Posted on 01/24/2016 10:23:47 AM PST by Kaslin
That Donald Trump is no conservative is a proposition of which this conservative needs no convincing.
On this score, the self-styled "conservative" contributors to the recent National Review symposium against Trump are correct. It is their conservative bona fides that I challenge.
For example, Glenn Beck suggests that Trump is no conservative because along with Barack Obama, Trump supported "the stimulus, the auto bailouts, and the bank bailouts."
Yet Trump had neither authority nor power to make these ideas materialize. That distinction is enjoyed by just those politicians who Beck supported.
For years, Beck ran cover for George W. Bush, the 43rd president who, along with such members of Congress as John McCain, who Beck also endorsed for President in 2008, brought us the bank bailouts. McCain also signed onto the auto bailouts and while he didn't back Obama's stimulus, he announced his own stimulusin 2008—months before the election in which he lost to Obama.
But Beck still endorsed him.
Michael Medved was an even more enthusiastic champion of McCain than was McCain himself. And in his critique of Trump he refers to Bush II as one of the two most "popular" of "conservative" presidents (the other being Ronald Reagan).
Of course, Medved is not alone in his estimation of Bush II: NR and, by implication, the 22 "conservative" pundits who it invited to warn conservative voters about Trump agree wholeheartedly.
NR, along with The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and several other Republican-friendly outfits regularly supported both the domestic and, especially, the foreign policies of Bush II—regardless of how wildly un-conservative these policies were.
Though Beck has since come to see the Iraq War for the calamitous event that it is, he didn't always think this way. In 2006, Beck remarked that while the Bush administration was sincere when it insisted that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction," this was "just gravy." The "real reason" that "we went into Iraq was Iran. We were going there to stop Iran by planting the seeds of democracy all around Iran" so as to "change the face of the Middle East."
The invasion of Iraq was necessary, Beck insisted, in order to avoid World War III.
Bush didn't tell us his real reasons for invading Iraq, Beck said, "because he felt, you know, [that] we just wouldn't understand that we were in the early stages of World War III."
Let that register. According to Beck, not only was the invasion of Iraq a good idea; it was the only move necessary to prevent a third world war.
And we were already in the early stages of this war.
Beck was correct that it was indeed the agenda all along of Bush and his party to make the world—or, in this case, the Middle East—"safe for Democracy." Beck, Medved, NR, and all of those in the better known "conservative" media outletsalways knew that this was the objective.
The "progressive" of all progressives, Woodrow Wilson, would've been proud.
Bear this in mind as you consider that Mona Charen, another contributor to NR and supporter of the Iraq War, assures us that, in contrast with Trump, who "has made a career out of egotism," conservatism "implies a certain modesty about government."
However, no one who favors using the United States government as an agent by which to spread "democracy" throughout the world has any kind of modesty about government.
This prosecution of this utopian fantasy has come at the cost of trillions of dollars and the incalculable cost of tens of thousands of lives extinguished and even more ruined.
It is not Trump on whose shoulders any of this rests, for he opposed this reckless enterprise.
Medved assures us that Trump's "brawling, blustery, mean-spirited public persona serves to associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have for decades attached to their opponents on the right." So, it is Trump's style that's bad for conservatism—not the GOP's launching of a war that the vast majority of Americans now regard as a colossal waste of blood and treasure, a war waged upon false pretenses.
He's also concerned that Trump's "much-heralded hard line on immigration discards pragmatic reform policies favored by the two most popular conservatives of the last half century, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush."
Reagan's "pragmatic reform policies" regarding immigration consisted of an amnesty that he granted in 1986—and which he retrospectively judged to be the biggest mistake of his career. Implicitly, Medved at least concedes that all of this talk of "comprehensive immigration reform" really is amnesty by another name.
As for Bush's "conservatism," from No Child Left Behind to the Patriot Act; from federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to Medicare Part D; from his "Home Ownership Society" (which culminated in the recession of 2008) to his nomination to the Supreme Court of John Roberts (the judge who made Obamacare the law of the land); from his efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegals to his "War on Terror," G.W. Bush continually proved that he was anything but a conservative.
If Bush is a conservative president, as Medved and NR continue to maintain, then we must conclude that so too are LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama conservative presidents.
Medved and company at NR also endorsed, not just Bush and McCain, but Mitt Romney, a politician whose opportunism and waffling on topics from abortion to gay marriage to gun control and many issues in between are epic. Notorious flip-flopper John Kerry seems as steady as a rock compared to Romney.
