{"id":1433,"date":"2016-01-23T18:54:25","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T23:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2016-01-23T19:08:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T00:08:28","slug":"national-review-vs-trump-ii-what-exactly-is-conservatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2016\/01\/national-review-vs-trump-ii-what-exactly-is-conservatism.html","title":{"rendered":"National Review vs Trump II: What Exactly is “Conservatism?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

That Donald Trump is no conservative is a proposition of which this conservative needs no convincing.<\/p>\n

On this score, the self-styled \u201cconservative\u201d contributors to the recent National Review <\/em>symposium against Trump are correct. It is their <\/em>conservative bona fides that I challenge.<\/p>\n

For example, Glenn Beck suggests that Trump is no conservative because along with Barack Obama, Trump supported \u201cthe stimulus, the auto bailouts, and the bank bailouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Trump had neither authority nor power to make these ideas materialize. That distinction is enjoyed by just those politicians who Beck supported. <\/em><\/p>\n

For years, Beck ran cover for George W. Bush, the 43rd<\/sup> president who, along with such members of Congress as John McCain, who Beck also endorsed for President in 2008, brought us the bank bailouts. McCain also signed onto the auto bailouts and while he didn\u2019t back Obama\u2019s stimulus, <\/em>he announced his own stimulus<\/a> <\/em>in 2008\u2014months before <\/em>the election in which he lost to Obama.<\/p>\n

But Beck still endorsed him.<\/p>\n

Michael Medved was an even more enthusiastic champion of McCain than was McCain himself. And in his critique of Trump he refers to Bush II as one of the two most \u201cpopular\u201d of \u201cconservative\u201d presidents (the other being Ronald Reagan).<\/p>\n

Of course, Medved is not alone in his estimation of Bush II: NR <\/em>and, by implication, the 22 \u201cconservative\u201d pundits who it invited to warn conservative voters about Trump agree wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

NR, <\/em>along with The Weekly Standard, Commentary, <\/em>and several other Republican-friendly outfits regularly supported both the domestic and, especially, the foreign policies of Bush II\u2014regardless of how wildly un-<\/em>conservative these policies were.<\/p>\n

Though Beck has since come to see the Iraq War for the calamitous event that it is, he didn\u2019t always think this way. In 2006, Beck remarked<\/a> that while the Bush administration was sincere when it insisted that Saddam Hussein had \u201cweapons of mass destruction,\u201d this was \u201cjust gravy.\u201d The \u201creal<\/em> reason\u201d that \u201cwe went into Iraq was Iran. We were going there to stop Iran by planting the seeds of democracy all around Iran\u201d so as to \u201cchange the face of the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

The invasion of Iraq was necessary, Beck insisted, in order to avoid World War III.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bush didn\u2019t tell us his real reasons for invading Iraq, Beck said, \u201cbecause he felt, you know, [that] we just wouldn\u2019t understand that we were in the early stages of World War III.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let that register. According to Beck, not only was the invasion of Iraq a good idea; it was the only move necessary to prevent a third world war.<\/p>\n

And we were already in the early stages of this war.<\/p>\n

Of course, Beck was correct that it was indeed the agenda all along of Bush and his party to make the world\u2014or, in this case, the Middle East\u2014\u201csafe for Democracy.\u201d Beck, Medved, NR, <\/em>and all of those in the better known \u201cconservative\u201d media outlets always knew that this was the objective.<\/p>\n

The \u201cprogressive\u201d of all progressives, Woodrow Wilson, would\u2019ve been proud.<\/p>\n

Bear this in mind as you consider that Mona Charen, another contributor to NR <\/em>and supporter of the Iraq War, assures us that, in contrast with Trump, who \u201chas made a career out of egotism,\u201d conservatism \u201cimplies a certain modesty about government.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one who favors using the United States government as an agent by which to spread \u201cdemocracy\u201d throughout the world has any kind of modesty about government.<\/p>\n

This prosecution of this utopian fantasy has come at the cost of trillions of dollars and the incalculable cost of tens of thousands of lives extinguished and even more ruined.<\/p>\n

It is not Trump on whose shoulders any of this rests, for he opposed this reckless enterprise.<\/p>\n

Medved assures us that Trump\u2019s \u201cbrawling, blustery, mean-spirited public persona serves to associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have for decades attached to their opponents on the right.\u201d So, it is Trump\u2019s style that\u2019s bad for conservatism\u2014not the GOP\u2019s launching of a war that the vast majority of Americans now regard as a colossal waste of blood and treasure, a war waged upon false pretenses.<\/p>\n

Besides, Medved should know by now that there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest that if only the Republican politicians, to say nothing of Republican presidential nominees, act nicer that their opponents will stop depicting them in terms of \u201cnegative stereotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also concerned that Trump\u2019s \u201cmuch-heralded hard line on immigration discards pragmatic reform policies favored by the two most popular conservatives of the last half century, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reagan\u2019s \u201cpragmatic reform policies\u201d regarding immigration consisted of an amnesty that he granted in 1986\u2014and which he retrospectively judged to be the biggest mistake of his career. Implicitly, Medved at least concedes that all of this talk of \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d really is amnesty by another name.<\/p>\n

As for Bush\u2019s \u201cconservatism,\u201d from No Child Left Behind to the Patriot Act; from federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to Medicare Part D; from his \u201cHome Ownership Society\u201d (which culminated in the recession of 2008) to his nomination to the Supreme Court of John Roberts (the judge who made Obamacare the law of the land); from his efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegals to his \u201cWar on Terror,\u201d G.W. Bush continually proved that he was anything but a conservative.<\/p>\n

If Bush<\/em> is a conservative president, as Medved and NR <\/em>continue to maintain, then we must conclude that so too are LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama conservative presidents.<\/p>\n

Medved and company at NR <\/em>also endorsed, not just Bush and McCain, but Mitt Romney, a politician whose opportunism and waffling on topics from abortion to gay marriage to gun control and many issues in between are epic. Notorious flip-flopper John Kerry seems as steady as a rock compared to Romney.<\/p>\n

More importantly, Romney\u2019s socialization of healthcare in Massachusetts provided the blueprint for Obamacare.<\/p>\n

Given their respective records, as well as the fact that Bush II, McCain, and Romney issued in a series of electoral successes for Democrats, we must ask NR: <\/em> So, what exactly is conservatism, and why are you so worried about Trump?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That Donald Trump is no conservative is a proposition of which this conservative needs no convincing. On this score, the self-styled \u201cconservative\u201d contributors to the recent National Review symposium against Trump are correct. It is their conservative bona fides that I challenge. 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