Posted on 01/22/2016 10:38:17 AM PST by Albion Wilde
Today, The National Review magazine, for decades the must-read monthly of the conservative movement, has published a yellow journal worthy of the best discourse Facebook has to offer. This formerly revered publication, founded and edited by William F. Buckley, Jr, was the premier resource for conservative commentary from 1955 until the illness and retirement of its renowned leader in the mid-2000s.
The New York polite society of pious, trust-fund Ivy Leaguers who formed the backbone of the founding editorial staff had given National Review an air of the lamp-lit gentlemen's club: leather wing chairs, green velvet wall coverings, cigars and brandy in front of the fireplace tended by a person of color, harumphed opinions about "the liberals" -- informed by the pages of The National Review. NR's brand of conservatism was infused with an air of social (and therefore moral) superiority. Yet Buckley, along with the unlikely intellectual partner Ronald Reagan, would provide the intellectual correctives to a post-WWII nation infatuated first with liberalism, then radical Marxist progressivism. Under Buckley's editorial narratives, conservatism became a movement.
Writers such as Ludwig von Mises, Whittaker Chambers, Russell Kirk and Auberon Waugh once graced NR's pages, followed by the likes of Robert Bork, Francis Fukuyama, Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, Tom Wolfe, John Derbyshire and other crafters of deeply informed opinion. NR and NROnline today, led by Rich Lowry, are struggling to survive in the era of New Media. NR thought its best strategy during the 2007 McCain/Obama contest was to run cover after cover depicting -- who? -- Barack Obama, while the articles inside timidly criticized his candidacy. Any streetcorner vendor can tell you, as he watches an increasingly attention-starved work force stream by his magazine stand morning and evening, what catches the eye is now the message; those pesky little words, not so much.
Few of today's regular contributors except perhaps for Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson have garnered name recognition solely on their strengths as writers in the New Media conservative audience, who are experiencing the steady erosion of all that America once promised to those who would work hard and seize opportunities to advance. As the ground beneath them is eroded by the hardened generation of anti-authoritarian narcissists produced by the demise of the traditions, demographics and conservatism that Buckley's editorial heirs have failed to stand athwart, National Review's lead editorial staff have turned to face their own small tent -- and pee'd inside.
The current issue has killed trees and sucked bandwidth not to encourage a new generation to the benefits of conservatism, not to debate the issues as issues, not to promote the best their favored candidates have to offer, but rather to tear down the personality and aspirations of the undisputed leader in the polls of the disenfranchised American middle class, the ones who are flocking by the tens of thousands per event to hear him speak. The aggregate number of Donald Trump campaign rally attendees has, over a six-month span, long passed the million mark. His tweets and Facebook hits stagger the Internet. He has accomplished the "big tent" of fanpersons from all walks of life that the ailing Republican Party has long dreamed about; yet the Party and the National Review despise him for it.
NR and NRO have this week tarnished their brand with 22 mean screeds against The Donald, making it personal. They aim to shame their readers: Trump isn't good enough, smart enough or, doggone it, likeable enough, according to their antique, hypocritical standard of repressed emotions and unspoken agendas, such as projecting onto the guy who has lived the American Dream the blame for the impending death of their genteely elite vision of America -- the elites whose religion was slipping from dominance as early as the 50s and needed to be robustly defended by intellectual Constitutionalism; the elites who spoke of equality under the law but lived in unequal up East enclaves.
To be fair, this smarmy issue of their once respected magazine might cost Trump a few hundred votes.
William Buckley, speaking in 1967 of The National Review's policy towards elections, said, "Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate...The wisest choice would be the one who would win... the most right, viable candidate who could win."
With the margin so razor-thin and the stakes so catastrophic against the Democrat Party's entrenched big tent of anti-Constitution, anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-sovereignty and pro-repressive movements dominating a dumbed-down, entertainment-addicted, financially gutted electorate, any challenger under the Republican banner deserves a fair review, but is too valuable to slime, even if his politics are only just conservative enough to place-hold while he saves this nation from ruin.
NR could have found what's to love in every Republican candidate whom The People say could win, and showcased their best ties to conservatism. Yet in the face of Trump's overwhelming viability -- his robust poll numbers, demonstrable energy for the tasks ahead, financial independence, courageous dismissal of political correctness, incisive diagnosis of the problems facing us, long experience as a dealmaker in the realms of power and industry -- and believing that they still have time to reject the half-a-loaf that's better than none -- Buckley's heirs have just published the sound of entitled heads exploding.
