NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about "presumptive nominee" Trump and the slow shift in rightblogger sentiment toward him. Some #NeverTrump types will hold firm, I think, but Principled Conservatism will leak a great many soldiers because many of them have no real reason to resist Trumpism -- the National Review guys are obliged by the terms of their sinecures to talk about policy, but do you think someone like Ace of Spades or the guys at Hot Air really give a shit about the Constitution as anything but a rhetorical weapon to use against the dirty hippies they hate? That being the case, what's stopping them from lining up with the ultimate dirty-hippie hater?

I'll be interested to see how Rod Dreher's case resolves itself. For months, Dreher has been pee-dancing around Trump, saying things like “I want Trump to beat the SJWs at their game. They are making America ungovernable… But it is not sufficient to cheer Trump for opposing these idiots. Whatever my heart says in the moment, my head tells me that I don’t want Trump to win…” blah blah blah.

Dreher has remained unproductive on the pot, but lately his hints at Trumpism have gotten stronger. Last week he read a rude blog post by Harvard professor Mark Tushnet, moaned for the millionth time that “we cultural conservatives have lost, and have to prepare for active resistance under occupation,” and declared, “the only good reason I can think of to vote Trump this fall is that we can be certain that President Hillary Clinton, who will probably get to name three, maybe four, Supreme Court justices, will do her best to appoint justices that believe as Mark Tushnet does…”

I imagine Dreher will keep this up till one day Hillary Clinton supports some trans woman using the ladies room, whereupon he'll declare THIS IS IT! and go whole hog. No more lesser-of-two-evils shit, like when he voted against David Duke but “felt sick inside over it.” And he won’t be the only one. After all, if guys like Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have gone over, how bad can it be?

UPDATE. The rats are boarding the sinking ship! At National Review, Fred Schwarz:

For both candidates, their main interest is, of course, themselves; but Hillary’s basic inclination is far to the left and so is the base of her party, whereas Trump’s inclination is centrist consensus and the base of his party is to the right. Even if you assume they both will practice Clintonian triangulation (govern from middle and placate your base with gestures), Trump’s middle will be to the right of Hillary’s. She will fight to shift the nation leftward, while he may let such a shift occur but will not aggressively pursue it (for instance, on immigration, he won’t do much to stop it, but neither will he aggressively work for legalization and amnesty, and he will let Border Patrol and ICE do their jobs).

So if Trump gets elected and drones some guy because he beat him on a land deal, or clubs Paul Ryan to death with a baseball bat on national TV, Schwarz can confidently say, "Yes, but his capricious evil inclines to the Right!"