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Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.

I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obamas failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obamas election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term presidentthe corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime. It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obamas legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.

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Ive been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesnt ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of ones own party. Michael Gerson, a conservative columnist and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote, four months into the new presidency, The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased, and conservative institutions with the blessings of a president have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.

For a conservative, thats an awfully bitter pill to swallow. So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, If I took the time to respond to every presidential tweet, there would be little time for anything else. Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge. It would be like Noah saying, If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else. At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention. At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.

Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. It is what we talk about when we talk about checks and balances. Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, Someone should do something! without seeming to realize that that someone is us. And so, that unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.

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There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the presidents party. We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplarsthe Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more important, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great.

But then the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goalseven as we put at risk our institutions and our valuesthen it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldnt be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American presidents seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservativeswho had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Unionthat it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a concerted attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwaters book, to a chapter entitled The Soviet Menace. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of Goldwaters critique had seemed particularly anachronistic. The lesson here is that nothing is gone forever, especially when it comes to the devouring ambition of despotic men. As Goldwater wrote in that chapter:

Our forebears knew that keeping a Republic meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.

So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldnt hesitate to speak out if the president plays to the base in ways that damage the Republican Partys ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.

We have taken our institutions conducive to freedom, as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.

Jeff Flake is a Republican senator from Arizona. This article has been excerpted from his new book, Conscience of a Conservative. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump - POLITICO Magazine

Or so he hopes.

The decision to part ways with Priebus and bring on Department of Homeland Security chief John Kelly as chief of staff, all which Trump announced via Twitter late Friday, was cast by allies of the President as a much-needed reset for a White House that had lost its direction.

Maybe.

Kelly is, by all accounts, a highly disciplined and organized leader. The Trump White House needs that. He is also a highly decorated military man and someone Trump regards as an equal; Priebus was neither of those things. Kelly is the man Trump wanted. Priebus was the guy he accepted as, in his mind, a sop to a Republican establishment fretting over what sort of President he might be.

The problem with all of the talk of a "reset" in the White House led by Kelly is that Donald Trump is still the President. Priebus proved ineffective at managing Trump's erraticness -- leaping from issue to issue within a single day, tweeting out things that directly contradicted his White House's official line, fomenting competition among top staffers into a sort of blood sport.

This is, quite literally, who Trump is. He has lived his entire adult life a certain way. At 71, the idea that anyone -- Kelly included -- can fundamentally alter who Trump is -- or who Trump is willing to be for political purposes -- seems very far-fetched.

No one, ever, has wrangled Trump for any extended period of time. Sure, for a day or even a week during his first six months in office, Trump would avoid sending an inflammatory tweet or straying way, way off the teleprompter when delivering a speech. But it never lasted. He always returned to what he knows: the brash, unapologetic provocateur who is as interested in making a stir as he is in getting things done.

Trump didn't bring in Kelly to hamstring his natural instincts. Ditto Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director who spent his first week on the job savaging Priebus (and chief strategist Steve Bannon) to The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza. Trump brought both men in because he sees them as equals, as men who understand who he is and will work to implement his wishes as opposed to trying to fit him into a traditional political frame.

That last line from Lewandowski is the most important one: "Anybody who thinks they're going to change Donald Trump doesn't know Donald Trump."

That's 100% right. It's also why the chances of the next 193 days being any different than the past 193 days are very, very small.

Trump doesn't look back on the past six months as a failure on his part. He views it as a failure of the experiment he undertook to play nice with the Washington establishment. He put Priebus and Priebus' allies (Sean Spicer, Katie Walsh) in senior roles -- right alongside the likes of his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner -- and they failed to deliver. Their attempts to manage Trump made him angry; their inability to grind the gears of official Washington to work for him infuriated him.

The lesson Trump learned from these first six months office wasn't that he needs to change. It was that trying to change him into a Washington figure or anything close to a traditional politician wouldn't work. And that even if it had worked, he didn't want to do it anyway.

To the extent Trump is "starting over" then, it is really, in his mind, a return to his roots -- to who he should always have been from the start. He has put in place a team -- from Kelly to Scaramucci and on down -- that is much more likely to affirm and amplify his gut instincts to "let Trump be Trump" than to block them.

That is the only reset anyone watching this White House should expect. Trump isn't going to change. Instead, he's going to double down on being exactly who he's always been.

