Most of us are old enough to remember Ann Coulter. Back in the early days of this here century, Coulter briefly cut a gigantic figure within the American Right. Many found her good-looking (no rarity among con women, it’s true) with traditional WASP features and a mane of blonde hair, though others found her a trifle horse-faced. For a time, it seemed possible that she’d attain a status second only to El Rushbo himself. She appeared on the covers of national magazines, became a go-to source for quotes, and was profiled and tracked in the gossip columns. For a year or two, Coulter appeared unstoppable.
Then it all started to fall apart, thanks largely due to her inability to control the mean-girl aspects of her persona. Coulter’s default was nastiness greater than was strictly called for. The most notorious example involved John Edwards, a confused and not-quite-competent Democrat pol who was somehow maneuvered into taking the VP slot next to the walking target Al Gore. When asked what she thought of Edwards, she had one response: “Faggot.”
The comment was out of line and resulted in immediate blowback. Edwards, while gifted with bland Midwestern good looks, had no gay mannerisms or queeny aspects. In fact, when scandal did break, it was of the exact opposite nature: Edwards had knocked up a staffer while on the campaign trail. To his credit, Edwards left public life, presumably to help raise the child and take the pressure off the young woman, by all indications a rather neurotic and needy type. He came out looking better than he likely deserved.
As opposed to Coulter, who didn’t seem to grasp the fact that plenty of gays have conservative instincts and needed to be cultivated, not driven away. Dave Rubin, Link Lauren, and Tammy Bruce can all serve as exemplars of gay conservatism.
But her real downfall came, along with so many others, with the advent of Donald Trump. Coulter had no use for Trump and made that fact quite clear. Her beef involved illegal immigration, for she was angry that Trump had failed to build a ten-story-high two-thousand-mile-long border wall on the first day he was in office. Coulter came across as somebody who didn’t understand the Constitution or quite grasp the fact that Trump wasn’t elected dictator, but instead had to work within a system designed to prevent sudden dislocations, and one furthermore that was largely devoted to working against him.
Coulter wouldn’t back off , and her already damaged brand faded still further. MAGA masses wouldn’t touch her. Today, she is effectively forgotten, unquoted, and unacknowledged. I was quite surprised to learn that she still has a column that appears here and there.
(Matt Drudge’s career followed a similar trajectory, sliding from mammoth influence to irrelevance, and for largely the same reason: a world-class case of TDS.)
The opening of Donald Trump’s second term has been one of the most remarkable on record, more so than any other going back to Roosevelt – and I’m not absolutely sure if I’m referring to Franklin or Teddy. (Coulter herself admitted this, only within weeks to go back to her previous Trump-as-idiot stance.)Trump has finally succeeded in closing the border, cutting illegal immigration by over 90%. He rescued the economy from almost certain collapse, cutting inflation to levels not seen this century. He has embarked on an effort to reshore industry to the U.S., with more success than was thought possible even six months ago. He has embraced a bold and counterintuitive strategy of universal tariffs in order to bludgeon those nations (which is to say, all of them) who think they can abuse the global economy’s reigning T. Rex with impunity. Moans and shrieks from critics have yielded to totally unanticipated results that even include bringing mighty China to heel.
Elon Musk’s DOGE, with Trump’s clear backing, has revealed federal government finances to be a massive money-laundering scheme, with results still to be fully investigated. Over $165 billion has been recovered, and a number of government agencies and offices apparently devoted solely to supporting left-wing agendas have been shut down or curtailed.
Trump has punished the universities that allowed anti-Semites, terrorists, and wokies to run riot on their campuses, forcing them to take action. As is usually the case, these would-be Ches faded faster than a Temu shirt.
Not the least, he has brought the Democrat party to the brink of destruction. The party is now a ghost of itself, consisting of half-senile ancients, howling harridans, and sexually ambiguous freaks. It has lost its connection with the working class, the trust of the common voter, and is quickly losing the minorities that it claims to “defend.” It had no leadership, no prospects, and as far as can be seen at the moment, no future.
And he has done this with the same crowd opposing him as in his first term, with the addition of a vast cadre of small-time judges in open revolt, while Congress and the Supreme Court try to outdo each other in their imitations of a three-toed sloth.
