National Review’s Jonah Goldberg: ‘Count Me Out’ of Any
Conservative Movement with Donald Trump
by Ben Shapiro 7 Sep 2015
On Saturday, National
Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg penned a
controversial column in which he rejected Donald Trump and his
followers from the conservative movement. “Well, if this is the conservative
movement now, I guess you’re going to have to count me out,” Goldberg writes.
Goldberg goes on to suggest that the embrace of Trump
perverts conservatism itself, broadening the definition of the movement in
order to include Trump.
Goldberg, whom I consider a friend and a brilliant
commentator, is right to label Trump insufficiently conservative. I have
specifically argued that Trump ought not be the nominee thanks to his
insufficient conservatism—so has Michelle Malkin, so have numerous other
conservative commentators.
But here is the sad truth: Many of the same people appalled
by Trump made Trump’s candidacy possible.
Trump is a product of a conservatism-less Republicanism,
prepared for and championed by the intellectual elites who told us to ignore
Mitt Romney’s creation of Romneycare and
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 43%’s campaign finance
reform, who told conservatives to shut up and get in line, who explained that
conservatives had to throw over Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 96% and his
government shutdowns in favor of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 52% and
his pathological inability to take a hard stand against President Obama using
the tools at his disposal.
Over at National Review, even as Goldberg condemns
Trump for his non-conservatism, another columnist simultaneously urges a
ticket with Governor “God Told Me To Use Obamacare Money To Expand
Medicaid” John Kasich (R-OH) and Sen. Marco “Immigration Gang of Eight” Rubio
(R-FL). Goldberg himself championed Romney’s candidacy because he wasn’t
a conservative, writing
back in 2012:
Even if Romney is a Potemkin conservative (a claim I think
has merit but is also exaggerated), there is an instrumental case to be made
for him: It is better to have a president who owes you than to have one who
claims to own you. A President Romney would be on a very short leash.
Why wouldn’t the same logic apply to Trump?
And while Goldberg today raps Trump on the knuckles for his
support of socialized medicine, going so far as to label opposition to such
policy a “core tenet of American conservatism from Day One,” Goldberg used
Romneycare as a point in favor of Romney in 2012: “He is a man of duty
and purpose. He was told to ‘fix’ health care in ways Massachusetts would like…
He did it all. The man does his assignments.”
Goldberg today says that Trump doesn’t deserve to be a part
of the conservative movement, and his followers have excised themselves from
the conservative community. But in 2012, he warned that anyone saying the same
of Mitt Romney threatened the possibility of conservative victory. In 2012,
Goldberg explicitly
opposed purges and purity tests:
That’s certainly reason enough to be mad at the
establishment. But replacing the current leadership with even more ardent,
passionate and uncompromising conservatives is far from a guaranteed formula
for making the Republican Party more popular or powerful. To do that, the GOP
needs to persuade voters to become a little more conservative, not to hector
already-conservative politicians to become even more pure as they go
snipe-hunting for the Rockefeller Republicans.
What requirements did Mitt Romney, and John Kasich, and John
McCain, and Mitch McConnell fulfill that Trump does not? Goldberg is right that
Trump has “no ideological guardrails whatsoever” when it comes to taxes and
“knows less than most halfway-decent DC interns about foreign policy.” Goldberg
could have added that Trump has made an enormous amount of money utilizing
eminent domain, that he supports affirmative action, and that he opposes free
trade, among other pernicious positions. There is a reason that this weekend
full-fledged economic idiot Paul Krugman endorsed Trump’s economic policies.
The question is: Why are so many Republicans backing him?
There are two answers: first, he’s tough on illegal immigration, the only issue
many conservatives believe matters. The second answer is more telling,
however: Trump has heavy support because Republicans rejected ideological
purity a long time ago. And here’s the irony: Goldberg and others can’t call
Tea Partiers to Jesus on Trump because, according to polls, Tea Partiers
don’t support Trump in outsized numbers. The reality is that the same
people who don’t like ideological litmus tests support Trump. Just a few weeks
back, the Washington
Post concluded that Trump’s fans “are more moderate than Tea
Partiers were,” significantly more likely to call themselves Republicans
than Tea Partiers were, far younger and less religious and blue collar than Tea
Partiers.
As Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark would put it,
“Jonah, you’re digging in the wrong place.”
If you want to target Trump supporters for failing to take
conservatism seriously, try starting with those who don’t take
conservatism seriously. Most of them were trained in the acceptability of
“victory before conservatism” Republicanism by the some of the same folks now
deriding the poll-leading Trump.
I’ve lived this story before: I’m from California. Trump is
Arnold Schwarzenegger without the Austrian accent. He’s a know-nothing with a
huge name and a Teflon personality, and people get behind him because he’s a
celebrity and because victory matters more than principle. I know that’s so,
because I made the same mistake with regard to Schwarzenegger, explicitly
endorsing him in spite of his insufficient conservatism on the grounds that
voters in California would get used to voting Republican.
