“Alas, there is no grand principle on display here. There is nothing but opportunism and ego. For a long time now, Sarah Palin has been apt to say anything and everything to keep the cameras buzzing around her hive. This rotten endorsement completes the decline. What, we might ask, has become of Palin’s beloved Tea Party? What, too, of her purported admiration for limited government, and of her ostensible hatred of heretics and fakers? The prospect of a mass movement that was earnestly committed to libertarianism was always a little too good to be true, but even I didn’t imagine it ending like this. All that talk of the Constitution and the Declaration; all that energy expended against the cronies and the rent-seekers; all those purifying voter drives — and for what? So that Sarah Palin could add a few zeroes to her bank balance and Donald Trump could go from the purchaser to the bought? Today was the day that Rick Santelli’s famous yelp finally melted into populism and avarice. Today, at about ten minutes past six, P. T. Barnum beat out Hayek for the soul of the insurgent Right. Today, the rebels became the charlatans they had set out to depose. What comes next will be anybody’s guess.”
—Charles C.W. Cooke
P.T. Barnum, it is worth noting, knew how to attract large crowds and be successful. So, Clearly, does Donald Trump. It is a serous mistake to insist on some concept of purity instead of victory. The great mistake of these “insider” conservative intellectuals is that they fail to consider that if a candidate succeeds by taking conservative positions that he knows and senses stir the greater number of people, then he will continue to sound the same notes and espouse that which he advocates in order to win in order to get re-elected by an even larger margin and then will continue with the same measures in order to ensure his place in history and be able to exercise leadership and influence after he leaves office.
P.T. Barnum, it is worth noting, knew how to attract large crowds and be successful. So, Clearly, does Donald Trump. It is a serous mistake to insist on some concept of purity instead of victory. The great mistake of these “insider” conservative intellectuals is that they fail to consider that if a candidate succeeds by taking conservative positions that he knows and senses stir the greater number of people, then he will continue to sound the same notes and espouse that which he advocates in order to win in order to get re-elected by an even larger margin and then will continue with the same measures in order to ensure his place in history and be able to exercise leadership and influence after he leaves office.