Peggy Noonan was a speech writer for Ronald Reagan, and then was an insightful commentator until she got Trump Derangement Syndrome. After the 2024 RNC Convention, she can’t quite come around.
I did not support either of the major party presidential candidates in 2016 and wrote about it here. I could not endorse either in 2020, and explained why here. I fully expect my third consecutive write-in this November, for the same reasons as stated in my 2020 column, plus the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the attempt to overturn the results of the election, which was not a failure of “decorum” and “norms” but something else and, I believe, more sinister.
Noonan has known all the important people for forty years. In 2016, she had to know that Hillary was greasy. Trump was an unknown, but clearly not aligned with established Republicans. He was a Democrat for most of his life in the NYC kind of way. Noonan is establishment, so she got pretty strident during Trump’s term. She couldn’t believe that the Justice Department had been weaponized against President Trump.
In 2020, Noonan had to know that Biden was fading. She should have been able to see that Trump had been acting for the American people and was trying to implement the policies that he’d promised. It’s hard to see how she couldn’t vote for Trump in that election.
By January 6th, 2021, Noonan was in old lady mode. Blinded by her belief in the establishment and fear of disorder, she couldn’t see how the protest/riot at the Capitol was a trap set for Trump supporters.
And so, to the Republican National Convention: It was stupendous, a triumph in every way from production through pronounced meaning and ability to reach beyond the tent. It moved me.
It’s hard to see how Noonan remains unable to commit to vote for one of the two choices for president.
We saw something epochal: the finalization and ratification of a change in the essential nature of one of the two major political parties of the world’s most powerful nation. It is now a populist, working-class, nationalist party. That is where its sympathies, identification and affiliation lie.
I think that’s it. Noonan is so committed to the establishment, she can’t get back to a pro-America party that her former boss, Ronald Reagan, led with. That’s a shame.