I'm not arguing against all criticism of one's friends; I've never written anywhere that took that stance. But choices of tone & emphasis & narrative are pretty easy to detect in opinion writing; who is treated as a friend in need of correction, who a foe.https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1204503787362234370 …
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If your desired end state is a set of policies & institutions & you envision obtaining that without anything resembling a realistic coalition, then your advocacy really isn't offering the reader anything they can apply as an informed citizen.
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The advantage of having fixed principles, of course, is that you can always argue in that direction, even if you accept falling short. But that also required knowing what those principles *are* & having some realistic idea of how they interact with the coalitions available.
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The problem with being Against Trump as your only organizing principle, without any other defined end state or any sense of who you want to help you reach that end state, is that Trump won't be with us forever. We'll still need to know what we believe & where we're aiming to go.
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I keep coming back to Lincoln, who had to navigate an era when the stakes were high, the coalitions up for grabs, & the choices of how to advance one's principles, what compromises to make, & who to welcome in the tent were all fraught. He never lost his realism or his goals.
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I like both principles & purity but am realistic about their presence on the list of ingredients for politicians. https://twitter.com/_Drew_McCoy_/status/1204516439681650688 …
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My own view of intra-party tests: on an ongoing basis, you isolate the worst people in the herd - whether crooks, grifters, squishes, bigots, incompetents - & purge them. But you don't burn down the tent. Regular culling of the worst people=incentive to not be the worst.
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Consider Lincoln: he stayed with the Whigs almost to the end, until the Republicans were a viable replacement. He didn't quit the party when it elected Taylor (even though Lincoln opposed the Mexican War) or when Fillmore pushed through the Compromise of 1850.
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Lincoln never went with the purist Free Soilers. He welcomed ex-Know Nothings & machine politicians. He ran with a slave-owning Democrat as his VP. He made common cause with the Tsar when it helped the Union.
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End of conversation
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