Conservative NeverTrumpers

Reading Rich Lowry’s latest column “Trump’s Path to Victory” has made one blogger wonder whether “NR is about to pivot to the Trumpster.” But this is most unlikely.  Although Rich reluctantly concedes that Trump “really can beat Hillary” and that, moreover, he himself had been wrong in imagining this “reality-TV star with a spotty business record and a weird penchant for proclaiming he was on the verge of running for president” could ever win, the conservative luminary is  not about to pivot with his magazine. In his column, Lowry pours as much venom on Trump as he ever did in the past.  Supposedly Trump shows “thin-skinned vindictiveness” and “is trampling on basic political norms, like the convention of candidates releasing their tax returns.” Lowry is appalled by Trump’s “lack of preparation” and the fact that “he knows less about public affairs than the average congressman.” He is moving ahead of his opponent not because of his job qualifications but because he is running “against the second-worst presidential nominee in recent memory.” Lowry quotes National Interest editor Yuval Levin who suggests that Trump’s main advantage is that he has found an opponent who “manages to be boring and corrupt.”

One has to approach such invective with an eye toward what is driving this rant. Certainly, it makes little sense to take Lowry’s free-swinging accusations at face value. For example, does Trump really know less about foreign affairs than the “average congressman”? Who is this average congressman, the chairman of the foreign relations committee or such Solons as Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings and Alan Grayson (when he’s not beating up his spouse)? Lowry may not like some of Trump’s positions, for example, his views about dealing with Putin’s Russia. But can he honestly say that the Republican nominee knows less about foreign relations than our last two presidents, neither of whom seemed to shine in this department. Like them Trump as president would be instructed by others on how to deal with other countries, and looking at his foreign policy team, I am at least as confident that he’ll obtain good advice from these people as I was about the advisers of W and Obama. Is releasing one’s tax returns a sacred “political norm”? Exactly how far back in our history does this venerable norm go? Did Truman or Eisenhower observe it?  What about LBJ? I won’t even try to respond to Lowry’s silly indirect insult that Trump is the worst presidential candidate “in recent historical memory.” I’m sure if Rich tried for a mini-second, he could find some who were worse.

Lowry also complains about Trump’s “newly minted, hard-to-credit social conservatism.” One would, of course, be hard put to find anything conservative about Rich’s hero, Mitt Romney when Mitt was governor of Massachusetts? Most of Romney’s appointees to the state bench were liberal Democrats, and his turn toward the Right only became conspicuous when he began to position himself to run for the presidency. Romney’s socialized medical plan, known as Romney-care, foreshadowed Obamacare and created huge deficits in the Bay State. But Lowry and his buds had no reservations about beating the drum nationwide for their “conservative” candidate, although Romney’s embrace of conservatism seems to have been at least as problematic as that of Trump. Although idealists may not want to settle for anything but the best, hypocritical liars are of course another species.

This leads me into speculating about the uncompromising hostility toward Trump exhibited by Lowry and his friend and fellow-Fox-contributor Guy Benson. Recently Benson responded on Townhall to a charge that one might gather issued from somewhere in the netherworld that he and other minicons are piling on to Trump because they’ve been financially influenced. From Benson’s comment, it would seem that this weird accusation is coming from isolated wingnuts. But the “flawed” charge against never-Trumpers comes up almost daily when I’m speaking to people, not all of whom are members of the Old Right. Although this allegation is hard to prove definitively, as a historian of the conservative establishment, I find it to be quite plausible. In the 1980s the neoconservatives took control of the conservative movement after putting themselves in charge of several large foundations that donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican and movement conservative magazines and think-tanks. A very systematic takeover occurred that went through a donation-gathering Philanthropic Roundtable, organized by Irving Kristol and Leslie Lenkowsky, and which ended with the occupation of key positions by neocon operatives at Olin, Scaife, Smith-Richardson, and Bradley Foundations.

I would never claim that the financial dependence of what is euphemistically called “the conservative foundation community” on neoconservative-filtered funding was the only reason that the neocons ascended to power.  But it certainly helped, particularly when Kristol and his friends poured money into struggling magazines and debt-ridden think-tanks in return for the modest assurance they would advocate for their donors. I am also not suggesting that everyone who received funding from neocon sources behaved dishonorably. If this funding had been made available to me (which it never was), I would have taken it gladly.

But there are certain connections that are too obvious to be ignored. In the 1960s and 1970s, NR was running deep in the red and had to be pulled back from the precipice every few months by infusions of WFB’s family wealth and by desperate appeals for donations. Now Rich and his friends seem awash in dollars and have a well-paid staff. Shall we ask where the added funds were generated? I doubt that most of this cash is coming from an expanded subscription list or from selling cruise tickets to NR– fans. Although I wouldn’t put myself through the inconvenience of updating my study of the late 1980s, I’m sure that an enterprising young researcher would have fun discovering who gives money to whom in the conservative establishment.

One might also note the continuing, close alliance between the conservative establishment and the establishment GOP. Presumably by sticking with the never-Trump former presidential candidates, Guy, Rich and the other “conservative” publicists are winning new credits as party loyalists, and without a doubt, they’ll be richly rewarded if the losers manage a comeback. What I’m excluding from consideration is the less complimentary explanation for the persistence of the never-Trumpers that Newt Gingrich put forward last week. When asked by Sean Hannity why the never-Trump journalists go on slimming Trump, Newt responded perhaps flippantly: “because they’re all deranged.” A focus on the money trail may yield a more satisfactory answer than investigating mental illness. It is not only the Democratic nominee but Rich and his fellow-never-Trumpers who may be corrupt as well as boring.

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