Neocons Against
Kevin D. Williamson says he is a demagogue and would-be dictator.
Donald Trump, talked up endlessly by the likes of Hannity and Laura Ingraham, apologized for by Rush Limbaugh, and indulged far too deeply for far too long by far too many others, rejects conservatism.
He rejects free trade.
He rejects property rights.
He rejects the rule of law.
He rejects limited government.
He advocates a presidency a thousand times more imperial than the one that sprung Athena-like from the brow of Barack Obama and his lawyers.
He meditates merrily upon the uses of political violence and riots, and dreams of shutting down newspapers critical of him.
He isn’t a conservative of any stripe, and it is an outright lie to present him as anything other than what he is.
David Harsanyi says the convention should not nominate a re-run of George Wallace who would lose badly and cost the seats of many senators and house members.
Voters don’t decide the nominations; delegates do — preferably in smoke-filled rooms where rational decisions about the future of a party can be hashed out.
The Republican party is not a direct democracy.
And if the convention caves then a real conservative should run a third party candidacy and decent Republicans should support him.
Heather Mac Donald says his "riot" remarks show he is not qualified for the presidency.
Trump has achieved a level of vicious, personal invective, and wildly irresponsible public pronouncements that is unprecedented in recent memory.
And I speak as someone who supports his immigration positions 100 percent and who takes a fiendish delight in his scourging of the Republican establishment and its open-borders ideology.
But some things are more important than a stated willingness to enforce the immigration laws (especially when an alternative candidate exists who is equally committed to immigration enforcement), and the maintenance of civilized society is one of them.
Ironically, Trump occasionally positions himself as the law-and-order candidate.
But his recent threat of riots disqualifies him from that position and shows him to be clueless about the fragility of civil order and the profound responsibilities of a leader for maintaining that order.
His self-indulgent, undisciplined pronouncements should disqualify him from the presidency as well.
Charles Krauthammer deplores the violence encouraged by the leader of the GOP's largest faction, today.
There’s an air of division in the country.
Fine.
It’s happened often in our history.
Indeed, the whole point of politics is to identify, highlight, argue, and ultimately adjudicate and accommodate such divisions.
Politics is the civilized substitute for settling things the old-fashioned way — laying your opponent out on a stretcher.
What is so disturbing today is that suffusing our politics is not just an air of division but an air of menace.
It’s being fueled on both sides: one side through organized anti-free-speech agitation using Bolshevik tactics; the other side by verbal encouragement and threats of varying degrees of subtlety.
They may feed off each other but they are of independent origin.
And both are repugnant, both dangerous, and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.
William Kristol agrees with Harsanyi.
Paleocons For
Ann Coulter says "Die, donor scum!"
It is no longer a question of what the party wants.
The voters — remember them? — keep showering Trump and Cruz with Ceausescu-like percentages.
The combined vote for Trump and Cruz is a ringing chorus of what this party wants: a wall, deportation, less immigration and no job-killing trade deals.
In other words, what the party wants is the diametric opposite of what the donor and consultant class wants.
One would have to search the history books to find a party establishment so emphatically rejected by the voters as today’s Republican Party has been.
. . . .
The establishment laughed at us.
They wanted our votes, but then ignored us.
They lied to us about opposing amnesty while repeatedly conspiring to pass it.
Now we’re going into the presidential election with our 80 percent thunderous will of the people against immigration.
I’m not sure someone who is more preacher than president is the most electable expression of that will, but whether Trump or Cruz, make no mistake about what the will is.
Pat Buchanan could not be more thrilled at the takeover of the party by the Trumpistas and says he is sure he would crush Hillary for NAFTA and amnesty.
The worst mistake Trump could make would be to tailor his winning positions on trade, immigration and intervention — to court such losers.
While Trump should reach out to the defeated establishment of the party, he cannot compromise the issues that brought him where he is, or embrace the failed policies that establishment produced.
This would be throwing away his aces.
The Trump campaign is not a hostile takeover of the Republican Party.
It is a rebellion of shareholders who are voting to throw out the corporate officers and board of directors that ran the company into the ground.
Only the company here is our country.
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