Neoconservatives, #Nevertrump, & the Death of Conservatism
by Bruce Frohnen
Neoconservatives have garnered a fair amount of media coverage in recent weeks for their determination to keep on with the #nevertrump fight.
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standardand son of neoconservative founder Irving Kristol, has been especially vocal in his determination to launch a third party challenge to Donald Trump and the eventual Democratic nominee. A number of Republican figures have made similar noises, including other neoconservatives like Linda Chavez and Robert Zoellick, as well as the seemingly more conservative Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and the more openly-liberal former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.
There are genuine reasons behind the ill feelings toward the presumptive Republican nominee. Mr. Trump’s rude comments have garnered well-deserved hostility across the political spectrum. Perhaps most understandable, if least noted, is Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s avoidance of a Trump endorsement in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s improper comments about his wife and his calculated broadcasting of scandalous rumors published only in The National Enquirer—a supermarket rag that gets its stories straight about as often as The New York Times highlights conservative achievements. More curious is the #nevertrump movement leadership’s claim that it is opposing Trump in the name of conservative principles.
Ted Cruz opposed Donald Trump in the name and service of traditional conservative principles. There are genuine conservatives who are extremely unhappy with Mr. Trump. After all, Mr. Trump quite recently supported many leftist policies and candidates, and continues to eschew any serious discussion regarding issues of Presidential overreach or the size and intrusiveness of the federal government. Conservatives are not pining for Romney redux. It seems likely, in fact, that most traditional conservatives will end up supporting Mr. Trump as the lesser of two evils. Traditional conservatives quite rightly fear the possibility of a Clinton Presidency that would carry on the Obama Administration’s bathroom wars, its aggression against free speech and religious self-government, its use of the Education Department to brand all young men as presumptive rapists, and its continuation of a policy of de-facto open borders and never-ending war. Compared to these policies, a Trump presidency looks positively benign in its ignorance of cultural issues and its insistence on the reality of borders.
There remain, of course, very real questions regarding Mr. Trump’s commitment to constitutional restraint, as well as the ability of our other institutions to check and balance an overreaching President. This is especially worrying given the abject failure of the courts in particular to keep President Obama within even the vaguest limits of even the broadest laws. Then again, Americans know Hillary Clinton’s contempt for the law and seem, sadly, to have decided that their interests are more likely to be served by the person who most vocally rejects the current ruling class than by anyone committed to historical institutions, beliefs, and practices of limited constitutional government.
I have my own doubts about how a Trump presidency will work out for America. I have no doubts, however, about Mr. Kristol’s goals in continuing his #nevertrump machinations. Those machinations are rooted in the same ideology that undermined the conservative movement for more than thirty years and led to the rise of Mr. Trump.
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Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org
Ted Cruz opposed Donald Trump in the name and service of traditional conservative principles. There are genuine conservatives who are extremely unhappy with Mr. Trump. After all, Mr. Trump quite recently supported many leftist policies and candidates, and continues to eschew any serious discussion regarding issues of Presidential overreach or the size and intrusiveness of the federal government. Conservatives are not pining for Romney redux. It seems likely, in fact, that most traditional conservatives will end up supporting Mr. Trump as the lesser of two evils. Traditional conservatives quite rightly fear the possibility of a Clinton Presidency that would carry on the Obama Administration’s bathroom wars, its aggression against free speech and religious self-government, its use of the Education Department to brand all young men as presumptive rapists, and its continuation of a policy of de-facto open borders and never-ending war. Compared to these policies, a Trump presidency looks positively benign in its ignorance of cultural issues and its insistence on the reality of borders.
There remain, of course, very real questions regarding Mr. Trump’s commitment to constitutional restraint, as well as the ability of our other institutions to check and balance an overreaching President. This is especially worrying given the abject failure of the courts in particular to keep President Obama within even the vaguest limits of even the broadest laws. Then again, Americans know Hillary Clinton’s contempt for the law and seem, sadly, to have decided that their interests are more likely to be served by the person who most vocally rejects the current ruling class than by anyone committed to historical institutions, beliefs, and practices of limited constitutional government.
I have my own doubts about how a Trump presidency will work out for America. I have no doubts, however, about Mr. Kristol’s goals in continuing his #nevertrump machinations. Those machinations are rooted in the same ideology that undermined the conservative movement for more than thirty years and led to the rise of Mr. Trump.
......................
Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org
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