"Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance." -- Kate Morton
Some people, especially in this age of hyperpartisanship, never learn to dance.
A couple of recent missives to this page suggested we and other Republicans are just now getting around to criticizing former President Donald Trump.
We wonder where they've been.
During Trump's presidency, we were clear when we felt he did something right. His efforts to jumpstart the economy, his court appointments and his slicing of business regulations were just a few. We were forthright when we thought the national media and Democrats were being unfair to him. His efforts at halting illegal immigration, the now-debunked Russian collusion and the COVID-19 pandemic were among those instances.
And we appreciated that he took on Democrats and the media in a way that Republicans before him never would.
But from the beginning, when he came down the golden escalator, we were clear on his personality and what could possibly happen if he became president. It's a drumbeat we continued throughout the primaries, through the Tennessee presidential preference primary when we endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and through the efforts to stop his nomination.
This page did not endorse him for president in either 2016 or 2020.
But to refresh memories, we decided to check on what we'd said in the past.
In 2015, after Trump jumped to the head of polls for the 2016 Republican nomination, we wrote: "Somewhere on the bench, we hope, is a candidate who has that combination of plain speaking, family values, a desire to reach out to the entire electorate and a willingness to undo the excesses of the last six years. That is the candidate Republicans should nominate."
After the first Republican debate, we wrote: "If the first in a series of Republican presidential debates proved anything Thursday night, it was that businessman and blowhard Donald Trump does not belong in the field." Subsequently we mentioned his "vague answers," "his bluster" and "his general lack of seriousness."
In 2016, we called him "dangerous" and said this: "A man in his 60s, who is still acting like a spoiled adolescent, is not going to grow up in the next four years. And, as president, he would have the lives of us all, and our loved ones, in his hands, as well as the fate of this great nation at a fateful time."
A couple of weeks later, our editorial talked about his "gross inadequacies," "headstrong shallowness" and "fecklessness."
After another two weeks, we said this: "The political damage of Trump to the Republican Party is completely overshadowed by the damage he can do to the country and to the world with his reckless and irresponsible statements."
In our October 2016 non-endorsement, we wrote: "Nearly one year ago, when Donald Trump had begun to make believers out of his 16 Republican primary opponents, we wrote that the New York businessman was 'not one of us.'
"In that editorial, we discussed his inconsistency as a conservative, his 'bombastic naivety on foreign policy,' his 'lack of specifics on domestic issues' and his 'marked lack of couth.'
"Nearly a year later, with Trump the Republican presidential nominee, we don't believe much has changed."
In our 2020 non-endorsement, we noted that the Republican nominee's "name-calling, tone deafness and intractability confounded us long before he was elected in 2016."
Beyond what we said about Trump before, during and after his presidency are the commentaries that this page chooses to run from a variety of conservative columnists.
Although the stable of writers from which we can choose are considered conservative, they had and have a variety of opinions, as do our readers. They don't think in lockstep the way we believe many of our friends on the left do.
So when Trump was elected, we constantly searched for commentaries that would back his policies as well as those who were skeptical of them. The former were hard to find; the latter were everywhere, and we fell in for a heavy dose of criticism from readers because we couldn't find enough praise-only Trump columnists.
Many of the columnists were like us. They praised many of the president's deeds but were less enamored of his personal behavior.
Now that he is not president, now that some of the intrigue before his Jan. 6, 2021, speech to protesters has been exposed, now that many of his personally endorsed candidates caused the U.S. Senate to remain in Democratic hands, and now that he is doing unhinged things like meeting with white supremacists and suggesting the Constitution be scrapped, he is indeed coming in for heavier criticism from conservatives.
But those conservative critics are not Johnny-come- latelys, and neither are we. Nevertheless, in our hyperpartisan age, if people convince themselves of something, no matter how wrong it is, they cling to it like a lifeline.
So let us make it clear for 2024: Donald Trump should not be the Republican nominee for president. He is the ticket to four more years of Democratic rule.