Our Very Own Mandela Speaks

James Bennet’s star hire has some modest thoughts about the unrepresentative and irrelevant “Never Trump” movement that has attracted an audience among the nation’s opinion editors it hasn’t secured within the party:

But as even minimally sentient Trumpified Republicans know, what Charen said at CPAC was true. NeverTrumpers haunt the conservative movement the way Polish or Czech dissident intellectuals such as Czeslaw Milosz and Vaclav Havel haunted that segment of Central European intelligentsia that made its peace with Stalinism after World War II.

I’m sure that you believe this!

Credible conservatives like Charen can still make a positive difference in that respect, in a way that people like, say, Elizabeth Warren cannot. That’s why you want good guys on the other side of the partisan divide, no matter how irrelevant they currently appear to be. When Trumpism fails, as it inevitably will, who will be the Republican Adenauer?

SPOILER ALERT: It will be a less vulgar (and less corrupt, if only because there’s almost nowhere to go but up) politician who shares 99% of Trump’s agenda. And NeverTrumpers will erroneously believe that this is because they were relevant.

I have bad news; we’re now exiting the better part of the column.

I write this as a parallel contest is taking shape within the Democratic Party, most visibly in the rift between traditional liberals and the social-justice warriors of what used to be the far left. Dianne Feinstein’s failure this week to claim her party’s nomination for the Senate seat she’s held since 1992 is another depressing indication that the rift is widening.

Wait, what?

Dianne Feinstein’s failure this week to claim her party’s nomination for the Senate seat

Um, I guess one can’t really expect someone with a six-figure sinecure writing about politics to understand such complex issues, but Feinstein wasn’t “denied her party’s nomination.” She was denied her party’s official endorsement, which is really not the same thing. Feinstein hasn’t actually lost anything yet, and (regrettably in mu view) probably remains the frontrunner.

But, leaving this aside, the argument is that the Democratic Party is going to be like the Trumpified Republican Party because it’s being taken over by wild-eyed Trotskyite fanatics like [checks cue card] Kevin de León? That’s pretty feeble stuff even by Both Sides Do It standards.

The problem is when conservatives are raised in SAFE SPACES like the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, they’re so used to getting PARTICIPATION TROPHIES for everything that they never really learn to make arguments, do basic research, stuff like that there. Anyway, it’s probably not surprising that Times employees who actually have to work for their paychecks are less than impressed with Bennet’s hiring choices.