Start four years ago:

Four years later, John Sexton reports:

Ben Ray Luján, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), sent a letter to his Republican counterpart Monday asking that information in leaked documents not be used against Democratic candidates. The letter from Luján reads in part:

The Russians have a long track record of doctoring documents acquired through cyberattacks, and while we cannot confirm their authenticity, their appearance online is certainly a notable concern…

I write with the assumption that you are not aware of the troubling action your Committee undertook last week to take advantage of this Russian cyberattack ahead of this week’s Democratic primary in Florida. In a digital advertisement attacking Mr. Randy Perkins in the 18th Congressional District, your staff used content from documents stolen by the Russian hackers.

I know you to be an honorable person, and this disturbing action by your Committee is genuinely shocking. The NRCC’s use of documents stolen by the Russians plays right into the hands of one of the United States’ most dangerous adversaries. Put simply, if this action continues, the NRCC will be complicit in aiding the Russian government in its effort to influence American elections.

Luján asks that the NRCC forswear any further use of leaked information. The letter concludes, “This is the only appropriate and patriotic way to respond to this Russian attack on our democracy.”

Several points on this. First, you have to love that the DCCC now refers to Russia as “one of the United States’ most dangerous adversaries.” That’s quite a change from where the party was four years ago. …

Second, does anyone think that if the shoe were on the other foot, i.e. if oppo research material on Republicans had been dropped in the lap of Democrats, they would forswear using it as a matter of patriotism? I don’t buy it for a moment.

Third, the DCCC is suggesting that Russia may have doctored the documents. It’s true that Russia probably would do this, however the DCCC has yet to indicate this has actually happened. Politico reports, “The DCCC, however, refuses to say whether the information in the DCCC memo was altered or not, citing an ongoing FBI investigation.”

Which brings me to my fourth and final point. The one instance Luján mentions of this leaked material being used in an ad didn’t involve any secret information about the candidate. From Politico:

The NRCC sparked the debate last week when it aired a digital ad attacking Randy Perkins, a Democrat running in Florida’s 18th District, over his company’s alleged over-charging of a school district for contracted work. Florida press had covered the legal dispute, and the back-and-forth was listed on the hacked DCCC internal memo as potentially problematic for their candidate.

“Even Democratic Party bosses are questioning his character,” the narrator said in the ad, which included a photo of the internal memo.

So that’s the extent of this so far. Republicans mention that a DCCC file pointed to already public information which made the Democratic candidate look bad. You can argue whether or not that’s fair game but it’s not as if this was some deep, dark secret only revealed by the hack.

James Taranto:

“Did Democrats cry wolf so many times before [Donald] Trump that no one hears or heeds them now?” asks the New York Times’s Frank Bruni. One such Democrat, the fittingly named Howard Wolfson, answers in the affirmative.

Wolfson worked for John Kerry’s campaign in 2004 and was communications director for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign. In referring to Republican nominees in those years and 2012, Wolfson tells Bruni, “I’m quite confident I employed language that, in retrospect, was hyperbolic and inaccurate, language that cheapened my ability—our ability—to talk about this moment with accuracy and credibility.”

In contrast with George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, according to Wolfson, Trump is “an actual, honest-to-God menace”:

“It’s only when you find yourself describing someone who really is the definition of an extremist—who really is, essentially, in my opinion, a fascist—that you recognize that the language that you’ve used in the past to describe other people was hyperbolic and inappropriate and cheap,” Wolfson said.

He certainly has a point about credibility—as we noted way back in February, in a column titled “The Boy Who Cried Trump.” What about accuracy? That’s debatable, to say the least. Wolfson acknowledges that his description of Trump as “essentially . . . a fascist” is just his opinion.

Wolfson is unequivocal in describing Trump as an “extremist,” but is that description really apt? In August 2015, the Times published a piece by Josh Barro titled “Donald Trump, Moderate Republican.” In a November Slate piece, Jamelle Bouie echoed the claim: “Donald Trump Is Actually a Moderate Republican.”
Six days later, another Bouie piece appeared, titled “Donald Trump Is a Fascist.” In July, Barro tweeted: “The Republicans lining up with Trump now would’ve gone with Hitler in the 1930s, seeing his rise as an opportunity.”

