[nathanbedford]

For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc

Levin is criticized for not supporting Trump while, you say, he supported Bush, McCain and Romney who were actually less true to conservative values. But let's look at Levin's support of George Bush. No one has been more critical of George HW Bush and his betrayal of the Reagan revolution than Mark Levin. His principled criticism of all of these men was parallel to is criticism of Donald Trump, he criticize mistakes but distinguished that criticism from support of their candidacies.

Let's consider a few of the list of positives, and there are many legitimate ones, cited to fortify Trump's conservatism. You'll forgive if the observer is skeptical of Trump's commitment to "fiscal responsibility." Putting his biography of bankruptcy aside, and putting aside his "love of debt," it is very difficult to believe that Trump is committed to fiscal responsibility when he advocates massive tax cuts, $1 trillion infrastructure building program, rebuilding the military, a brand-new entitlement, no cuts anywhere in other entitlements like Social Security, and upgrading of the veteran administration. Clearly, this is a recipe at least in the near-term and medium-term for increased debt and fiscal irresponsibility. In order to justify this spending spree coupled with massive tax cuts, Trump has to argue that stimulation package will energize the economy. Maybe so, but not in the short or medium term enough to compensate for federal budget shortfalls.

Let us consider, "trade agreements that help our workers" and whether they are, as opposed for example to tax cuts, orthodox conservative values. Fair and free trade have been staples of the conservative catechism since Ronald Reagan and before. Trump has departed from that view, he might have won the argument but that does not make opposition to him somehow a contradiction of conservatism. Certainly, citing the danger of massive depression if Trump were to make good on his threat to unilaterally slap 35% tariffs on imports is not a betrayal of conservatism and it is arguably a departure of conservative doctrine by Trump.

Let us consider the argument that Trump was " against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury". I recall when I turned against the war in Iraq it generated considerable criticism in this forum. It was not then and it is hardly now conservative catechism to be against that war. Just because I turned against it doesn't make it so and just because Donald Trump turned against it does not make support of the war anti-conservative. Much of the criticism of Trump's position on the war in Iraq, for example, have to do with the dispute about whether or not he was lying about his initial opposition to the war. Again, hardly a touchstone of failing to be conservative to criticize Trump for such a lie.

Those of us who have been falsely accused of being "never Trumper's" frankly do not understand how to define the phrase. I am certainly not a person who opposed Trump after his nomination, and to my knowledge neither was Levin although Levin withheld support which I promised to deliver and in fact did deliver upon his nomination. But I'm not aware that I, Levin, or any thinking conservative in supporting Trump necessarily must surrender his power of discernment or his self-respect. When Trump was wrong and God knows there were many occasions when he spoke or tweeted so irresponsibly that it was unreasonable to condition conservative bona fides on defending Trump. Many of us criticized the gaffe without withdrawing support for the candidacy.

What is a never Trumper? Is it anybody with whom Trump-bots disagree? What is a globalist, is it anybody with whom Trump supporters disagree? We conservatives deplore the left's practice of stealing our language, I deplore the same practice when done by conservatives.

The point is that since the nomination we should all have supported Donald Trump, which I did, which Mark Levin ultimately did and even Ted Cruz, despite outrageous provocation, also ultimately did. Now that he is President-elect Trump, we continue to owe him our support but that does not mean, and never did mean, that we surrender our power of discernment or our self-respect. If they are to be deployed against George HW Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, they are equally be applied to Donald Trump.

[ek_hornbeck]

I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I don't think that it addressed my main point.

A lot of prominent Republican politicians and talking heads may have indeed said a word or two gently criticizing the liberal leanings of Bush, Dole, Bush II, McCain, and Romney, but they never failed to endorse them once they had secured the nomination, and certainly they never refused to vote for them. Trump was a different story - you had prominent Republicans and media figures saying they would refuse to vote for him or saying they may vote for him but won't endorse him (Levin falls into the later category, correct me if I'm wrong since I don't follow him closely). Those who said they wouldn't vote for Trump generally either voted for zero-shot third party candidates like McMullin (after years of self-righteously accusing third party voters in the past of "helping Democrats" or "wasting their vote") or didn't vote at all. Some neoconservatives went so far as to overtly support Hillary.

This brings me back to my original point. It's certainly true that on any number of issues Trump is not a conservative ideological purist. He has reversed his positions on many issues, and it's quite likely that in some cases he's just paying lip-service to some conservative talking points on social issues that he really doesn't care much about (that doesn't bother me as much, since social issues don't animate me in the same way as the national question). However, every other GOP nominee from 1988 on has deviated just as far from movement conservatism's ideological checklist.

My question is why their lack of ideological purity didn't inspire the same hysterical reaction and vocal opposition as Trump. The fact that it did while Bush's "compassionate conservatism" (aka watered down liberalism) or Romney's liberal track record in Massachusetts did not tells me that this was never about ideology at all, it was about personalities and resentment of the fact that a non-party machine vetted candidate won the nomination.