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THE TRANSOM

22 JANUARY 16

BEN DOMENECH

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CASE AGAINST TRUMP:

The editors of National Review organized a symposium published yesterday featuring a number of leading conservative and libertarian thinkers, writers, and media figures, each offering their perspective on why Donald Trump should not be an acceptable candidate for conservatives. The cover is here. http://vlt.tc/28yq  The full list of entries is here. http://vlt.tc/28yk  National Review’s official editorial is here. http://vlt.tc/28yl

In response to this cover story and symposium, and after several members of the symposium went on Megyn Kelly last night to discuss their views, Trump tweeted about it here, calling NR a “dying paper”. http://vlt.tc/28yp  The Republican National Committee responded as well, denying National Review its scheduled February debate media partnership, which had first been with NBC and then CNN. http://vlt.tc/28ym  As a practical matter, this symposium is a diverse group of right of center people who are drawing a line – and while it may turn out to be the same as Han Solo begging on the bridge to give up the darkness and follow the path to the light, it is a line that must be drawn.

I was honored to be included in the list of participants, and I encourage you to read the others as well, particularly Yuval Levin’s. Having read them all, I’d suggest my own entry is oddly enough the most positive about Trump’s supporters and the phenomenon he represents. Here is my argument, which amounts to a case for the Constitution instead of the easy answer of authoritarianism:

The case for constitutional limited government is the case against Donald Trump. To the degree we take him at his word — understanding that Trump is a negotiator whose positions are often purposefully deceptive — what he advocates is a rejection of our Madisonian inheritance and an embrace of Barack Obama’s authoritarianism.

Trump assures voters that he will use authoritarian power for good, to help those who feel — with good reason — ignored by both parties. But the American experiment in self-government was the work of a generation that risked all to defeat a tyrannical monarch and establish a government of laws, not men. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is precisely what the Constitution offers, and what is most threatened by “great men” impatient to impose their will on the nation.

Conservatives should reject Trump’s hollow, Euro-style identity politics. But conservatives have far more to learn from his campaign than many might like to admit. The Trump voter is moderate, disaffected, with patriotic instincts. He feels disconnected from the GOP and other broken public institutions, left behind by a national political elite that no longer believes he matters.

Trump’s current popularity reveals something good. President Obama’s core domestic-policy agenda was designed to pull working- and middle-class voters left. It assumed that once they received the government’s redistributive largesse, they would be invested in maintaining it — and maintaining the Left in power. Trump’s rise bespeaks the utter failure of this program for the American working class: They have seen the Left’s agenda up close and do not believe it is good enough to make a nation great.

In order to build a governing majority, conservatives do not need Trump’s message or agenda, but they urgently need his supporters. Trump proves that these disaffected Americans can be won by those who respect the pro-American Jacksonian spine that runs through the electorate. The challenge now is for conservatives to give these voters the respect they deserve.

OPPOSITION TO TED CRUZ IS ABOUT MORE THAN TED CRUZ:

For the candidate in second in this race, Ted Cruz, there has been some smart writing of late about why – despite his obviously more robust conservative credentials and a resume that looks far more presidential – Washington Republicans give the appearance of being so much more open to the prospect of a Trump nomination than they are to Cruz. Jonathan Martin writes on the issue here. http://vlt.tc/28yr  “[T]he cadre of Republican lobbyists, operatives and elected officials based in Washington are much more unnerved by Mr. Cruz, a go-it-alone, hard-right crusader who campaigns against the political establishment and could curtail their influence and access, building his own Republican machine to essentially replace them… “Trump won’t do long-lasting damage to the G.O.P. coalition,” said John Feehery, a Capitol Hill aide turned lobbyist. “Cruz will.”

Charles Krauthammer says that should Trump win Iowa, he will receive the endorsement of at least one establishment governor or senator, and at that point become the inevitable nominee. Why the rejection of Cruz? http://vlt.tc/28yn  “I think the short answer is because everybody who knows him in the Senate, hates him. And I think hate is not, is not an exaggeration. The enmity which he wears on his sleeve as, with pride, is something that he’s now, you could almost say cultivated. To make him a freshman senator with no particular record into a national figure rallying everybody against the Washington cartel, you know Republicans in the Senate, in the House have been out there half of their lives, don’t appreciate being called essentially traitors to the cause of conservatism. And then you get antipathy and they will put that antipathy perhaps even over what’s best for the party.”

Philip Klein has more. http://vlt.tc/28yo  “It appears that these Republicans are so blinded by their personal hatred of Cruz that they’ve convinced themselves that the party would be better off choosing somebody who represents everything they claim to abhor. In making this calculation, they are exhibiting the same shortsightedness and lack of pragmatism that they claim to hate about Cruz… Following [Bob] Dole’s comments, a number of sitting U.S. Senators, led by Orrin Hatch, trashed Cruz to CNN. Hatch claimed that while Cruz would lose the nomination, “I’ve come around a little bit on Trump … I’m not so sure we’d lose if he’s our nominee because he’s appealing to people who a lot of the Republican candidates have not appealed to in the past.”

Coming as it does from so many Washington politicos who have for years said it was beyond the pale to attack fellow Republicans, and how dare conservatives not rally behind their chosen candidate, the hypocrisy here of rejecting a lifelong Republican in Cruz for a Republican of convenience in Trump is laughable. The motivations are obvious: first, there is the personal animus; second, the partisan belief Cruz would fail and Trump would succeed; third, the cynical view that Trump would be a better working partner than Cruz.

Except there’s one more thing going on here too – the recognition of a threat to the existing order not of Ted Cruz the man, but Ted Cruz the model. Yes, Cruz himself is an existential threat to the established order in Washington, someone with the potential to reorient a party coalition and blow up the existing gravy train. But everyone in Washington who depends on that order is convinced that he’s a general election loser. So why the palatable underlying fear for the disruption a Cruz nomination could bring? If they’re so certain he’s going to lose, why worry?

Because the threat smart members of the Washington political elite truly believe in is not Ted Cruz, but the model he represents: that the path for an ambitious freshman politician to achieve leadership of the Republican Party in this day and age is not the normal give and take and deference to leaders and precedent and the way we do things around here, but instead to take a flamethrower to this system from day one. Regardless of whether Cruz wins a general election, his nomination could fundamentally transform the political incentives of the Senate and change the internal dynamics of the Senate Republican Conference. It shows that you can get a shot at the presidency not by playing along, but by playing your own game.

The potential of every two years having someone walk through the door in each new Senate class who thinks they could be the next potential Ted Cruz is an absolute nightmare for those who have thrived in their cushy lifestyles as stewards of the world’s most exclusive club. And that is why his nomination is unacceptable.

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