New "Conservatives"

I'm not sure what National Review hopes to accomplish by attacking Donald Trump.  Sure, Trump is not a conservative and probably isn't serious about half of what he puts out as policy positions, but people still view him as anti-establishment.  National Review, on the other hand, has been an establishment publication ever since Buckley turned it into a neocon rag.  An establishment publication attacking Trump just boosts his anti-establishment reputation.  I suppose it will get people reading NR again, and that is probably the main point.

 National Review used to be a conservative publication, until it became a neocon one.  This attempt to stave off Trump-mania carries with it a dose of irony given NR's role in the struggle between the neocons and the Old Right.  Consider the following quotes.  

"But we should not put a new conservative in charge of conservatism"
-- Erick Erickson, regarding Trump becoming a Republican [full article here]

 

"It has always struck me as odd, even perverse, that former Marxists have been permitted, yes invited, to play such a leading role in the Conservative movement of the twentieth century. It is splendid when the town whore gets religion and joins the church. Now and then she makes a good choir director, but when she begins to tell the minister what he ought to say in his Sunday sermons, matters have been carried too far."

-- Stephen J. Tonsor, regarding the entry of neoconservatives into the conservative movement 

Do not allow others to do unto you what you have done unto others may be a good motto, but it makes for a rather pathetic whine.

 

One would think a former Leftist turned rightward would be right up National Review's alley.  Buckley seemed to like Norman Podhoretz well enough.  Not so, in Trump's case.  In their main editorial National Review declared that Trump would "trash the broad conservative ideological consensus" which NR supposedly upholds.  However broad that consensus may be, it does not extend too far to the Right.  That consensus wasn't broad enough to keep William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, from attacking Pat Buchanan or firing Joe Sobran.  Nor was it broad enough to keep David Frum from writing every actual conservative out of the movement in his despicable "Unpatriotic Conservatives" article.  More recently NR parted ways with John Derbyshire over a silly controversy that only Leftists would have been offended over.  It is National Review that has trashed the "broad" and "conservative" in favor of their "ideological consensus."  So spare us the angst and histrionics, you aren't on our side either.