So Trump is a moderate Republican fascist? Well, why not? So was Mitt Romney. In a hilarious piece for the Daily Beast last month, Karol Markowicz rehearsed some of the rhetoric of former Enron adviser Paul Krugman:

In 2012, Krugman called Mitt Romney a “charlatan,” pathologically dishonest, and untrustworthy. He said Romney doesn’t even pretend to care about poor people and wants people to die so that the rich could get richer. Romney is “completely amoral,” “a dangerous fool,” “ignorant as well as uncaring.”
In March, Krugman had a column called “Clash of Republican Con Artists.” In it, he called Trump’s foreign policy more reasonable than that of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz and said he’s just as terrified of either of those men in the White House as he is of Trump. He wrote: “In fact, you have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump. Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other?”
Yet a few weeks ago Krugman wondered how Republicans could rally around Trump “just as if he were a normal candidate.” It was exactly Krugman who normalized him! What makes Donald Trump normal to so many is that they’ve heard all the hysteria from people like Krugman before.

Markowicz is a Nevertrump Republican; she agrees with Wolfson that Trump is an honest-to-God menace, though unlike him she always recognized earlier GOP nominees weren’t. “Perhaps if the Trump campaign has taught the media anything,” she concludes, “it’s to ratchet down the rhetoric so that words mean something again.”

Bruni ends on a similar note:

“We should take stock of this moment,” [Wolfson] said, “and recognize that our language really needs to be more accountable and more appropriate to the circumstances.” I hope we do.

The problem is that at this moment, “ratcheting down the rhetoric” is actually a way of ratcheting it up. Wolfson’s acknowledgment that his own past characterizations of GOP nominees were false is meant to create a dramatic contrast and thereby lend credibility to his current denunciations of Trump.

But if you are inclined to think (as we are) that it is overwrought to describe Trump as an extremist or fascist, why should it? Wolfson has said similar things about past GOP nominees, and apparently he was sincere about them, realizing only “in retrospect” that they were inaccurate. Why should we think his judgment is reliable now?

Bruni half-acknowledges the point:

What stands out in this presidential campaign aren’t [sic] the alarms that Democrats are sounding about the Republican nominee but the ones that an unusual number of Republican defectors are. That’s what’s unfamiliar. And that’s what’s wounding Trump.

He cites as examples pieces from July by National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and March from Commentary’s Noah Rothman. He doesn’t mention Markowicz’s much-discussed piece; we suppose it would be awkward to do so given her evisceration of his colleague Krugman.

It’s true enough that the Trump nomination has occasioned an unusual amount of Republican disunity and conservative opposition. But Nevertrump conservatives are all over the map as to their rationales for opposing the candidate. Some would agree with Wolfson’s characterization of him as an extremist, but others make the opposite argument. Last week a Nevertrump friend of ours told us she would vote for neither Trump nor Mrs. Clinton because both are “New York liberals.” Still others object to Trump for nonideological reasons of character, personality, temperament, style or experience.

And those conservatives whose objections to Trump are ideological often end up sounding suspiciously like liberals, as Jonah Goldberg found on Wednesday night. In response to Trump’s immigration speech, Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s token conservative blogress, tweeted: “David Duke and NRO [National Review Online, former name of NR’s website] pleased. One of these should know better.”

Goldberg—whose magazine published an issue before the primaries almost entirely devoted to the case against Trump—replied: “Push away the keyboard, Jennifer. Shameful and dumb.” Rubin rejected that wise counsel. The guilt-by-association-with-David-Duke move is an old and tired liberal smear, and it gains no added vitality from being employed by a putative conservative.

On the other hand, after the Republican nominee’s visit to Mexico earlier Wednesday, Howard Wolfson tweeted: “If you believe Trump needed to pivot, moderate and look more Presidential, that event was a home run.” So let’s give Wolfson credit for giving Trump credit where it was due.