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On day 193, Donald Trump (tries) to start over - CNN

On Sunday, Breitbart published a column by Susan Berry, who began by invoking the web sites late founder: Andrew Breitbart famously said, Politics is downstream of culture, she began, using the hyperlink to direct readers to this Red State post:

Andrew Breitbart, the late ever-controversial right-wing gonzo journalist (not to be confused with the dreary Trump-propaganda organ that now bears his name) used to have a saying that politics is downstream of culture.

Meaning that:

After approvingly linking to that article describing todays Breitbart as a dreary, Trump-propaganda organ, Berry proceeded with her own Breitbart article:

Andrew Breitbart famously said, Politics is downstream of culture, and while establishment Republicans seem unwilling to defend Americas culture and values on many fronts, President Donald Trump is already changing the countrys politics by taking back its culture from progressives.

Heres how.

She then offered seven examples: Trump banned transgender people in the military; signed an executive order pertaining to abortion; signed another executive order on religious freedom; signed a bill that affects state funding of Planned Parenthood; appointed a Supreme Court justice; made sound appointments to the Department of Health and Human Services; and vowed to defend law enforcement.

Notice that Berry inverted Andrew Breitbarts claim: She cited what are largely political actions, arguing that cultural change is downstream from them.

The inadequacy of the metaphor is part of the problem here. Streams always flow in one direction. Culture often influences politics, but culture is often influenced by politics, too. In fact, much of the Republican Party has gambled that political gains they expect from the Trump administration outweigh the cultural costs that Trump is exacting.

Fans of Andrew Breitbart who believe that politics is downstream of culture should look not just at Trumps political actions, but also at how he is changing American culture.

1.

Way back in 2011, the public moralist Dennis Prager wrote a column titled F-Word Laced Speech Disqualifies Donald Trump from the Presidency. In it, he argued that there is an enormous moral difference between using an expletive in private and using one in a public speech, that the latter is degrading to the user, to the listener and to society, and that Trump didnt merely use an expletive in a political speech, but upon seeing the enthusiastic reaction, felt encouraged to use it again and again.

He continued:

The audience's reaction is even more importantand more distressingthan Trump's use of the word. Had there been booing, or had someone who invited him arisen to ask that he not use such language, or had some of the women walked out, the good name of the Republican Party and of conservative values would have been preserved. But if Republican womenand I emphasize both the party and the genderfind the F-word used by a potential candidate for president of the United States amusing, America is more coarsened than I had imagined. If we cannot count on Republicans and conservatives to maintain standards of public decency and civility, to whom shall we look?

Today, weve gone far beyond curse words in a speech. Trump is unapologetically and publicly indecent or uncivil on almost a daily basis. And there is no way for the Republican Party to credibly advocate for public decency and civility so long as it supports Trump.

2.

As Peggy Noonan observed in an astute Wall Street Journal column, Trumps sharp break from traditional norms and forms of American masculinity and public displays of weaknessin her words, his continually acting like a drama queenis giving young boys, like the ones that he addressed recently at the Boy Scout Jamboree, a new, self-obsessed, and overindulgent template for what maleness is:

The way American men used to like seeing themselves, the template they most admired, was the strong silent type celebrated in classic mid-20th century filmsGary Cooper, John Wayne, Henry Fonda. In time the style shifted, and we wound up with the nervous and chattery. More than a decade ago the producer and writer David Chase had his Tony Soprano mourn the disappearance of the old style: What they didnt know is once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings they wouldnt be able to shut him up! The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His characters couldnt stop talking about their emotions, their resentments and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice and anger.

But he was a comic. It was funny. He wasnt putting it out as a new template for maleness. Donald Trump now is like an unfunny Woody Allen. Who needs a template for how to be a man? A lot of boys and young men, whove grown up in a culture confused about what men are and do.

3.

In just the last week, Trump has twice attacked the rule of law. Andrew Sullivan wrote about one example in New York magazine. Day after day, the president has publicly savaged his own attorney general for doing the only thing possible with an investigation into a political campaign he was a key part of: recusing himself, he observed. And the point of the presidents fulminations was that the recusal prevented Sessions from obstructing that very investigation. The president, in other words, has been openly attacking his own attorney general for not subverting the rule of law.

And in a speech to police officers, Trump said:

When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don't be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over. Like, don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody. Don't hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?

