The National Review dust-up, a couple of days in

In a Politico piece today, NR editor Rich Lowry sums up the emerging set of themes of the blowback, and addresses each one:

Who are you to tell us what to think? Well, we’re an opinion magazine. People are free to agree or disagree, admire us or detest us. If people find that uncongenial, there are all sorts of place they can move in the world where they won't be disturbed by robust argument about politics.

Won't your criticism just help Trump? It's possible. But we aren't a super PAC or a political campaign. Our role is to call it as we see it, and let the chips fall where they may. It has happened before that candidates we opposed won the Republican nomination (see Bob Dole in 1996 or John McCain in 2008), and it may well happen again this year.

You are the dastardly establishment. If Brent Bozell, Dana Loesch, Katie Pavlich and Erick Erickson are the establishment, the world really has been turned upside down. In reality, elements of the Republican establishment are currently negotiating the terms of their surrender to Trump before a vote has been cast, in an astonishing display of fecklessness.

How dare you criticize someone so dominant in the polls? I really don't get this one. If Trump were running second everywhere, it would be less important to criticize him. Even Trump understands this: As he explained in the last debate, he only began attacking Ted Cruz when he started rising in the polls. This line of argument is a form of fatalism: Trump is at about 35 percent in the national polls, therefore the race is over. Nicolle Wallace actually said on MSNBC on Friday, "The voters have now spoken." Before any caucus or primary! There is no doubt that Trump is in a strong position, but that obviously shouldn't exempt him from criticism, especially when he himself is a one-man political wrecking ball.

You just don't get Trump's appeal. Actually, we have written extensively about Trump's appeal—from his emphasis on immigration to his resistance to political correctness—and believe his candidacy holds important lessons for the GOP. You can learn from him without nominating him.

I gave some thought to whether to put Lowry's list first, rather than use it as a refutation of the various types of charges I've been seeing in the - I guess - right-of-center punditsphere, but I'm inclined to think that having his solid defense in each case in mind is good preparation for considering the nature of the salvos being lobbed from various quarters.

John Nolte at Breitbart thinks he adds to an accurate view of the matter by painting a scene of wood paneling, brandy and cigars - in a rather abrupt turn from the metaphor he employs in the first few paragraphs, that of a nuclear-tipped missile thudding to the ground immediately upon launch:

The entire execution behind the delivery of this dud immediately brought this to my mind:

INT. PRIVATE CLUB – K STREET – VICTORIAN ERA

Long hallway. Oak paneled walls. Ends at two closed, imposing doors.

The only sound is horse-drawn carriages passing by outside and the echo of IMPORTANT MEN discussing IMPORTANT MATTERS from behind those doors.

From somewhere a bell tinkles. Immediately a BOY in a heavily-starched uniform appears. The doors swing open. A toxic cloud of cigar smoke swallows the boy. As the smoke dissipates, we see that the room inside is filled with WELL-DRESSED IMPORTANT MEN pleased with themselves. They sit in leather chairs and drink brandy.

The BOY is handed a piece of paper – A PROCLAMATION.

Like it is as sacred as the Magna Carta, the BOY runs to make his delivery as the WELL-DRESSED IMPORTANT MEN confidently celebrate how their proclamation will change the world.

Other than the usual-usual Fox News appearances, that is exactly what National Review did last night.

I’m sorry but even if it ever did, the world does not work this way anymore. Even if you believe 100% in every word National Review wrote against Trump, if there ever really was an era where one could change the world by stuffing a bunch of opinions in-between magazine covers, this sure as hell isn’t it.

This is 2016. Opinions are not changed with the drop of a magazine filled with Very Important Thinkers espousing Very Big Thinks about How We Should All Think. This approach only backfires because it looks self-important, stuffy and conceited from good people who are none of those things.

If I may paraphrase the Coen Brothers: Nobody likes the high hat.

Drudge doesn’t issue proclamations.

BuzzFeed doesn’t issue proclamations.

The Mainstream Media doesn’t issue proclamations.

Roger L Simon at PJ Media couches the matter in man-of-action-versus-the-theorists terms:

Many of their arguments revolve around whether Trump is a "true conservative."  Instead of wading into the definitional weeds on that one -- as they say on the Internet, YMMV -- allow me to address the macro question of what the purpose of ideology actually is. For me, it is to provide a theoretical basis on which to act, a set of principles.  But that's all it is.  It's not a religion, although it can be mistaken for one (communism).