It’s a remarkable performance of world-historical significance. And it has been encompassed in less than six months. Trump still has three-and-a-half years to go.
So why are so many conservatives starting to turn on him? This is not a widespread or major phenomenon. It involves the MAGA grassroots, not the NeverTrumpers, the Cheneys and Kinzingers who have effectively receded into footnotehood. These supposed MAGA diehards are suddenly disappointed in Donald Trump and are beginning to attack him in print and otherwise on much the same terms as they once used against the Left.
They can be found in articles on some of the smaller sites and personal blogs, and, in particular, on comment threads (including, sadly, AT’s). I’m not naming any names in order to avoid the impression that I’m going from general to particular.
The technique is largely to focus on one single element of Trump’s efforts to the exclusion of all others and hammer relentlessly and repeatedly at it as if it were the sole fulcrum of the Trump agenda. It could be Trump’s refusal to issue blank checks to Zelenskyy, or alternately, his failure to kowtow to Putin. Some have attacked the trip to Qatar, along with the armistice with the Houthis, claiming that he’s surrendering to terrorists. The Big Beautiful Bill has come in for sniping in recent weeks.
I see a number of reasons behind this.
- The Zeitgeist — too many people tend to follow the mob wherever it may lead. The feeble, the corrupt, and the fanatical have been attacking Trump for ten years now. Some of the more simple-minded in our crowd may well find it hard to resist.
- The Whiners — Some people just have to piss and moan. We’ve all dealt with them and we know what they’re like. Nothing is pleasing, nothing is satisfactory. Life is simply not worth living unless you’re crying about something, so let’s drop it on Donald Trump.
- The Defeatists — This crowd was shocked into silence last November, after spending the campaign predicting total defeat on the grounds that the elites would not “allow” Trump to ever set foot again in the White House. They’ve recently recovered their voice to predict total catastrophe in 2026, with Trump evicted and imprisoned, and all who supported him on the run.
All these play a role. But I think the major factor is this: Some people have extraordinarily strange ideas about what conservatism is and what it’s supposed to do. We’ve all run into those types whose plan for saving the country involves burning all Beatles albums or splitting the U.S. into two nations or executing, hanging, or torturing whatever group aroused their ire that day.
This is largely a side effect of the freedom of thought that prevails on our side. The Left doesn’t have this problem — its doctrines are so rigid and totalist that meaningful dissent simply isn’t possible. You have to believe in unlimited abortion; you have to believe in transsexual treatment for minors; you have to believe in confiscating all firearms, and so on. Conservatism is based on principle rather than ideology, which, while generally an advantage, has its drawbacks, and tolerance for cranks and crackpots is one of them.
Trump is not conforming to their preconceived notions of what conservatism is and what conservative action should achieve. They know what conservatism is and what it should do, and Trump is failing to do it — whatever oddball notion it should happen to be — and therefore he’s a washout.
Simply put, they want to make conservatism more like leftism.
That’s the danger — a slide further to the Left, that once having crossed the TDS Rubicon, people will start to buy into other leftist notions. This is what happened to the NeverTrumpers, and it could happen to others. Which is why it needs to be spotlighted and countered wherever possible.
A few years ago, Victor Davis Hanson published The Savior Generals. How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars that were Lost, a study of military commanders who appeared in times of crisis to retrieve almost untenable situations, including Themistocles of Athens, Matthew Ridgeway in Korea, and David Petraeus in Iraq. One of his conclusions is that, even while successful, many of these commanders were seriously mistreated in the wake of their victories, being reviled, ignored, and even punished. The ingratitude of nations and peoples is often hard to fathom.
This is not unknown in politics. Consider Rudy Giuliani, who, as AG, destroyed the Mob’s power in New York City and then went on to save the city itself as mayor. Today, he is persecuted, near bankrupt, a political outcast, and all for one reason: he supported Donald Trump.
This should not have happened to Giuliani, and it must not happen to Trump.
I’ll add here that I’m not particularly worried. It will not do to underestimate Donald Trump, as all these people from Coulter onward have done. This guy has more chess moves in his head than Kasparov, Karpov, and Bobby Fischer combined. I will be the last to claim that I understand his strategy in full, and I don’t believe anybody else does either — especially these one-note prophets on the Internet.
And anyway, what’s the alternative?
