Neither Trump Nor Hillary!
 
I write this from snowy McLean, Virginia, where 24 inches of snow fell Friday night and Saturday. But all is well–the trees look nice covered in snow, our power didn’t go out, and our driveway is now clear. So I’ll be getting back to work (eventually). Meanwhile, being housebound all weekend allowed me to spend even more time indulging in phone calls about Trump, tweeting about Trump, and planning conspiracies about Trump. All perhaps to no avail?
 
Or perhaps to some avail. If Bill Buckley could found National Review six decades ago to stand athwart history, yelling Stop, we today should be able at least to try to stand athwart Trump, yelling Stop. Rich Lowry, the current editor of National Review, thought so too, and asked a bunch of conservatives to explain why we shouldn’t yield to the temptations of Trumpism. The whole symposium is well worth reading. Here’s my contribution:
 
Let us, as conservatives, seek guidance from those we admire.
 
The Federalist (No. 39) speaks of “that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.” Hasn’t Donald Trump been a votary merely of wealth rather than of freedom? Hasn’t he been animated by the art of the deal rather than by the art of self-government?
 
William F. Buckley Jr. proclaimed, in the founding statement of this journal, that conservatism “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Hasn’t Donald Trump always been a man inclined to go along-indeed, impatient to get along-with history?
 
In a letter to National Review, Leo Strauss wrote that “a conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.” Isn’t Donald Trump the very epitome of vulgarity?
 
In sum: Isn’t Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained? Isn’t the task of conservatives today to stand athwart Trumpism, yelling Stop?
 
And we’ve been doing our best at TWS. Our new issue has a terrific cover story on Trump by Matt Labash that should be forwarded to every GOP primary voter you know. Here’s the link. Peruse it yourself if you haven’t yet, and then feel free to forward. It’s a fun read–as well as being an accurate, amusing but also somewhat horrifying portrait of the current GOP frontrunner. You might also take a look at the editorials by Steve Hayes and me, as well as John McCormack’s reported piece based on spending time with Trump in Iowa.
 
And with Iowa a week away, to keep up with our reporting on the race, you really will want to visit weeklystandard.com with some regularity. Mike Warren, Steve Hayes and John McCormack will be out in Iowa, and the rest of us will be weighing in from here and elsewhere. We’ll try to provide our usual combination of lively reporting, astute analysis, and well-grounded opinion. Which we’ll supplement over the next week with burnt offerings to the gods of politics inducing them to save American conservatism from disaster. That will be each day at our office, at 5:00 p.m. Just before cocktails.
 
And speaking of Neither Trump Nor Hillary, I’ve registered a website to lay the groundwork for…who knows what?…if Trump does prevail. Take a look, if you wish, at neithertrumpnorhillary.com. Handsome, no? That’s Patches, our mini-Australian shepherd, whom we thought an appropriate mascot: He’s smart and loyal, pretends to be fierce, is a bit crazy, and tries to herd people into one area for their own safety whether they want to be there or not.

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