That was a failure. Schwarzenegger was terrible, and what
followed him was a shift to radical leftism unthinkable in the early days of
his candidacy. I learned that lesson, and in January 2012, I said that the conservative
embrace of Mitt Romney would pervert the movement itself, in the
same way Goldberg now accuses Trump of perverting conservatism:
Yes, defeating horrible politicians like Barack Obama is the
top goal — but that doesn’t justify redefining conservatism entirely…. When we
deliberately broaden conservatism to encompass government-forced purchase of
health insurance or raising taxes or appointing liberal judges or enforcing
same-sex marriage or using taxpayer money to bail out business or pushing trade
barriers, we destroy conservatism from within. If we do that, why would our
politicians even bother to pay lip service to the standard?
Like Goldberg, I fear the same from Trump: I fear that he’ll
be a wild card with no governing principle, that even if he were to win, he’d
irrevocably split conservatism. But I also recognize that Trump isn’t a
departure for Republicans abandoning principle: he’s the political love child
of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, a combination of the
non-conservative “victory mentality” and the arrogance of a dictatorial left
many conservatives want to see countered with fire.
In sum, I’m happy to welcome establishment Republicans who
want to revivify conservative litmus tests to the party. But from now on, let’s
be consistent: if we’re going to oust Trump based on his ideology, those
requirements can’t be waived for others.
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg is
a founding editor, National Review Online for the National Review, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank), and was a founding
producer for Think Tank with Ben
Wattenberg.
Note: Think
Tank with Ben Wattenberg is a Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) program.
Ben
Wattenberg was the host for Think
Tank with Ben Wattenberg, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Robert
H. Malott was a board member for the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS), a trustee emeritus for the American Enterprise Institute (think tank), and a lifetime trustee
at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the American Enterprise Institute (think tank), the Aspen Institute (think tank), the International Rescue Committee, the Committee for Economic Development, the
Brookings Institution (think tank), and
the Urban Institute (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Aspen Institute (think tank),
the International Rescue Committee,
the Committee for Economic Development,
the Brookings Institution (think tank),
and the Urban Institute (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Clifford S.
Asness is a director at the International
Rescue Committee, and a trustee at the American
Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Paul
S. Atkins is a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development, and
a visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Raymond V.
Gilmartin is a trustee at the Committee
for Economic Development, and a trustee
at the American Enterprise Institute (think
tank).
R. Glenn Hubbard
is a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Edward B. Rust Jr.
was a trustee at the Committee for
Economic Development, a trustee
at the American Enterprise Institute (think
tank), and a director at the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce.
U.S.
Chamber of Commerce Foundation is a lender & philanthropic arm for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
American
Enterprise Institute (think tank) is a contractor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
John R. McKernan
Jr. is the president of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and a board member for the American Action Forum.
Jeb
Bush was a board member for the American
Action Forum, and an advisory committee member for the Hispanic Leadership Network.
Hispanic
Leadership Network is an offshoot of the American Action Network.
Frederic V. Malek
is the chairman for the American Action
Network, the chairman for the American
Action Forum, and a trustee at the Aspen
Institute (think tank).
Robert
H. Malott was a lifetime trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), a board member for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and a
trustee emeritus for the American
Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Think
Tank with Ben Wattenberg is a Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) program.
Jonah Goldberg was
a founding producer for Think Tank with
Ben Wattenberg, is a founding editor, National Review Online for the National Review, a visiting fellow at
the American Enterprise Institute (think
tank).
Ted
Gayer was a visiting scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute (think tank), and is the VP for the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s great
uncle, a senior counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld,
LLP, a life trustee at the Urban
Institute (think tank), a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is Vernon E. Jordan Jr’s great niece, the senior
adviser for the Barack Obama
administration, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Newton
N. Minow is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Bradford A.
Berenson was a partner at Sidley
Austin LLP, and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank).
American
Enterprise Institute (think tank) is a contractor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
U.S.
Chamber of Commerce Foundation is a lender & philanthropic arm for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Vernon E. Jordan
Jr. is a senior counsel
for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a life trustee at
the Urban Institute (think tank), a
director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg
conference participant (think tank).
N. Gregory Mankiw
is a trustee at the Urban Institute
(think tank), and was a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank).
Jonah Goldberg is
a visiting fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute (think tank), a founding editor, National Review
Online for the National Review, and
was a founding producer for Think Tank
with Ben Wattenberg.
Think
Tank with Ben Wattenberg is a Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) program.
Ben
Wattenberg was the host for Think
Tank with Ben Wattenberg, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (think tank).
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