Never Trump’s Bed Wetters and Washington Generals

This article originally appeared on the California Political Review.

As Bill Clinton apparently said to every woman other than his wife that he ever met, let’s get the sex thing out of the way first.

Years ago Donald Trump engaged in piggish locker room talk, leaving the media and the NeverTrump pearl clutchers in a frenzy. To be painfully blunt, any male who has been in athletic locker rooms and claims not to have heard or participated in such blather is either lying or a candidate for Vestal Virgin status. Doubting that there are many Vestals among either the media or NeverTrump, the conclusion is clear – they’re all lying, as frankly are 99 percent of the locker room talkers.

This is the same media that labelled the waddling sot from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy, as the “lion of the Senate,” ignoring that he murdered a young woman. This is the same media that winked, chuckled and guffawed at the eight-year occupant of the Oval Office who was accused of rape and serial molestation. Their protestations about words, not deeds but words, are as sincere as Captain Renault’s about gambling in Rick’s Café.

The NeverTrumpers having fainting spells over the comments need to put on their big boy pants, get over it and put the good of the country above their prissy, prudish, holier-than-thou theatrics. Mike Huckabee referred to them as “bed wetters,” and they richly deserve that title.

As to the plethora of women coming forth to say Trump committed various sorts of sexual battery on them, some as long as 30 years ago, their accusations don’t pass the smell test. We are to believe that all of them – not some, not most, but all – kept these indignities to themselves all these years, and coincidentally decided to step forward a month before the election. Right.

In the wake of Trump’s words – again, not actions but words – NeverTrump recruited some new members for their Quisling Caucus to make the media rounds denouncing the only candidate who can keep Hillary from shredding the Constitution. The new batch came in three varieties. Has-been, mainly vociferously pro-abortion politicians, members of the GOP establishment’s consultant corps and inside-the-beltway lobbyists. These folks were rewarded with their 15 minutes of fame and then some, because they are Republicans, at least technically. Though a better name for them and their fellow NeverTrumpers would be the Washington Generals.

Readers of a certain vintage will remember the Harlem Globetrotters. Since the 1930s they have been a wonderfully talented and entertaining basketball team, which is still touring. Their “games” combine athleticism, comedy and theatrics. They do play basketball, but with this asterisk. Their opponents are always a team called the “Washington Generals,” and the Generals always lose. Over the thousands of games they’ve played, the Generals have beat the Globetrotters only once.

The similarities between the NeverTrump leadership and the Washington Generals is striking. Both groups get paid well for what they do, which is put up a good, entertaining “fight” … and then lose. The Trump candidacy would never had gotten traction if the self-appointed, insular, ossified conservative “leaders” in the D.C./New York axis had the slightest feel for rank-and-file conservatives or had successfully opposed President Obama the past eight years.

The Trump insurgency was and is powered by grassroots conservatives who got wise to the game and realized that while the show could be entertaining, the results were always the same – we lose. They want to replace the GOP’s and conservative movement’s Washington Generals with a team that knows how to win.

For that feeling, for wanting a team that plays to win, these conservatives are sneered at and belittled by the likes of the supercilious, ever smirking Billy Kristol and the strutting popinjay George Will. They are mocked and mercilessly attacked in the pages of magazines like the Weakly Standard and the once proud National Review.

There is little risk and in fact substantial upside in this for NeverTrump’s Washington Generals. Their sinecures (for UCLA grads that means a position requiring little work but that pays well) as the liberal establishment’s favorite conservatives will continue and be enhanced by a Trump loss.

It’s a win-win for the liberal establishment and NeverTrump’s Washington Generals. The liberals can continue to surround themselves with a trained poodle act of non-threatening Republicans and conservatives. Our Washington Generals can continue to pull down large lobbying contracts, appear on Sunday morning TV talk shows, exhibiting their intellectual and moral superiority to bumpkins and rubes who don’t understand that all power and wisdom resides inside the D.C. beltway.

There will be many salutary effects of a Trump victory, the main one being preventing Hillary from filling the federal judiciary and bureaucracy with Stalinist activists who will launch search-and-destroy missions against conservative institutions, conservative individuals and conservative thought. Not far behind that benefit however will be the retirement – or irrelevance – of the conservative movement’s Washington Generals. Our country, our movement and our party deserve a team that is interested in winning, not just putting on a good show. It’s time to trump the Washington Generals.

Bill Saracino is a member of the Editorial Board of CA Political Review.