Conservative columnist and icon George Will has left the Republican Party in light of the presumptive nomination of Donald Trump and his announcement triggered another juvenile response from Trump on Twitter — followed by a reply from Will that may be one of the best put downs that I have read in years.
Will said on Sunday that he had “left the Republican Party for the same reason he joined it” and said that he no longer believed in the Party after it handed the nomination to Donald Trump. It was a defining moment for the Party from a man who is viewed by many as one of the true intellectual forces behind the conservative movement since Reagan.
Earlier Will wrote in a column that “Events already have called his bluff about funding himself and thereby being uniquely his own man. His wealth is insufficient. Only he knows what he is hiding by being the first presidential nominee in two generations not to release his tax returns. It is reasonable to assume that the returns would refute many of his assertions about his net worth, his charitableness and his supposed business wizardry.”
There is no question that Will is hunting for Trump in his column and comments, but he is raising concerns over well-founded criteria for the presidency from temperament to transparency to trustworthiness. While one would have expected Trump to issue a measured response to combat the image of a loose cannon, he responded in his signature fashion: “George Will, one of the most overrated political pundits (who lost his way long ago), has left the Republican Party. He’s made many bad calls.” Trump also stated “You know he looks smart because he wears those little glasses. If you take those glasses away from him, he’s a dummy.”
Yea, it is the glasses.
Trump’s playground taunt led to a classic Will line: “He has an advantage on me because he can say everything he knows about any subject in 140 characters and I can’t.”
I honestly do not know why someone like Trump seems intent on proving his critics right about his alleged lack of maturity and self-control. He is not a stupid person. We all have had the urges to say taunting or juvenile things and somethings the urge gets the better of us. However, Trump appears to have no resistance to such urges, which can be a troubling characteristic for a chief executive. It is also highly counterproductive at this stage in the campaign. There is no question that the personal attacks played well with his base in the primary but polls now suggest that he will fall considerably short in the general if this trend continues and furthermore it seems likely that, if he flames out in November, he will hand Clinton not only the White House but the Senate. It is an ironic moment. He is up against the single weakest modern Democratic candidate since Ed Muskie — a person with record negatives. Yet, he cannot resist reducing every dispute to name calling and taunts.
For the record, I have known George Will for years and consider him a friend. I have had the pleasure of meeting with him over lunches where we have discussed everything from economic game theory to contemporary politics. We both also share a deep love for the Chicago Cubs.
George graduated from Trinity College in 1962 and then studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford where he received a BA and a masters. He also received MA and PhD degrees in politics from Princeton University. His 1968 PhD dissertation was entitled Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society. He also taught political philosophy at the James Madison College of Michigan State University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University.
In other words, it really is not the glasses.
There are a few truly transcendent intellectuals in this city and George Will is one of them. In a city of shallow spins and trite slogans, George Will routinely brings depth and insight into contemporary issues. His loss to the Republican Party should concentrate the minds of all of its continuing members. More importantly, calling Will names only serves to prove his point about the dangerous turn of our politics and his former party.
Just like the rest of the GOP Will is using Trump as a way of cleaning up his own image. It’s a bogus protest.
Professor Turley, I appauled your assessment of Mr Will and tRump. It has been sad to see that Fox News requires their own to drink tRump’s koolaide. They are both on their way down.
It is sad to see that out great country has become more entrapped by a two-party system– often by an inability to get on the ballet. The Libertarian Party offers options for those opposed to Hillary. Do you think Mr Will would look at the Conservative Party?
Will lost me long ago when he wrote a book on baseball, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. In it, he wrote a chapter worshiping Tony La Russa, a man who made micromanaging acceptable. Well, not to me.
The American people mistakenly believe they have used their free will to stroll in under the big tents of the Republican and Democratic parties. The reality is they have been treated like cattle, no longer free-ranging but rather herded into stockades and nourished until the party decides what to do with them. This is the opposite of what a constitutional republic should be. The constitution (stockades) was intended to limit the range of the political class and the people are supposed to be the ones prodding them to move WITHIN the range of those stockades.
We are a paper republic; actually a utilitarian republic corralled by the political class because we’ve allowed them to tell us what the limits of our free will should be. We need to all leave the parties.
Rexit and Dexit now!
Maybe George Will would like to interview Robert Looks Twice for U.S. President.
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer interviews Robert at age 12 on Pine Ridge in SD. He’s 18 years old now and wants to be a U.S. president. Give this guy some air time & media attention.
Just saw Steve Ratner on Morning Joe go on about how Hank Paulsen and the CEO of GE aren’t going to vote for Trump either. Don’t these corporate apologists understand that when they open their Wall St. Insulated pie-holes that they are just spewing napalm onto the fire that is Donald Trump supporters?
If they’re so good at numbers, well then maybe they should just look at the numbers in one voting district in NJ and realize they only get one vote a piece and they can’t do crap about being out voted.What are they going to do force their employees on the assembly line in KY to vote for Hillary?
Let them burn all the money they want, they can’t unmotivate Trump supporters and saying they will now HAVE to vote for Mrs. Clinton further questions their judgment.
These are the leaders of the investor class?
Seriously?
