Then there are the Trumpists — populist and nationalist
Republicans (like White House senior counselor Stephen Bannon) who blend a mania for cutting taxes and government programs with an enthusiasm for trade tariffs, border walls, and immigration bans from majority-Muslim countries. This GOP also promises to increase defense spending, but not to contribute to the leadership of anything. It advocates putting "America first," by which it means that the United States should do whatever it wants anywhere it wants, including, perhaps, "taking the oil" from Iraq, backing away from our commitments to NATO, and turning a blind eye to Vladimir Putin's aggression in Eastern Europe. This writer hasn't the foggiest notion about what is a "Trumpist". No other comment necessary.
The most intellectually formidable member of this last group is arguably Michael Anton
In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Anton wrote a series of essays under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus in which he made a breathtakingly radical case for supporting Trump's campaign. He did so not in a Bannonite idiom of right-wing tabloid populism but instead in the high-minded, morally insistent style favored by those decisively influenced by Harry Jaffa,
Michael Anton so believed in Trump that he deemed to prove it by writing about it using a pseudonym. High-minded morally insistent style, my ass, he's just another GOP Establishment elite who was afraid to burn his bridges with access to political power should Trump inexplicably win the election.
Michael Anton so believed in Trump that he deemed to prove it by writing about it using a pseudonym. High-minded morally insistent style, my ass, he's just another GOP Establishment elite who was afraid to burn his bridges with access to political power should Trump inexplicably win the election.
Uhm ... he's not the only one using a pseudonym.
What makes him any worse than me or you or anybody else on the Internet?