Back in 2003 the psychiatrist and columnist Charles Krauthammer declared a new psychiatric syndrome, “Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” He had a point. But derangement can be generated by support as well as opposition for a political figure.
What do we say about conservatives — people who believe, variously, in limited government, free markets, Judeo-Christian values, and the importance of character in public life — who have been forced to utter absurdities in defense of Donald Trump? It’s one thing to say that Hillary Clinton and her Supreme Court justices and her 4,000 bureaucrats are on net worse than Trump and whatever menagerie he brings to the White House. But when free-market conservatives find themselves enthusiastically defending the most protectionist presidential candidate since Pat Buchanan, or Christian conservatives are forced to say that personal character isn’t really a big issue for them, I fear that derangement has set in. Take just a few examples in the past few days.
In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Karl Rove writes that Trump needs “a Republican House to pass his agenda.” But his agenda is trade war, deportation, and banning adherents of the Muslim faith from entering the United States. Is that an agenda a Republican House would pass? Say it ain’t so, Karl (or Paul).