Ideology should function as a guide, not a faith, because in the real world you may have to violate it, when the rubber meets the road, as they say.  For those of us in the punditocracy, the rubber rarely if ever meets the road.  All we have is our theories. They are the road for us.  If we're lucky, we're paid for them.  In that case, we hardly ever vary them. It would be bad for business.

Trump's perspective was the reverse.  The rubber was constantly meeting the road.  In fact, it rarely did anything else.  He always had to change and adjust.  Ideological principles were just background noise, barely audible sounds above the jack hammers.
When National Review takes up arms against Trump, it is men and women of theory against a man of action.  The public, if we are to believe the polls, prefers the action.  It's not hard to see why.  The theory has failed and become increasingly disconnected from the people.  It doesn't go anywhere and hasn't for years. I'm guilty of it too. (Our current president is 150% a man of theory.) Too many people -- left and right -- are drunk on ideology.
That is why, more than any other potential matchup, I would like to see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders go head-to-head in the coming presidential election. And, although far from a sure thing, this is becoming increasingly likely.
It would be an American epic -- the quintessential business pragmatist against the most extreme ideologue to have run for national office in years ... in a nutshell, capitalism versus socialism.  Capitalism is ragged and wild and wooly, like Donald Trump. It changes its mind on a dime. Ideology is secondary.  Socialism is a rigid utopian theory that leads to bankruptcy (at best) or mass-murdering Maoist totalitarianism.  Ideology is primary.

This is frankly disturbing. If anyone is supposed to believe that principles are immutable, it is a conservative. Then again, Simon is something of a latecomer to conservatism, and maybe it never really found its way beyond his brain into his heart.

Andrea Tantaros tries to paint NR's against-Trump issue as an establishment Hail Mary. Has she seen Lowry's Politico piece, and does she have anything to say about point number three?

Publications like National Review, run by elite "conservatives" have given us George W. Bush and his wars, "No Child Left Behind," Medicare Part D, huge deficits caused by Republican consultants spending to woo select voters, Mitt "Romneycare" Romney, John McCain...the list goes on and on.

William F. Buckley, who founded National Review, used the magazine to publish a stellar series of essays by conservative intellectuals who helped foster the Reagan Revolution. 

Since then, "movement conservatism" has not been a powerful enough force to make things better for the working classes in the country.

This vacuum, created by the "conservative" elites who have backed RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and candidates who are antithetical to conservatism, is what created the opportunity for Donald Trump to rise. 

In fact, publications like National Review have such a blind spot, they never even saw devout, pro-America nationalists like Trump taking off. 

They aren't credible in their criticism of Trump because they never saw it coming. 

Beyond that, and most importantly, they told us we -- the conservatives who are sick and tired of elistist, establishment blunders -- were wrong.

And they still don't get it.

Trump's appeal stretches far beyond disgruntled, outside the country club conservatives. His potential for crossover support, especially with blue collar and working class voters, is huge. Most establishment Republicans have never met a blue collar worker (unless they were fixing their Jacuzzi).

I can see Trump winning coal miners, unionized construction workers, auto workers, steel workers, Teamsters, etc. 

Trump may even score a larger share of black votes with his immigration stand. His appeal to working class voters is a very under reported story, but it's evident because even President Barack Obama himself mentioned Trump by name during an interview with NPR in which he said that Trump is tapping into the "anger of the blue collar white male."

This showcases just how scared the left is when it comes to Trump's potential to tear into demographics that Democrats have largely considered theirs. 

The bed wetters at the RNC are dreaming of a GOP that grows because it attracts Latinos, pro-abortion millennial women and other hopelessly Democratic voters. Trump's coalition of adding working class voters (who actually work) makes more sense. 

I have respect for National Review as an institution, but the cover and series of articles designed to hurt Trump only hurts the elitest, Beltway crowd they represent because it exposes why he is the seemingly solid and unstoppable frontrunner: it's because of them.

They have failed us, not Trump. Donald Trump is merely capitalizing on a moment in a pursuit to make America Great Again, in spite of the failures of the conservative movement.

The conservative movement hasn't failed, Andrea. The Republican party, yes, but they are entirely different animals. You know this. Why are you writing this kind of stuff?


This is a taste of the spectrum of arguments against what NR has done.

They are all to be found in ostensibly right-of-center venues, but not a one of them is conservative.

And, as we conservatives have been saying since at least the mid-1950s, if our "ideology" were ever tried in a robust, undiluted form, it would make America actually great again.