Source: The Next Move
by Jay Nordlinger
“Some Republican-aligned journalists said that they would be neither pro-Trump nor anti-Trump. They would be neutral umpires, calling balls and strikes. Which sounds good—reasonable. But there were always problems with this approach. First, the umpires did not call every pitch. They were selective. Pitches that did not reflect well on Trump might not get called at all. Second, not all pitches are equal. The attempt to overturn an election is one pitch, I suppose. The deregulation of oil and gas, another. But you see how one thing crowds out—overwhelms—the other? This gets to the biggest problem with the balls-and-strikes approach: it may work with a normal politician, with a basic fitness for office and a basic respect for our constitutional order, but it cannot work with a Trump.” (10/28/26)