Washington Post puzzled that people who agree with Trump's policies are supporting him.

Finds it "shameful" that the do.

I don’t blame people for believing their own BS. It’s hard not to do. I’m probably guilty of it at times.

What bothers me is when people expect others to believe their BS, especially when the others in question hold a very different view of the world. That kind of mindset is egocentric and carries authoritarian overtones. (More on the latter description below.)

In this article, a Washington Post reporter, Jesus Rodriguez, tries his best to explain why conservative politicians who have been highly critical of Donald Trump are nonetheless supporting him for president, now that he will be the Republican nominee. “They were highly critical of Trump, but they’re still voting for him,” reads the subtitle of the article (paper edition).

The same could have been written in the case of any candidate for president who had to battle serious opponents for his or her party’s nomination. It certainly could have been written about the support many of Bernie Sanders’ prominent backers offered to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

These Sanders supporters understood that Clinton and Biden, though not true socialists, held views that aligned much more closely with Sanders’ than with Donald Trump’s. So, naturally, they supported Clinton and Biden.

Did the Washington Post ever express bewilderment about this? I don’t think so. Nor should it have. This was just politics as usual.

Yet, when the Post sees Trump’s GOP critics lining up to support their party’s nominee, it’s “a walk of shame.”

In Trump’s case, there is less policy disconnect with those whose support of him the Post finds problematic than there was between Sanders and Clinton-Biden. Trump’s policy views are similar to those of his two main rivals for the nomination, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. There are a few areas of disagreement, obviously. However, any backer of either losing candidate should feel comfortable with Trump when it comes to most policy questions.

The problem Trump’s GOP critics had (and still have) with the nominee is his personality and character. But while personality and character are important, it’s normal to view policy as more important, come voting time. There’s nothing wrong with putting personality and character first. After all, a candidate’s positions on policy often change once in office, whereas character is a constant. But, equally, there’s nothing wrong with prioritizing policy. Indeed, as I just said, doing so is more common than the reverse.

To be sure, the Post’s problem with Trump goes beyond generic concerns about personality and character. It considers him an “existential threat” to democracy.

To me, that’s BS. If the Post really believes it, okay. But it should not expect those outside its echo chamber to concur. And the Post certainly should not be accusing conservatives of hypocrisy, or of acting “shamefully,” for not accepting the paper’s partisan narrative.

Let’s turn, then, to some of the Republican heavyweights the Post calls out. The first is Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire governor who strongly backed Nikki Haley. When Sununu declined to run for president, he explained that beating Trump was more important. But he meant beating Trump with another Republican, not beating him with Biden. In fact, as the Post acknowledges, Sununu said all along he would back the Republican nominee.

At one point, the Post notes, Sununu said that Trump “can barely keep a cogent thought” without a teleprompter. But now, Trump is running against a guy who can’t keep a cogent thought even when using a teleprompter.

Two years ago, Sununu reportedly called Trump “f___ing crazy.” This, no doubt, was hyperbole. It’s not hyperbole to say that Trump is a bit off-kilter. That was a good reason to prefer Haley and most of the other Republicans who opposed Trump for the nomination. It’s not a good reason for someone like Sununu to prefer Biden, whose mental capacity seems diminished and whose policies are largely incompatible with his own. Nor is it a compelling reason not to back Trump when Biden is the only serious alternative and when we have almost four years of Trump acting (as opposed to tweeting) rationally as president. (I say “almost” because Trump did act crazy after he lost the election.)

The Post also calls out Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, who courageously stood up Trump during the former president’s attempt to reverse the 2020 result in Georgia. It notes that Trump called Kemp “a fool” and “a clown.”

But Kemp’s explanation for backing Trump is straightforward: “He’d be better than Joe Biden.” Obviously, the Post disagrees. But there’s nothing puzzling or shameful about Kemp putting aside Trump’s insults and supporting the candidate who, from his ideological perspective, would be the better president. In fact, a less partisan outlet might find this commendable.

The Post also cites Eric Levine, a GOP fundraiser. According to the Post, Levine was thinking about not voting for either Trump or Biden (as, frankly, so am I). However, he decided to back Trump after the Biden administration abstained from voting on a UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Levine told the Post he was also influenced by what it calls a “laundry list” of other grievances with Biden: open borders, the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Bidenomics and its consequences, and the president’s social justice agenda.

