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Kristol doesn't have a leg to stand on here. He has a long, long, looooong history of actively opposing the very agenda he's now suggesting may be the "right" post-Trump move

Bill Kristol: Maybe Republicans should nominate someone with a 'radical constitutional agenda' next time



Bill Kristol is pretty sure Trump is going to lose. He's been working hard to make that happen and he might be right but, as he admits, there's a solid chance that he's wrong, too. However, he's devoting his time not to stopping Hillary, but instead to preparing for a post-Trump GOP. Should Trump go down in flames, how will the party deal with the populist leanings of its most recent failed candidate. That was the question Kristol answered in this week's Weekly Standard podcast - a recording that's startling in its lack of introspection. Kristol appears to think that Trump is just another shade of George W. Bush, and he worries that the party will make a mistake by embracing Trump's populism.
“Part of me also thinks though that that’s sort of the obvious answer but maybe not the right answer. Maybe what’s needed is a bolder answer that cuts against, in a way, the Trump message and really tries to go back to constitutional, limited government.”
Kristol thinks maybe - just maybe - the party should embrace the Constitution instead
"Once you have the notion that the government can just do things for you – with Bush it was to do nice things for poor people, with Trump it’s to reflect the anxieties and unhappiness of working class, middle class people – but either way, maybe it’s time for a more radical, libertarian/constitutionalist agenda. Those two cut in different directions, right? One is, sort of, ‘how can Republicans be more the party of putting government on the side of the middle class?’ – that’s sort of a saner version of Trumpism. The other is much more of a ‘let’s get out of the business of trying to buy votes in the first place.’ I don’t know which way conservatives will go, or should go.”

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Kristol is right, in as much as Trump is not a constitutionalist. We all know that. He's way better than Hillary, and he may like the 2nd Amendment, but he's not even remotely a dyed in the wool strict constructionist. Kristol's also right that the GOP needs to fight for founding principles. The problem here is that, if Kristol really wants to "learn a lesson," he should be asking himself a different set of questions. A: Why hasn't he been advocating this ....for years?
If Kristol is anything, he's the face of what the left likes to call the NeoCon right. If you listen to the complete podcast, you'll see that he leads with a McCain quote. That's absolutely perfect, since he's part and parcel of the crew that labelled people like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz "wacko birds." When hardcore constitutionalists reared their heads, Kristol was frighteningly willing to be counted among those who picked up the mallet to smack them down in a game of political whack-a-mole. After all, Kristol is the guy who assailed Rand Paul as the "spokesman for the Code Pink faction" in the GOP. He also called Paul a "kook" who "runs to the left of Barack Obama." Speaking of Paul's strict-constructionist 2013 filibuster, Kristol said:
"Paul’s political genius strikes us as very much of the short-term variety. Will it ultimately serve him well to be the spokesman for the Code Pink faction of the Republican party? How much staying power is there in a political stance that requires waxing semi-hysterical about the imminent threat of Obama-ordered drone strikes against Americans sitting in cafés? And as for the other Republican senators who rushed to the floor to cheer Paul on, won’t they soon be entertaining second thoughts? Is patting Rand Paul on the back for his fearmongering a plausible path to the presidency for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz? Is embracing kookiness a winning strategy for the Republican party? We doubt it."
Kristol had the chance to champion "radical constitutionalists" all along - and he never did. In fact, he relished attacking them.

B: What, precisely, about fighting for the Constitution is "radical?"
It's our founding document. It's the bedrock of our nation, the basis for all our laws, and the protector of our freddoms. Democrats, obviously, have been trying to dismantle it for decades. Would that they were our only problem. The bigger problem has been a set of GOP elites who are more than willing to bastardize the Constitution - or ignore it altogether - in favor of their own set of social, economic, and foreign policies. I've taken a lot of heat in the past for arguing that Obama was right. The Defense of Marriage Act was indeed unconstitutional. Similarly, a wide range of domestic spying activities trample the 4th Amendment, various foreign entanglements initiated by both parties have violated Article I, Section 8, and we won't even get into the whole "separation of powers" quagmire. To put it bluntly; "radical" is acting in defiance of the Constitution, not defending it. The GOP has been more than willing to ignore - or advocate for - constittuitonal transgression when it suited their purposes. Why is it only now, in the face of a presumed Trump loss, that people like Kristol are piping up about a course correction?
C: Why only now?
Let's say, for a moment, that we're doomed to "President Hillary." Why did it take that disaster for Kristol to embrace what he calls a "radical, libertarian/constitutionalist agenda?" Was his lack of vision so all encompasing that he couldn't understand the validity of conservative warnings? Or, is he just searching for a new direction so he can hang on in a media landscape that will change drastically if Trump loses?
Only Kristol can answer those last two. Look, every sane human being is still hoping Hillary loses in November. This could all be a moot point. However, Kristol doesn't have a leg to stand on here. He has a long, long, looooong history of actively opposing the very agenda he's now suggesting may be the "right" post-Trump move. I'll take him seriously when he admits he's been part of the problem. You can listen to Kristol's entire Podcast appearance here.


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