in particular, I’m sure I’m not alone in finding him, again, sometimes literally sickening.
Conservatives must hope that the post-Trump Republican Party can keep the very good — and quickly and decisively dispense with the horrid.