One can only hope that the Trump phenomenon will bring into the sunlight several fictions, most, but not all, of which GOP boosters have been promoting for years.<\/p>\n
The first is that there are two fundamentally opposed forces within the Republican Party: \u201cthe Establishment\u201d and \u201cconservatives,\u201d \u201canti-Establishmentarians,\u201d or \u201coutsiders.\u201d From this perspective, to hear many GOP politicians and their apologists in the media tell it, several of this year\u2019s Republican presidential candidates\u2014including Donald Trump\u2014fall into the latter camp.<\/p>\n
This, so it is said, explains why they are doing so well in the polls.<\/p>\n
In reality, the conflicts that beset the GOP\u2014to the extent that they\u2019re remotely as dramatic as their participants and the media would have us believe\u2014are internecine battles within <\/em>one political establishment. There is no \u201canti-Establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n Secondly, this being said, it follows that Trump is no outsider. Though he hasn\u2019t made his living as a politician, Trump has been peddling and receiving political influence for years courtesy of both Republican and Democrat politicians alike. Few \u201coutsiders\u201d have had so many \u201cins\u201d with the establishment as has Trump. Indeed, for decades, Trump has been every bit as much a member of the establishment as anyone.<\/p>\n Of course, if it is nonsense to identify Trump as an \u201canti-Establishmentarian\u201d\u2014and it is\u2014then it is doubly nonsensical to suggest that Senators <\/em>Cruz, Rubio, and Paul, or Governors <\/em>Christie, Kasich, Bush, and Huckabee are \u201canti-Establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n A true \u201coutsider,\u201d a person like most readers of this column, wouldn\u2019t even know how to take the first step toward running for any political office, let alone the presidency of the United States of America. And even if such a person was in the know, a true outsider wouldn\u2019t be able to come within miles of a presidential race while campaigning as a<\/em> Republican or Democrat.<\/em><\/p>\n Third, Trump\u2019s Republican critics continually charge that unlike, say, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, Trump is not an authentic \u201cconservative.\u201d Now, this allegation is true as far as it goes: Trump is not<\/em> a conservative. But because the allegation doesn\u2019t go far at all, it may as well be a lie.<\/p>\n While Trump is not a conservative, with the possible\u2014the possible<\/em>\u2014exception of Rand Paul, none of Trump\u2019s GOP rivals and accusers are conservative. <\/em><\/p>\n In fact, unless being a proponent of an activist, omnipotent government that exists to spread \u201cliberal democratic\u201d values around the globe is necessary for being a \u201ctrue conservative,\u201d Trump is arguably more conservative than Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and virtually all of the other Republican contenders.<\/p>\n And this gets us to our next, and probably most important, myth to be exposed.<\/p>\n For decades, the so-called \u201cconservative movement\u201d has been largely a neoconservative <\/em>movement. Neoconservatives have been remarkably successful in convincing millions and millions of Americans both<\/em> that they are conservative and<\/em> that the Republican Party and conservatism are one.<\/p>\n The truth, though, is that neoconservatism is no form of conservatism at all. The conservative movement that took flight nearly 70 years ago consisted of multiple strains, it\u2019s true, but it was exemplified in many respects by Russell Kirk, the man without whose labor William F. Buckley says it is \u201cinconceivable\u201d that there ever would\u2019ve been any such movement.<\/p>\n Kirk was a conservative in the vein of Edmund Burke, the 18th<\/sup> century Irish Parliamentarian who is widely regarded today as \u201cthe patron saint\u201d of conservatism. Kirk was painfully aware of the differences between conservatism and neoconservatism, noting that the two were different in kind. <\/em><\/p>\n Conservatives in the mold of Kirk favored a wide dispersion or decentralization of power and authority\u2014what is commonly referred to as \u201cstates\u2019 rights.\u201d They opposed all attempts at \u201cleveling,\u201d all redistributive schemes designed to alleviate \u201cinequalities.\u201d Yet it isn\u2019t just utopian domestic<\/em> visions for which conservatives like Kirk had no use. They disdained idyllic foreign <\/em>policy plans as well. Hence, before he died in 1994, Kirk denounced the first President Bush\u2019s decision to invade Iraq.<\/p>\n Clearly, between classical conservatives and neoconservatives there is a chasm. Yet it isn\u2019t just that neoconservatives and conservatives disagree. Upon appropriating the conservative label, a move that involved an exercise in repackaging the likes of which wouldn\u2019t be seen again until \u201cgay rights\u2019\u201d advocates redefined marriage, neoconservatives did their best to see to it that conservative voices would no longer be heard\u2014at least not within the Republican Party.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right: Sarah Palin and others misspeak when they simply say that \u201cthe Establishment\u201d is not conservative. The referent here\u2014neoconservatives\u2014are anti-<\/em>conservative.<\/p>\n That this giant in the history of the American conservative movement is never mentioned in any \u201cconservative\u201d media outlets today proves that Kirk has been flushed down the memory hole. However, it isn\u2019t just Kirk who has been \u201cpurged\u201d from the (neo) conservative movement.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s meteoric rise stemmed principally from his tough talk on immigration\u2014an issue that now ranks in no small measure of importance for Americans. Ann Coulter, Trump\u2019s most vocal and visible of nationally recognized supporters, has also been superb in highlighting the disaster that is our immigration policy.<\/p>\n Yet for well over 20 years, Peter Brimelow, a one-time associate of Buckley and contributor to National Review, <\/em>has been writing and speaking tirelessly on this very issue. A veteran when it comes to telling hard, politically incorrect truths, Brimelow\u2019s work is second to none in this arena. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to refer to him as a pioneer.<\/p>\n But Peter Brimelow has long been expunged from \u201cthe conservative movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul Gottfried is a scholar of European intellectual history and the American conservative movement. He too was friends with Buckley at one time, as well as a contributor to NR. <\/em><\/p>\n Yet that was then, this is now. Paul too has been purged.<\/p>\n The late Joseph Sobran, who at one time was a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of a sort to Buckley and a brilliant essayist, found himself unceremoniously ejected from the \u201cconservative\u201d movement, as did the now deceased Samuel Francis (who, remarkably, Rush Limbaugh, to his credit, recently defended on his radio show).<\/p>\n John Derbyshire, a witty, talented polymath, wrote regularly for National Review <\/em>until just a few years ago when he too was abruptly sacked for a racially incorrect article (that he wrote for another publication).<\/p>\n This list of extraordinarily intelligent, perceptive, and courageous old right thinkers who have been exiled by the self-appointed gate-keepers of \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d is hardly exhaustive.<\/p>\n And now neoconservatives continue to presume to tell the rest of us who is truly conservative and who isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n If any of the foregoing fictions will crumble to pieces during this most atypical of election seasons, hopefully it will be the fiction that the self-declared guardians of the \u201cconservative movement\u201d are conservative.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One can only hope that the Trump phenomenon will bring into the sunlight several fictions, most, but not all, of which GOP boosters have been promoting for years. The first is that there are two fundamentally opposed forces within the Republican Party: \u201cthe Establishment\u201d and \u201cconservatives,\u201d \u201canti-Establishmentarians,\u201d or \u201coutsiders.\u201d From this perspective, to hear many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n