To the Post, this may be a “laundry list.” To a reasonable non-leftist voter, it’s a list of good reasons to back Biden’s only viable opponent.

In an email to his contact list, Levine concluded:

The question becomes: as between the two [candidates]. who will leave a better, safer, and more prosperous America for my grandchildren? Hands down, the answer is Trump.

I don’t see how the reason most conservative critics of Trump are backing him could be stated better.

Yet, the Post isn’t buying it. Instead, it suggests that conservative support for Trump stems from a different reason: opportunism.

[S]hould we be surprised that Republicans are finding a way home to Trump?

“In some ways no, because it’s clear they think that there’s a chance he’s going to win,” says George Conway, the conservative lawyer and Trump critic, sipping on whiskey before an event at the National Press Club. “Or even if he doesn’t win, they want to preserve their political credibility. . . .

“It’s not a surprise that Sununu. . .and most every Republican elected official, is eventually gonna come home and support him this year, just like they have previously,” says Joe Walsh, the former tea party congressman who became a Trump apostate and ran against him in 2020. “Because you don’t want to kill your career and kill yourself and you want a seat at the table. So it makes all the sense in the world.”

The desire to maintain and promote one’s career is a time-honored motive for politicians to support a less-than-ideal nominee of their party. But the Post provides no evidence that this motive, rather than alignment on policy, is the main factor in the support folks like Sununu, Kemp, and Levine are providing Trump. (I don’t count grumbling by extreme NeverTrumpers as evidence.)

In fact, Sununu isn’t running for office. He’s moving to the private sector. And Kemp, who has been on Trump’s “s” list for more than three years, easily survived his wrath, winning re-nomination and reelection handily in 2022.

Inevitably, the Post also quotes Liz Cheney. She blames the support Trump is getting from Republicans on Kevin McCarthy’s visit to Mar-a-Lago in 2021. This, she says, signaled to “voters” that Trump can’t be that bad.

Come on, Liz. Voters don’t take their cues from Kevin McCarthy. For that matter, neither did GOP members of Congress. Cheney is letting her grievances with McCarthy override her judgment.

Speaking of Cheney, this passage in the Post’s article is perhaps the most revealing of all:

Former Trump adviser John Bolton has said he will be writing in Dick Cheney, of all people.

“Of all people?” The views of Bolton and Dick Cheney align almost perfectly on foreign policy and national security. If Bolton isn’t supporting Trump, why shouldn’t he vote for the former VP?

As clueless as the passage about Bolton is, one can easily understand why the Post published it. For the Post’s purposes, Dick Cheney was Trump before Trump. Never mind that the views of the two are diametrically opposite on key issues. Cheney was the Post’s cardboard villain in the first decade of this century. Trump assumed that role during the second decade and continues to play it in the third.

The Post can’t stand Dick Cheney. Thus, it struggles to process the fact that John Bolton will vote for him.

This brings me back, at long last, to what I see as the authoritarian overtones of the Post’s article. Naturally, the Post wishes that conservatives would back their man, Joe Biden, just as I wish that more liberals would not support him.

It’s also fair game, albeit somewhat cheap, for the Post to tout anti-Trump statements made by Republicans who now support the ex-president. In 1980, Democrats and their friends in the media endlessly reminded us that Ronald Reagan’s running mate, George Bush, had called the Gipper’s tax-cutting policy “voodoo economics” when Bush was seeking the nomination.

But I don’t recall anyone suggesting that Bush should refuse to run with, much less decline to vote for, Reagan because of their disagreement over the effect of cutting taxes. The target of the “voodoo economics” quote was Reagan, not Bush.

But now, the Post is calling out conservative public figures whose sin is to back Trump because they like his policies and dislike Biden’s. And not just calling them out, but also (1) questioning their motives and (2) claiming that their behavior is shameful. Not misguided. Not hypocritical. Shameful.

It’s bad enough to expect those at the other end of the political spectrum to believe your BS. It’s frighteningly dogmatic to call them shameful when they don’t.

It’s not a long step from that kind of talk to the suppression of those who support candidates the Post, as a stand-in for the left, regards as awful. Nor is it a long step to such suppression from the failure (or unwillingness) to understand why anyone, even those who view the world very differently than you, could, in good faith, back such a candidate.

Democracy could die in that kind of imperiousness.