On the final day of CPAC, conservative columnist Mona Charen denounced Republicans who are “hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women” — i.e. Trump supporters. “There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth,” Charen later wrote. “And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism.”

Well I’m glad she feels the lightness of liberation. But I’ve watched the likes of Charen pontificate for decades as the country deteriorated, with Washington either failing to stop the decline or abetting it.

Elite conservative thinkers like Charen fail to recognize what the “rabble” who put Trump in office understood better than their “betters:” The stakes in the 2016 election were just too high.