It's On: National Review, 22 Conservatives Openly Denounce Trump

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Escalating a skirmish into combat, the conservative magazine puts a beating on the GOP's front-runner.


A leading conservative magazine is leading a charge against Donald Trump's Republican presidential campaign.
By Gabrielle LevyJan. 22, 2016, at 1:10 p.m.+ More





All-out war has erupted between conservatives and the Republican establishment over presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, his closest challenger.

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Just as party elites have begun to grudgingly coalesce behind the billionaire real-estate mogul – or at least against the Texas senator, a brash tea-party favorite – the conservative magazine National Review is leading the charge against the businessman, publishing on Thursday evening a blistering editorial and a collection of essays "Against Trump" from 22 influential figures on the right.




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"He is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries," the National Review's editorial board wrote. "Trump is 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."


The editorial board called Trump and his campaign "show and strut," said his plan to force Mexico to pay for a wall on the U.S. border "silly bluster" and slammed his call to deport 11 million people as a "herculean administrative and logistical task beyond the capacity of the federal government."

Instead of embracing core conservative principles, Trump "has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution," they wrote.

The likes of radio host Glenn Beck, former RedState.com editor Erick Erickson, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Club for Growth President David McIntosh piled on.


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"When conservatives desperately needed allies in the fight against big government, Donald Trump didn't stand on the sidelines. He consistently advocated that your money be spent, that your government grow, and that your Constitution be ignored," wrote Beck.

"He's effectively vowing to be an American Mussolini, concentrating power in the Trump White House and governing by fiat," wrote David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute. "It's a vision to make the last 16 years of executive abuse of power seem modest."

The Republican National Committee immediately responded by disinviting National Review from sponsoring a Feb. 25 Republican primary debate.

RNC communications director Sean Spicer explained the move, saying that a debate moderator can't have a predisposition for or against any of the candidates.
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"Going after each other in the long run is not helpful for the party," Spicer said on CNN Friday. "I would rather see that energy focused on Hillary Clinton."




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The magazine brushed off the slight.

"We expected this was coming," said National Review publisher Jack Fowler. "Small price to pay for speaking the truth about The Donald."

As for the candidate himself, Trump responded to the magazine's attack in typical fashion.

"The National Review is a dying paper," he said at a press conference in Las Vegas Thursday night. "Its circulation is way down. Not very many people read it any more – people don't even think about the National Review."