.
Time to pass out Preparation H.
I asked you not to PING me. I’m not including you in a large list of posters to ping. I’m merely responding to posted bullshit.
If you can’t figure out the difference, well, it’s no wonder you’re voting for trump.
Can’t get a thing past you, sitetest!
Not fooled. My vote is set.
.
Trump is neither conservative, nor viable.
Only the infatuated will follow him to the bottom.
Thanks! I try.
You hit the nail on the head. I’ve not been a fan of the National Review for a while and after this latest screed against Trump I really doubt I ever will be again. Its like some of the crap coming out of Glenn Beck comparing Trump to Hitler as if conservatism is incompatible with populism and nationalism (loving ones country and wanting it to win).
Sure Trump has held various positions but that didn’t bother these folks when it was Romney coming late to the prolife cause or when he supported Cap and Trade and then didn’t. They weren’t even concerned that choosing someone who laid the foundations of state run healthcare in Romneycare would be a problem after 2010 and the Democrat rout over Obamacare. That I suppose was different. The only difference I see is one of demeanor and desire to win.
Romney didn’t always win when he worked at Bain Capital many of the businesses Bain tried to rescue ultimately failed yet these same people who attack Trump who has built a worldwide business empire with wealth rivaling Romney many times over is derided as a mere celebrity. I suppose to be respected by the national review and Glenn Beck pukes you have to look like a Mormon super man and just take a beating from Democrats.
I remember how many of them made excuses for Romney saying that he had to take certain policy positions to be elected in a Blue state and that it was understandable that he shifted his positions. I suppose Trump shifting from being a business man with a business based in a blue state doesn’t deserve the same consideration given how leftists like to target and shut down those they see as politically incompatible? I think that Trump surely deserves the same respect.
The part I think really offends those at the National Review is that Trump in the months since launching his campaign has totally taken over the direction of the party.
He immediately killed out the gate any ideas of comprehensive immigration reform and all anyone talks about now is a wall. He destroyed any hope of the goals of the Chamber of Commerce who for a while behaved as if it were in control of the United States Congress not the people who voted Republicans into power. Trump also has did what no conservative since Reagan has done. He took on the media and he has repeatedly won.
Trump’s campaign is the only campaign solely focused on issues that put the interests of the American citizen first economically and culturally. If making sure that Americans aren’t replaced by foreign labor, that manufacturing and other business stay in America, isn’t invaded by illegals, and isn’t culturally over run by those who embrace sharia law isn’t conservative then what exactly is conservatism?
I’m personally tired of a conservatism that behaves as if it has something to be ashamed of and these failures and hypocrites at the National Review and Glenn Beck are really pathetic. The one thing I’m certain of is that they are more the problem than anything Trump is doing. Trump is packing crowds of thousands excited to Make America Great again for Americans. Those who can not see the good in this I am torn between feeling bad for them and see them as absolute traitors to this nation who really have never intended to win. Hell they don’t even know what it means. I suppose they just intended to live out their lives get paid like leeches feeding off a dying nation.
I would say ALL of Trump supporters would also be VERY happy with a Cruz nomination and would fully support him! Not so much in the other direction! I Love Cruz but I DO NOT believe he can win in the general!!! The country has simply gone way to far to the left! It has taken the LIBS a VERY long time for this to happen and WE have to be willing to START without purist thinking to fix it!!!!
This, and everything else you said!
He is throwing buckets of ice water on the heads of the drugged-by-media populace. I was horrified when he first starting challenging the press and saying what terrible people they are -- "Oh, no! Now they will be terrible to him!" But I see now that it's not his first rodeo, and he is actually challenging those who are salvageable to do better. It will be like a parting of the Red Sea -- we're seeing already the doubling down of the bottom feeders; but in time the ones who want to rise to the surface and once again tell the truth, defying his low opinion and earning a better one, may change the media landscape. Devoutly to be wished.
I think he's viable, but not with all the usual republican voter base. He will need a lot of democrat crossovers, and I think he can get them, because of the fracturing in the dem party as well..
Enough to makeup for my lost vote at least, should he get the nomination.
I don't see this as anything new. There have been a few times when the country voted anti-establishment.
The two more recent examples did not work out well. Herbert Hoover and Teddy Roosevelt.
But I don't have a clue as to how this will play out. We have a primary that is really only now beginning to percolate.
