National Review, one of the country’s most prominent right-leaning publications, has gathered some of conservatism’s most prominent figures to take on Donald Trump.
With the Iowa caucuses mere days away and Trump running neck-and-neck with former BFF Ted Cruz, it may be too little too late (also, where were these guys when Trump launched his campaign with a racist, anti-Mexican diatribe six months ago?).
On Thursday night, National Review unveiled a new issue that makes the conservative case against real estate mogul Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency. It features 22 contributors, from veteran magazine writers to popular bloggers to fiery radio hosts.
“We take our heritage seriously,” National Review’s publisher, Jack Fowler, told The Huffington Post on Friday.
“We were the founding institution of the modern conservative movement and we see ourselves as the protector of what conservative means,” he said.
In the new issue, National Review’s editors denounce Trump for shifting his political stances and describe him as “a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.”
“Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner,” reads a portion of the so-called manifesto against Trump.
“But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”
Only time will tell how effective the effort will be. After all, one of the contributors, Erick Erickson, flatly states in the magazine that he’ll vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton in the general election, but just not in the primary.
If that’s supposed to get Trump to drop out or Republicans to wake up, better think of a better strategy.
