Benjamin Wittes: Time for a Grand Anti-Trump Coalition (with the left and right working together)

[pnwmom]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-a-grand-anti-trump-coalition?source=twitter&via=desktop

This is a time to put aside old fights and unite, for now, against a clear and present danger.

Michael Tomasky
MICHAEL TOMASKY
11.28.17 5:00 AM ET

Benjamin Wittes is one of those names you may have gotten to know in the Trump era. Not that you shouldn’t have known him before, but in the past 11 months, the Brookings scholar has produced more than his share of posts that have gone viral on the Lawfare blog, especially the ones he wrote about his friendship with James Comey just after President Trump fired him.

That friendship and his frank posts have helped him carve out a unique space for himself in the Age of Trump. And he seems to know it and is prepared to use it. Over the weekend, in a move that ignited animated discussions in my circles, Wittes took to Twitter and produced 18 tweets dedicated to the proposition that all decent people of left and right must set aside their differences and unite to defeat Trump and Trumpism.

Under the hashtags #CoalitionofAllDemocraticForces and #IBelieve, Wittes argued that he wants to see “a temporary truce on all (questions of disagreement), an agreement to maintain the status quo on major areas of policy dispute while Americans of good faith collectively band together to face a national emergency. #IBelieve that facing that national emergency requires unity.” He wants Americans “across the political spectrum [to] unite around a political program based on the protection of American democracy and American institutions.”

SNIP

He’s correct about two basic things. One, that this is a national emergency. If I have to spell out why for you, you’re reading the wrong column and should stick to the gossip pages. Trump is a clear and present danger the likes of which we’ve never seen. Two, that the top priority far and away of decent people of all ideologies has to be to confront Trumpism and to stop it.


SNIP

Such a coalition, too, would be propagandistic manna from heaven for the Our Revolution left, as it would affirm their view that sell-outs like yours truly always were destined to sacrifice their principles. Whatever. I look over the past 11 months, and I don’t see that I’ve changed a whit. Instead I see Kristol and George Will popping up on MSNBC, I see Max Boot emerge as one of the most powerful critics of Trumpism around, and I peruse Jennifer Rubin’s columns that with each passing week are reading more and more like Molly Ivins’. Irving Kristol, Bill’s father, famously said that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. Today, a liberal is a conservative who’s been trumped by it.

[greeny2323]

1. He can fuck off

Republicans control everything. They have all the power. They stole the Presidency in 2000. They are packing the courts. They stole a Supreme Court seat.

So now conservative jackasses like this think it's time for liberals to shut up about policy. The nerve of these assholes!

Atrios

Link to tweet

What is the policy agenda of ben wittes and bill kristol

Link to tweet

wittes is a horrible person whose entire current "brand" is having journalists give him advance notice of trump administration dirt. yay boom

[pnwmom]

2. He's not saying we should shut up about policy. He says we can ignore our policy differences

while we're interacting with each other to de-throne DT.

That doesn't mean we should stop taking action to stop GOP policies.

[nocalflea]

3. We need all the help we can get.

Our commanality is our belief in the vision of our founders, the constitution and the rule of law.