By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I can’t think of any topic in recent years that has dominated the right-wing talk shows in a manner comparable to National Review’s crusade to put an end to Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency. It calls to mind William F. Buckley’s rendition of the magazine’s mission purpose when he founded it in 1955: that it will be a journal of opinion that “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
Buckley was attempting to turn the tide against the regnant liberalism of the middle years of the 20th century. His successors at National Review have decided that a full-court press is needed to stop Trump; that the ongoing individual attacks against Trump by leading conservatives in their syndicated columns and appearances on the talk shows is not enough to do the trick.
The conservative writers who joined against Trump are some of the best-known and respected commentators on the scene today, people such as L. Brent Bozell III, Andrew McCarthy, Thomas Sowell, Jonah Goldberg, and Cal Thomas.
They minced no words, calling Trump an “unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones”; a man whose “political opinions have wobbled all over the lot,” who has “supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care…and punitive taxes on the wealthy.” They charge that Trump’s “signature issue,” immigration, “makes no sense and can’t be relied upon,” that his pledge “to build a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for it” is “silly bluster.”
They charge that “Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them,” appearing “to believe that the administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.”
One could make the case that Ted Cruz’s victory over Trump in the Iowa caucuses, along with Marco Rubio’s strong showing, indicates that National Review’s campaign has been a success. At the very least, Trump’s momentum has been slowed. We’ll see what happens as the primary season unfolds.
But whatever happens this spring, there is no need to take issue with the critics over Trump’s lack of conservative core principles. Trump is not a “movement conservative.” He has never claimed to be one. In fact, I can picture Trump looking at the list of conservative dignitaries National Review assembled to take him down, and responding, “Who are these guys?” Greta van Susteren made essentially the same point on her Fox News program when she stated dismissively that “no one from my hometown in Wisconsin reads any of these critics of Trump.”
What was ironic was that, just one day before National Review launched its frontal assault against Trump, the magazine published an article by Victor Davis Hanson, one of the most insightful conservative writers of our time. Davis underscored how important it is to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. He did not add, “even if that means backing Donald Trump.” I don’t know what Davis’ position is on Trump. But what he said illustrates why many on the right are willing to put aside temporarily their commitment to the conservative movement and back Trump.
Hillary is not just another Democratic wheeler and dealer, trading political favors for votes. It is important to stop her. There is a dark cloud of dishonesty and ruthlessness that surrounds her. Strong words? We don’t have to go back to Whitewater, the cattle futures and the travel office scandals, and Hillary’s role in containing the “bimbo eruptions” over husband Bill’s extramarital sex life.
Modern voters will likely accept the defense — even if they should not — that Hillary and her supporters will offer if these issues are brought up: that they are charges brought against her by right-wing extremists that she has answered many times in the past, and that there is no need for her to respond to them again. What Davis offers are part of recent history; Hillary may not be able to get away with shrugging them off.
Davis calls our attention to Hillary’s claim that she will go after tax “schemes” in the Caribbean, even though her husband is reported to have “made $10 million as an adviser and an occasional partner in the Yucaipa Global Partnership, a fund registered in the Cayman Islands.” To how she is calling for “huge campaign finance reform” to end the “pernicious role of big money in politics,” while at the same time collecting “more than $12 million for her primary campaign.” Also that she has earned, writes Davis, “nearly $1.6 million in speaking fees from Wall Street banks.”
Hillary has, Davis continues, “vowed to raise taxes on hedge fund managers,” even though her “son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, operates a $400 million hedge fund” and daughter Chelsea, “who worked for a consulting firm and hedge fund despite having no background in finance,” is now reported to be “worth an estimated $15 million.” Hillary is also promising a “new $350 billion government plan to make college more affordable,” while charging “universities $200,000 or more for her brief 30-minutes speeches.”
One would think that even Democratic Party loyalists — perhaps mainly Democratic Party loyalists — will recoil from what this wheeling and dealing reveals about Hillary. And easy to see why informed conservatives would come to the conclusion that keeping her out of the presidency is more important than backing a candidate who is more ideologically pure, but unlikely to block Hillary’s run for the presidency.
There is no betrayal of principle implicit that decision. Or in the calculation that there will be time to fight the fight over conservative causes that may not be high on Trump’s list of priorities — the dangers of judicial activism, states rights, and supply-side economics, for example — once Hillary is back in private life wherever she calls home these days.
Whatever one thinks of Trump’s lack of commitment to the above causes, his administration will give conservatives promoting them a far fairer hearing than a third Clinton administration.
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