George Will is not much different than Donald Trump. Each comes from a privileged self indulgent background. Will had the academic abilities to ride an education of peripheral subjects which prepared him to be a ‘court jester’ of sorts. He criticizes from afar, intellectually and practically. I have tried to read his stuff for decades but each time I clear my pre-existing opinions, temper my ego, and place myself at the center, it doesn’t work. Will is all delivery and no substance. He is like Scalia, brilliant yet off the beam of reality. Scalia was great at discovering faults due to semantics and legal structure but in the end it was his ‘cowboy shoot em up’ personality that made the decision. Will is not much different, and obviously neither is Trump. One might even opine that Scalia was just joking in giving corporations some sort of constitutional right to the oligarchy which we call a democracy, a brilliant pretzel.
Trump is simply not as erudite nor as in command of the English language as is Will. Trump speaks his biased position to the lowest common denominator, the least educated, those of poorest judgement. Will dilly dallies with those who attempt to elevate themselves via their own interpretation of intellectualism. Neither one comes anywhere near the reality of what they discuss. Each is as vacuous as the other; one just masks it better.
Now for a really empty house, subject matter as well as delivery, there’s Rubio and ‘he’s back’.
George Will is redefining conservatism, ‘I’m so conservative, I’m not saying who I’ll voting for, I”m just not voting for the GOP nominee.’ He wants to sit back for four years then take back the Whitehouse. What a joke. In four years the SCOTUS balance will be 3-7, the demographic of the entire nation will change, TX, GA, NC, VA, FL, and others states will be permanently blue, and the GOP will have lost any ability to have any national significance, only pockets at the local level.
George Will has always struck me as someone who wants to be a cross between Mark Twain and Tom Wolfe and enjoys hearing his own voice almost as much as Scott Simon.
” transcendent intellectuals”
Lots of transcendent intellectuals voted for Obama. Look how that turned out.
Obamacare is failing, as the flyover rubes knew it would. The economy is stalled at less than 2% GDP for going on 8 years. There are race riots in the streets. The endless ME war remains endless. Everything he has touched turned to lead.
Nissem Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan) calls people like George Will the IYI ((Intellectual-Yet-Idiots).
His recent comment about the reaction against Brexit is salient here:
“When people vote the way of the IYI elite, it is “democracy”. Otherwise it is misguided, irrational, swayed by populism & lack of education.”
I’d vote for a dead cat over Hillary, the most corrupt and vile candidate in the last 100 years.
But transcendent intellectual George Will is going with Hillary.
IYI.
Maybe “transcendent intellectuals” shouldn’t vote.
Dave137,
Why don’t you ask Hillary the same question? It’s also quite pathetic that you argue just like your hated candidate by coming up with such a grade school clever name calling like Dump. Did you spend up all night for that one? or did you get from a liberal web site?
Seeing that those who rise to the top of their respective political party candidacies, are not of the caliber or competence levels the public wants and deserves, wouldn’t it be better, as many others have suggested, for the public to vote on policies rather than on candidates? Then whichever policies the majority favor, experts could be hired to implement those policies. Who would develop the policy questions for voting? Policy development experts. So, for example a policy that is complete idiocy like “No regulations of guns”, would not be an option.
Talking Head, George Will never runs for political office. Just whines & complains at per diem rates.
What an appropriate label for ” an empty vessel”. Dump….as in those empty vessels, that make the most noise. I must say, Dump’s lack of command for even a third grade English class is appalling.
The primary responsibility of the president is to uphold the Constitution. This requires at least a basic knowledge of its content.
Can anyone please hold orange-Kardashian to account? Ask him directly, on the spot, at random, at least to paraphrase each Article, or maybe to paraphrase each Amendment in only the Bill of Rights: and then watch how he dodges. Watch how he fails to know not only what the Constitution says but also how its words apply in our modern society. And then maybe we can stop talking about talking about Dump and conversely focus the conversation on policy and the role of government generally.
Dump is all surface and no depth. He’s “unpredictable” because he has no idea or knowledge of what’s going on. So he hides in plain sight by pretending to keep his cards close to his chest: meanwhile he’s holding blanks.
Instead, we talk about bickering, and it’s why nothing sticks to The Dump. Everyone is playing his game while real solutions for the real world as always are needed. And it is a game that serves only to satisfy his pathetic need to draw attention to a patently hollow brand. Believe me, believe me.
Though Clinton is absolutely problematic for multiple reasons, comparatively — like Dump himself — the general election is a no-brainer.
In days of old when knights were bold and rubbers wern’t invented, they tied a sock around the Republican sock and babies were prevented.
Another Israel first war-monger voting for the status quo felon who helped Obama formulate current foreign policy contributing to over 30 million displaced persons on earth now, more than any time since the end of WW2.
Well done, George Will! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Amen! Just another pretentious twerp.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
There seem to be a group of sore-losers in the Republican Party who cannot tolerate Donald Trump winning the nomination. George Will fits in the group. What surprises me is that he reportedly is going to vote for the alleged felon Hillary Clinton. That really is sour grapes.
Good riddance to a another out of touch cuckservative! Go back to your Georgetown cocktail party.