This prompted clapping from many of the police officers immediately behind Trump in footage of the speech and cheering from some of the people in the crowdthe words were immediately corrosive to their culturefollowed by a series of criticisms of Trump from cops in leadership positions in cities all over the United States.

4.

As I noted last September, Trump has a cruel streak. He willfully causes pain and distress to others. And he repeats this public behavior so frequently that its fair to call it a character trait. Any single example would be off-putting but forgivable. Being shown many examples across many years should make any decent person recoil in disgust.

The list of examples has only grown in the interimand we have every indication that Trump will continue to flaunt his cruelty to others in public regularly for the next four years.

* * *

Later on in that Red State post that I quoted at the top, Berry writes that Andrew Breitbart himself thought Donald Trump was a con man and no conservative, but he doubtlessly would have enjoyed the showmanship and sheer disruption of Trumps primary campaign. And as we sift through the rubble left in his wake and look for a path forward, we should not overlook Breitbarts dictum. Because for all the talk about the politics of Trumpism, a major part of what allowed Trump to rise and prevail in the primary was his prominence in popular culture as well as the generally debased state of American culture in general these days.

That is true. And it doesnt speak well of Breitbarts legacy that the website and populist ethos he helped to create did so much to elevate someone he saw as a con man.

The Republican Party should be more farsighted about embracing nihilistic populism.

As David French put it, Words still matter, and the presidents words are often reprehensible. A conservative can fight for tax reform, celebrate military victories over ISIS in Mosul, and applaud Trumps judicial appointments while also condemning Trumps vile tweets and criticizing his impulsiveness and lack of discipline. A good conservative can even step back and take a longer view, resolving to fight for the cultural values that tribalism degrades. Presidents matter not just because of their policies but also because of their impact on the character of the people they govern.

Republicans should turn on Trump, en masse, right now. The longer the president enjoys a large degree of institutional support, rather than being regarded as a pariah by all, the more likely it is that other indecent, uncivil, weak, self-justifying, overindulgent, cruel men with little regard for truth or the rule of law will rise.

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Depravity Is Downstream of Donald Trump - The Atlantic

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, apologized Monday for incorrectly suggesting on Twitter that President Donald Trump had snubbed a disabled child during a press conference on healthcare in late July.

Rowling's apology came hours after PolitiFact rated her original tweets which have all since been deleted as "Pants on Fire," concluding that her comments were founded on an edited clip from which Trump's greeting to 3-year-old Monty Weer was cut. Weer is confined to a wheelchair because of a spinal birth defect.

"Multiple sources have informed me that that was not a full or accurate representation of their interaction," Rowling tweeted.

"I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly," she continued.

The writer, a regular Twitter critic of Trump and his policies, first reacted last Friday to the edited video from a July 24 press conference, according to PolitiFact, during which Trump delivered a speech on health care.

"Trump imitated a disabled reporter . Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition," Rowling originally tweeted based on the spliced footage. (While she has since deleted them, an archived of the tweets still exists.)

White House video of the same press conference, however, showed Trump appearing to bow down and greet Weer as he entered the venue, PolitiFact said.

Marjorie Kelly Weer, Monty's mother, also appeared to have called out Rowling's wrong interpretation of events on Facebook , the BBC reports .

"If someone can please get a message to J.K. Rowling: Trump didn't snub my son & Monty wasn't even trying to shake his hand," she wrote, adding that Monty wasn't into hand shaking anyway.

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JK Rowling Apologizes for Falsely Suggesting President Trump Dissed a Disabled Boy - TIME

A majority of voters think President Donald Trump's administration is in chaos, according to a new poll released Monday in the midst of several White House firings .

The Morning Consult/Politico poll found that 60% of registered voters think Trump's administration is running "somewhat chaotically" or "very chaotically." Just 33% of voters said the administration is running somewhat or very well.

The survey revealed a stark split along party lines. Most Democrats and Independents thought the administration was running chaotically, while most Republicans thought it was running somewhat or very well.

Anthony Scaramucci was fired from his post as White House communications director, just 10 days after he was introduced as the incoming communications chief. Scaramucci's arrival led to the departure of Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus , though Trump has denied reports of dysfunction. "No WH chaos!" he tweeted Monday morning.

" A great day at the White House!" he added later Monday night.

The poll which surveyed 1,972 registered voters between July 27 and July 29 had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

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Poll: Most Voters Think President Trump's White House is in Chaos - TIME