I keep thinking about George Will’s idea that Trump is like chemotherapy for the GOP: “a nauseating but, if carried through to completion, perhaps a curative experience.” Will wrote that column before the election, assuming Trump would lose. The curative experience he expected was for the GOP to realize its error in nominating, in his words, a “venomous charlatan” and finally reform its ways. (LOL)

But what he wrote still stands, even with Trump as president. The curative experience has come not from Trump’s defeat, but from how people have reacted to his success. “Trump is a marvelously efficient acid bath,” Will continued, “stripping away his supporters’ surfaces, exposing their skeletal essences.”

We’ve gotten to see the skeletal essences of many people energized by Trump’s election. Some see in Trump only what they want to see, and others see him for what he really is and say so, even when politically risky. Commentary editor John Podhoretz, commenting on Charlottesville, is one of the latter:

The president’s refusal to name the evil in our midst is the behavior of a man whose moral sense is stunted — if he has a moral sense at all. This is what I feared would be the case when he became president.

Perhaps those who say I have an obligation as a conservative to support Trump should wonder what their moral obligations require.

The last year or so has been very clarifying. David Frum, Bill Kristol, Ross Douthat, John Podhoretz, David French, and other conservative pundits I previously opposed to varying degrees (and still might on some issues) have revealed themselves to be principled thinkers, criticizing Trump early and often, even when doing so during the election exposed them to attack from their right flank. I respect them for standing tall then and sticking with their principles now.

If we make it through all this alive, we’ll be stronger for it.