More importantly, Romney's socialization of healthcare in Massachusetts provided the blueprint for Obamacare.
Given their respective records, as well as the fact that Bush II, McCain, and Romney issued in a series of electoral successes for Democrats, we must ask NR: So, what exactly is conservatism, and why are you so worried about Trump?
Conserve what?
Open borders?
20 trillion in debt?
A million Muslims brought here PER YEAR?
No thanks.
A valid bit point but mental masturbation never the less
The dems must be laughing their asses off. Can you imagine a liberal magazine ganging up and trashing one of their candidates, the one leading in the polls as a matter of fact. One thing for sure they stick together, whereas we eat our own. Whether you’re a Trump fan or not, this is reprehensible .
The GOPe is perfectly happy to elect Hillary.
They don’t want to lose Congress. The chairmanships and purse strings. Then they can blame the Dem president and say, “Oh well we tried.”
With a Republican president they’d be put on the spot.
Equally reprehensible is every.single.R.candidate calling themselves Conservative. It started last election cycle and ramped up to where the word is now pointless.
National review’s view of conservatism sounds a whole lot like crony capitalism to me.
Conservatism is NOT an opportunistic change in core beliefs.
Conservatism is Pro-Life without caveats.
Conservatism is Pro-2a without caveats.
Conservatism is anti-amnesty without caveats.
Conservatism does not support Eminent Domain for the enrichment of cronies.
lol. I would almost like to see donnie win just to see the heads explode.
Actually, it’s “Conservativism”.
But nobody says that.
I want all the people who say they will leave the country to sign a contract on that.
Senator Cruz -- Dump This Dumb S.O.B.!
Glenn Beck to Vote for Hillary if McCain is GOP Nominee
Glenn Beck - Why he would of voted for Hillary instead of John McCain
Glenn Beck: McCain would've been worse
Glenn Beck: I May have Voted for Hillary Clinton
Glenn Beck: 'I won't vote for Trump.' (Even if running against Hillary)
What we are “eating” is not “one of our own”, but the enemy which had disguised itself as one of us.
And queer child-molesters, baby killers, screaming communists, tree-hugging moonbats etc...
In fact, if the US world-view and government pendulum were to swing to Constitutionalists and other right-wing extremists, the progressives and RATagandists would then become the "conservatives".
I think it was Buckley that said all politicians will disappoint you.Right synagogue, wrong rabbi: it was original National Review publisher William A. Rusher. Various NR writers over the years have cited Mr. Rusher telling that to new hires at the magazine so long as he worked there.
On what side would Trump disappoint by being too conservative.All things considered, that will never happen. (Not the disappointment; not Mr. Trump being any kind of conservative, "too" or otherwise.)
It merely begins with the most conspicuous trait he has displayed during his campaign, even if only too many of his supporters seem a) oblivious to it; or, b) inclined to excuse it: the Constitutional illiteracy that permits him to speak as though the separation of powers---one of the very things that enrages about His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow Dr. Barack Obama Dada and at least a few presidents preceding him---was rhetoric and not part and parcel of the supreme law of the land.
I don’t need Glenn Beck, or NPR, or their reasons for not supporting Trump, for me to not Support Trump; and I don’t.
Against the phony “comprehensive immigration reform” and against amnesty”, as I am? What makes Trump the only one running who agrees with that? Zip, zilch, nada. What makes Trump ahead of or before others running who agree with us on that? Zip, zilch, nada.
How about on Putin? The record produces the same answers. As it does on taxes (Steve Forbes like’s Carson’s plan most of all), trade, China and whole host of issues.
Trump might reflect more emotional angst, but on the facts and on the record there is nothing that puts his positions ahead of some other GOP candidate, and usually put him in a “less than” position as far as knowledge and details of any position.
I think it is populist angst joined with populist nationalism that some (shall I say less well read, less informed) in the GOP have become attracted to Trump. Like many Dims were attracted to Obama because of how they put their “dreams” into what he said, some in the GOP get drawn to Trump because of what they think Trump would do, but I believe in reality they really don’t know what any actual Trump policy will look like.
Populist nationalism is not in and of itself Conservatism. And joining it together with populist angst does not make it a necessarily Conservative position either. Matter of fact, some of that same populist angst is what draws some on the left to Bernie Sanders, taking a different angry position on the causes of what ails people, the economy, whatever. And Bernie’s solutions are as one track (socialism) as Trump’s are - HE will solve it. That’s not a solution; that’s just an ego.
I call you all Grumps Against Trump
I am not “grumpy”. I’m positive, and positively not for any GOP-elite, nor for Trump.
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