https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/24/why...ualifying/

"...But I’m utterly mystified by those who insist on another national struggle session over the president’s rhetoric because of their misplaced belief that D.C. was all curtsies and decorum before Trump showed up.

Let me explain: A friend of mine, who had a reasonably important White House job in a different administration, is fond of saying, “The problem with Washington is there are not enough bar fights....”



It’s very, very true that so much of what passes for “civility” in the center-left consensus in This Town is anything but. Official Washington Civility is more often than not a cloak for the backstabbing petty “Mean Girls” nonsense that’s really going on over lunch at The Palm or in, yes, literal cloakrooms....

Well, Barack Obama was a well-spoken, generally nice guy. He also sued nuns to make them pay for abortions. Everyone in his orbit spent months in 2012 calling Mitt Romney — Mitt Romney! — a racist felon who gave people cancer. Obama brought a mobbed-up Chicago banker to the White House and emphatically endorsed that mobbed-up banker’s run for his old Senate seat. He made excuses for the Internal Revenue Service going after his political enemies. He lied repeatedly about health care. He gave cash to terrorists and guns to cartels, and his own “wingman” at the Justice Department said people were racist for asking questions about the latter.


I could go on about Obama, yet I still see journalists routinely praising his manner and civility as if there weren’t a whole lot of very disturbing cracks in that facade. (Speaking of journalists and civility, Trump’s “human scum” tweet came just a few minutes before a Washington Post columnist blithely accused him of inciting murder.) But maintaining the illusion is a necessary part of the “regulative fiction” Washington has to tell itself to justify letting their preferred leaders exercise awesome amounts of power in deeply questionable ways....


The ruling class is so invested in denying any hypocrisy here that we now have something in the political lexicon called “whataboutism,” a now almost universally misapplied fallacy largely adopted by the discourse police all at once circa January 2017. Comparing the president to his predecessor or political opposition for the purpose of putting their words and actions in context, once the most basic aspect of political analysis, is now frequently said to be off-limits because Trump is sui generis even when he’s not....

Supporting Voter ID does not make you racist. Being against abortion does not make you sexist. Wanting border security does not make you xenophobic. And thinking that baking cakes at the point of a gun is a bad idea does not make you homophobic.

I have no illusions about Trump’s way of engaging and debating people and why it coarsens politics. But discrediting and even dehumanizing your opposition was the dominant form of politicking before Trump came along, and that was obvious to voters no matter how much the media and administrative state tried hide it or give it a patina of respectability. If you’re continually surprised we’ve arrived at a point where much of the country doesn’t regard Trump’s rhetoric as disqualifying, you haven’t been paying attention."