Conservatives unite to condemn Donald Trump as a “menace”
The magazine that helped to start the modern conservative movement in the 1950’s, National Review, planted itself firmly in opposition to Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy Thursday.
“Against Trump,” the magazine placed on its cover, in large gold letters designed to mockingly imitate Trump’s own personal branding of his business empire. Inside, the publication’s editors condemned the real estate mogul and reality TV star as a “philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”
“Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself,” the magazine declared.
National Review also collected essays from 22 conservative leaders who offered their own reasons for opposing Trump’s candidacy. The names ranged from former Fox News star Glenn Beck to former U.S. Attorneys Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey to prominent Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore to online provocateur Erick Erickson, the founder of the conservative blog RedState.
The magazine’s dramatic move comes as Trump has regained the lead in polling in Iowa, which carries enormous influence as the first state to vote in the primary process.
National Review’s complaints against Trump ranged from his liberal positions in the past on abortion, gun control, health care and taxes, to what they deemed to be his lack of knowledge of the details of his own immigration plan.
“Against Trump,” the magazine placed on its cover, in large gold letters designed to mockingly imitate Trump’s own personal branding of his business empire. Inside, the publication’s editors condemned the real estate mogul and reality TV star as a “philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.”
“Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself,” the magazine declared.
National Review also collected essays from 22 conservative leaders who offered their own reasons for opposing Trump’s candidacy. The names ranged from former Fox News star Glenn Beck to former U.S. Attorneys Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey to prominent Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore to online provocateur Erick Erickson, the founder of the conservative blog RedState.
The magazine’s dramatic move comes as Trump has regained the lead in polling in Iowa, which carries enormous influence as the first state to vote in the primary process.
National Review’s complaints against Trump ranged from his liberal positions in the past on abortion, gun control, health care and taxes, to what they deemed to be his lack of knowledge of the details of his own immigration plan.
This was breaking news this morning.