I AM AN HONORABLE CONSERVATIVE, AND ALL OF YOU LIBS ARE EXTREMIST NUTJOBS

Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast has been reading the Trump news and now warns his fellow conservatives that they'll soon have to decide what principles matter to them:

We should be ready to accept the very real possibility that serious misdemeanors were committed and lies told.

... what will conservatives do or say ... if their leader does something so egregious as to render himself no longer worthy of even the most fawning conservative’s loyalty? The people who defend the indefensible—who put “loyalty” to a man (not principle or America) above all else—will not be judged well by history.

But the important thing, to Lewis, is not to be "extreme." Stop for a moment and savor how Lewis defines "extreme."

We’ve been through two years now of Trump. We know how the extremes on both sides are going to react. We know how many liberal Democrats are going to call for impeachment or resignation, regardless of Mueller’s findings. We know how Trump apologists are going to deflect and try to make excuses, regardless of how inexcusable the evidence turns out to be. The real unknown is how honorable conservatives are going to react.

Lewis says that it's quite possible to imagine Trump doing something "inexcusable," something that's "so egregious as to render himself no longer worthy of even the most fawning conservative’s loyalty." But he also says that "extreme" liberal Democrats "are going to call for impeachment or resignation, regardless of Mueller’s findings." When I put those two ideas together, I conclude that Lewis believes it's "extreme" to say that Trump should resign or be impeached, even if he does "something so egregious as to render himself no longer worthy of even the most fawning conservative’s loyalty" -- even if what he does is "inexcusable."

Am I reading too much into this? I don't think so. Lewis is trying to find a way to be anti-"inexcusable" while remaining anti-anti-Trump. His message is that coming out in opposition to Trump is an option honorable conservatives really need to consider in the somewhat distant but foreseeable future, primarily because not abandoning Trump at some point could mean not being "judged well by history." (The problem then, presumably, will be that if history judges conservatives poorly, they might lose many opportunities to cut taxes on the rich and regulations on corporations.)

I could argue that honorable people of all political stripes decided that Trump's conduct was "inexcusable" and "egregious" years ago. But that's just me being "extreme," isn't it?