[apillar]

George Will is the perfect example of what happens to good intentioned people when they spend too long “Inside the Beltway” and paling around with the DC Power Brokers. George Will was once a solid Conservative, but I remember even during the Reagan years he would “go wobbly” and criticize Reagan on issues when the DC Press Corp and Washington insiders turned against Regan. Same with the Gingrich Revolution in the 1990’s and even the Bush years, Will would be a “fair weathered” conservative.

[Pelham]

https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/08/george-will-and-the-gop-divide

"It is worth recalling here that once upon a time George Will was as down on Ronald Reagan as he is now on Donald Trump – and has been in the past on Texas Senator Ted Cruz. In a November 12, 1974 column appearing in the Washington Post on a potential 1976 challenge by Reagan to incumbent Establishment GOP President Gerald Ford, (titled “Ronald Reagan, the GOP and ’76”), Will wrote of Reagan:

'But Reagan is 63 and looks it. His hair is still remarkably free of gray. But around the mouth and neck he looks like an old man. He’s never demonstrated substantial national appeal, his hard core support today consists primarily of the kamikaze conservatives who thought the 1964 Goldwater campaign was jolly fun. And there’s a reason to doubt that Reagan is well suited to appeal to the electorate that just produced a Democratic landslide. If a Reagan third party would just lead the ‘Nixon was lynched’ crowd away from the Republican Party and into outer darkness where there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth, it might be at worst a mixed course for the Republican Party. It would cost the party some support, but it would make the party seem cleansed.'

"Four years later, Will’s first and second choices for the 1980 GOP nomination were Tennessee Senator Howard Baker and George H. W. Bush..