Many of us conservatives were shocked when National Review, the magazine of conservative thought, was so convinced that Donald Trump was not a conservative, that it devoted its February 15, 2016 issue to bring down his candidacy.
I was an admirer of the magazine’s conservative founder, William F. Buckley Jr, who passed away in February 2008. I enjoyed his wit and wisdom as the host of the PBS series Firing Line from 1966 to 1999.
I was a subscriber to National Review when it published its highly critical issue, “Against Trump,” and often thought what Buckley would have thought about its decision to come out in opposition to Trump, because he wasn’t conservative.
I’m reminded of Democrats, who oppose blacks who aren’t black enough, like Justice Clarence Thomas and Sen. Tim Scott.
Adding to my disappointment was the contributions by writers who I long admired for their conservative positions, who agreed to include their views on candidate Trump. Here are some excerpts:
“The GOP base is clearly disgusted and looking for new leadership. Enter Donald Trump, not just with policy prescriptions that challenge the cynical GOP leadership (the establishment), but with an attitude of distain for that leadership – precisely in line with the sentiment of the base. Many conservatives are relishing this, but ah, the rub. Trump might be the greatest charlatan of them all,” wrote L. Brent Bozell III, now president of the Media Research Center.
“We can talk about whether he is a boor, a creep or a louse, but one thing about which there can be no debate is that Trump is no conservative – he’s simply playing one in the primaries. Call it unreality TV,” wrote columnist Mona Charen.
“Isn’t Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained? Isn’t the task of conservatives today to stand athwart Trumpism, yelling Stop?” wrote Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard.
Edwin Meese III, attorney general under President Reagan didn’t like the way Trump attacked the sixteen challengers in debates, and quoted Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
“At a time when the nation is suffering under one of the most divisive and incompetent presidents in history (Barack Obama), our people need positive, unifying leadership, not negative, destructive political rhetoric,” wrote Meese.
“Conservatives have a serious decision to make. Do we truly believe in our long-held principles and insist that politicians have records demonstrating fealty to them? Or are we willing to throw these principles away because an entertainer who has been a liberal Democrat for decades simply says the right things? In short, do our principles still matter? A vote for Trump indicates the answer is “No,” wrote Katie Pavlitch, editor of Townhall.
“What is remarkable is that, after seven years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House (Barack Obama), so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor,” wrote Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution.
“The dictionary defines it (temperament) as “the combination of mental, physical, and emotional traits of a person,” wrote syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. “Would Trump’s ‘combination’ make him a good president? I think not.”
Although not included in that issue, known conservatives, George Will, Matt Schlapp, Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg and even Mark Levin questioned Trump’s candidacy. Not all Never Trumpers came from the media. There were, and still are, career bureaucrats and Republicans in Congress who quietly remain in opposition.
The notice of a new book, “Disloyal Opposition: How the Never Trump Right Tried – and Failed – To Take Down the President,” by Julie Kelly, a columnist for American Greatness, triggered this special edition of Kramerontheright.
Just as I have thought, Kelly notes, “how many people like me, millions of Republicans across the country, have been betrayed by the influencers we trusted and supported for decades. Consumed with their self-importance and alarmed at their potential demotion with the GOP, they pledged to crush the brash interloper.”
I always thought, how odd, those same individuals supported George W. Bush even though he did nothing for conservatives.
That was then. This is now.
Some of the Never Trumpers have come around to support Trump in print and on the air, including Schlapp, Shapiro, Pavlitch and Levin, but not Goldberg, who, two years into Trump’s presidency, wrote, “What bothers me, and what I think is so corrupting of conservatism and other Republican Party, is that we are hardwired evolutionarily to resist the idea that our leaders are bad people.”
Then there’s Bill Kristol, who spends his time tweeting anti-Trump messages since his magazine, the Weekly Standard, folded.
Former U.S. Attorney and contributing editor of National Review, Andrew McCarthy, who appears regularly on Fox News Channel is one of those individuals who appears to concede that Trump has been successful.
In Against Trump, McCarthy wrote of the presidency’s most crucial duty is the protection of American national security. Noting that Donald Trump did not know the key leaders of the global jihad during an interview with Hugh Hewitt during the campaign, he wrote, “of course a man who wants to be president should make it his business to know such things.”
“The threat against us has metastasized in our eighth year under a president (Barack Obama) who quite consciously appeases the enemy. But the remedy is not a president oblivious of the enemy,” McCarthy wrote.
Looking back to that 2016 piece, McCarthy was concerned that candidate Trump didn’t recognize the name of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the ISIS.
Trump may not have known al-Baghdadi then, but in October 2019, as commander-in-chief, he ordered a special ops team to take his life in Syria, and ISIS has been decimated. And, while the name of Qasem Soleimani wasn’t mentioned to Trump in that interview, he ordered a drone strike on this Iranian terrorist earlier this year. An outsider learns on the job.
Talk Show host Eric Erickson, writing in the National Review, said, “I will not be voting for Donald Trump in the primary. I take my conservatism seriously.” In 2018, however, Erickson wrote,” I find myself in an odd position where, for the first time, I see myself, one of the original Never Trump conservatives, voting for President Trump in 2020.”
Recalling the “Never Trump Coalition that Decided Eh, Never Mind, He’s Fine,” in the New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters, writes about social conservatives, evangelical Christians and women, who now consider Mr. Trump as “a hero.”
“Many of the conservative women who once saw him as a boor have to believe that for too long, they were focused on the wrong qualities in presidential candidates.
After the Justice Kavanaugh hearings, even Never Trumper Bret Stephens of the New York Times wrote that he was “grateful because Trump had not backed down in the face of slipperyness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. I’ll admit to feeling grateful that, in Trump, at least one big bully was willing to stand up to others.”
A year ago, Never Trumper Stephens, recalling the formation of the movement, wrote:
“Then Trump won. The guy who was supposed to lead his party to catastrophic defeat became the man who, in the eyes of the right uniquely figures out how to save the country from Hillary Clinton.
“The coarseness of speech and crudeness of character that were supposed to be his central flaws became evidence of his gutsy indifference to liberal reproach.
“There were also those conservative policy and political victories. Regulatory rollback. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and all the lower court judges. Increased military spending. The tax cut. Withdrawal from the Iran deal. An expanded GOP majority in the Senate. The Mueller fizzle.”
“In reality, the 45th president has presided over one of the most dynamically conservative administrations in a century,” concludes columnist Josh Hammer.
Still a Never Trumper, Stephens says Never Trumpers have scattered. We know where they live.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
