Robert W. Merry: "Trump Is Blowing It"

This is very close to my current view.
Perhaps the most important bit:

   Yes, the Donald Trump haters are blowing the Ukraine story out of proportion in their frenzied effort to drive him from office just months before Election Day—or at least to humiliate him and his followers with a House impeachment.
   And, yes, many of those same partisans carried out a years-long project to destroy his presidency with that so-called Russiagate investigation, which turned out to be based on bogus suspicions and allegations. And, yes, Trump is correct in his complaint that no president has ever before been subjected to the kind of relentless political assault that he has endured from the nation’s political, governmental, and cultural establishment.
   But all that misses a fundamental point about American presidential politics—that presidents get the credit for what’s going well in the country and the blame for what’s not going well. And the man most responsible for the current impeachment mess that’s tearing the country apart is Trump himself. His effort to gin up an investigation of his top political rival by a foreign government was so irresponsible, reprehensible, and reckless that he must now own the mess that has ensued from it.
   Do his ill-considered actions rise to the level of a firing offense in our presidential system? In ordinary times, probably not. But these aren’t ordinary times in America. The country is rent by crosscurrents of political passion far more intense and divisive than America has seen probably since the Civil War era. At issue is nothing less than the definition of the nation and what kind of country it will be in the next 20 years and beyond.
   The nation’s elites and their most fervent followers—globalist in outlook, anti-nationalist by instinct, increasingly contemptuous of national borders—want to remake the country through mass immigration, global finance, and a fierce demand for diversity, all enforced through the bludgeon of political correctness and the weapon words deployed in its behalf. Trump’s followers don’t see why they should simply acquiesce in this transformation that seems destined to leave them marginalized and their heritage in shreds. They needed a champion, and nobody throughout the firmament of American politics seemed interested in the job—until Trump.
   But it was a big job, rendered politically dangerous by the ferocious resolve on the part of the elites to continue their transformation project unimpeded. Anyone who got in their way would have to be destroyed, and Trump got in their way.
   That posed a profound challenge. He had to galvanize his natural supporters through rhetoric and initiatives favorable to them while at the same time expanding his base sufficiently to forge a governing coalition. This was no mean feat.
   Consider, as one telling example, the crudity and rawness of Trump’s rhetoric. On the one hand, it served to stir his natural constituency because it denoted a proud defiance toward those coastal elites that have so rankled many heartland Americans in recent decades, particularly on the issue of immigration. But this rhetorical crudity and rawness, if unconstrained, could turn off penumbral voters needed for that governing coalition. Trump’s inability to find the balance here has contributed to his inability to build his base beyond an approval rating hovering at or near 40 percent. No president has ever been reelected with such low numbers.

Trump's awful, but no other conservative/Republican seemed genuinely willing to step up and oppose the trajectory the cultural elite are leading us on. Progressivism has become a kind of antirational, antiliberal, quasi-religious cult. It is pushing a set of policies that are dangerously radical, and that may very well leave the country a smoking ruin 30 years--we just don't know. I'm willing to discuss virtually all of them--but the left isn't talking about discussion. To doubt its dictates is to be a racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic etc. etc. etc. Rational discussion is for fascists. It's talking about immediate implementation. That's why climate apocalypticism and the GND are important parts of the view: all progressive policies must immediately be implemented or we die. No time to discuss. No time to think. Perhaps we should have open borders or something like it. The arguments for such an idea are nontrivial. The downside is that it may lead to destruction of the nation--we just don't know. In such a case, careful thought is required. I don't think it's radical, nor particularly conservative, to insist that we stick with the status quo while we stop and think--rather than simply rolling the dice. And none of that even touches on the progressive drift against the First Amendment, against the Second Amendment, against the Fifth Amendment...

   But Trump's an idiot, and a loudmouth, and a lout. He's only made even minimally considerable because the alternative is very, very dangerous. I think the Democrats have finally found a slapfight they can win against him. Since he's a loon with a big mouth and a Twitter account, they've got the means to make him beat himself. They've been acting crazy, but, like so many people and parties, they have the ability to say insane things with a calm and respectable demeanor. Trump says less-crazy things, but his demeanor is the demeanor of a crazy street-billionaire, ranting and raving at the sky. Most people don't have time for politics; they decide on the basis of demeanor--which is usually a pretty good rule of thumb. And Trump's demeanor could hardly be worse. (Not to say that he doesn't also have substantive failings.)

   Anyway, yeah: Trump is blowing it. Which is exactly what you'd expect from a guy like him. Perhaps the Dems will regain their sanity. I very much doubt it at this point--but it may be our only real hope.