Jonathan Chait: “The right-wing intelligentsia has formed three broad categories of response to Trump. The most enthusiastic, on the right, have defended the president unreservedly. The most disgusted (‘Never Trumpers’) have denounced him and often his enablers as well. In the broad middle of conservatism is a third category of conservative I have in mind here. These are the conservatives who will occasionally acknowledge Trump’s flaws even while supporting him broadly. They will ruefully and sarcastically bemoan his childishness, egotism, and self-destructive habits without ever urging a course of action that might stop him (Democratic control of Congress, enforcement of congressional oversight, impeachment, voting for Joe Biden).”

“These conservatives have spent the last four years mostly directing their energies attacking Trump’s opponents or dissecting the flaws in the arguments against him. They are most comfortable discussing something else. Usually, that something else is the excesses of the cultural left. If you read National Review, or Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, you find them filled with ghastly tales of obnoxious progressives unfairly calling something racist or sexist. I happen to believe that the use of witch-hunt tactics on the left is a problem — not as important a problem as racism, but a problem, and have made this point repeatedly. Conservatives clearly (almost by definition) consider the left’s response to racism worse than racism itself. But even conservatives who take this position acknowledge that racism is bad. Or, at least, they acknowledge it in the abstract. Trump’s emergence onto the national scene has complicated matters for them. Their position requires dismissing racism as a vestigial prejudice whose once-doleful influence has waned to the point of irrelevance. Trump’s insistence on reminding people that racism and sexism remain alive and well makes a mockery of their pat dismissal.”