Far from the clever and cerebral discourse of its founder, WFB, the slam against Trump, here, takes a headlong dive into the gutter, e.g. Mona Charen, stating: "My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body." We want to know Mona, is this disgust or is it fascination with certain organs altogether absent in the denizens of DC on either side of the aisle?
What is left unanswered is what are the conservative principles argued for, which of them are at stake in the present election, and what is endangered by Trump's candidacy.
The fundamental problem, of course, is that conservatism is built on the political foundation of the Republican Party, and, with that party's devolution into crony capitalism, what the National Review, here, seeks to defend is built on a "dismal" plague infested miasma. Defend the ramparts of your castle all you want. You are defending ground no one wants to occupy.
The second problem is that conservatism, whatever the 22 participants in this attack mean by it, is the mirror reflection of the liberalism that it seeks to undo. And liberalism has built itself up as the antidote to the conservatism that sees itself as the antidote to liberalism. Each assails the other's stronghold and accomplishes nothing while marauders sack the undefended ground in between.
Trump has triumphed by side-stepping this attack / counter-attack by showing up the shortcomings of both sides, approaching from a different angle altogether.
Foremost is the utter lack of competence of both sides of this debate. WFB did not share this inability to do anything useful at all. Privileged as his upbringing was, WFB did establish and publish a successful opinion magazine - and NR was in his day successful. WFB could also navigate a sailboat at sea and had mastered the art of celestial navigation. The present ruling class in DC cannot successfully navigate a snowstorm, much less manage minor electrical or plumbing repairs or understand what is wrong with swaps on increasing levels of national indebtedness, an ill already addressed by on conservative economist, long ago, Ricardo.
Hillary vs whatever part of the Republican spectrum you want to name, Bush, Rubio, or Cruz, is just not interesting precisely because it is not the resolution of any problem that the average person faces.
And this is Trump's genius. Framing issues in ways that reflects the problems faced by voters in their daily lives and not the problems argued by inside-the-beltway think-tanks on which NR has made itself a useless appendage that is easily excised and burned with other biological detritus.
Not viable, eh? In what sense? It would appear that DT has a very good chance of being the nominee.
You are most kind!
"Robust poll numbers?? Overwhelming Viability???"
What are you smoking?
In poll after poll, Trump does WORSE, much WORSE against Hillary and Sanders than Cruz, Rubio, or Carson!! Don't be lazy, look it up!
The Trump people seem to want a fire-breathing candidate so they can vent during the election year, the rest of us want A CONSERVATIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE and it is why we're deeply worried about Donald's FEEBLENESS in the polls (in which Trump's people have so much faith) against the Democrats.
Another thing that bothers me about Trump, is that he waited until the field was very crowded, and though he realized a majority of Republicans wouldn’t support him in the primaries, the fracturing of the electorate left an opening for a candidate running on “Angry Personality” to get the nomination, even though the November election gets put at risk.
And he isn’t all that conservative, even recently. Quick, where does Trump stand with Common Core? With Cruz and Rubio? or Bush and Lindsay Graham? Don’t know? Don’t care?
Two wrongs don't make a right, and the idea that "BailOuttheBanks" Trump is more conservative than Romney is ludicrous. Remember that THIS YEAR Donald praised government-run health care in Canada and Great Britain as "Beautiful systems," he is NOT a conservative.
I sure as hell did on this very forum
Matt Drudge and his packer pal in Mitts camp
And Fox News
And National Review and Bill Kristol and fellow kapos
All brought down Newt after South Carolina
And the buttload of hate Newt cash spent in Florida
New Gingrich would have beat the Muslim loving pretender
NOW THE VERY SAME AHOLES SAND DRUDGE WISH TO TAKE OUT TRUMP
Ain’t gonna happen to paraphrase their patriarch
Dana Loesch needs a spankie.....
Well, yeah, in the sense that WE ARE LIVING WITH IT.
We don't take driven cars to and from work. We don't live in apartments with doormen in Manhattan. We do our own shopping. Send our kids to these multicultural power kegs they call schools. We have to cede more and more areas to drugs, crime and gangs. The crumbling cities. The constant 24/7 degeneracy that seems to find no bottom. We live with the fruits of all their "work".
Oh, arguing from the ever-effective ad hominum, just like your Master. (and sadly, with millions, it is effective).
So don't let the facts in Trump's revered polls get in the way of your decision, right? So we could have one conservative win the general by 9 points, another by 7, another by 5, but no, you prefer the guy (Trump) that's within the margin of error, struggling to stay ahead of his wounded ex-darling Hillary. Let me suggest Remedial Math, it's not that expensive.
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