National Review has served as the dictionary for what conservative means since founding in 1955. John Birch Society members were not conservatives said the magazine. Neither was Nelson Rockefeller and "Rockefeller Republicans." But that is where the confusion occurs also. In operating as dictionary for what conservatism was they also operated as gate-keepers for who could be a Republican. The Birchers and Rocky were expelled from the party, essentially. What of Pat Buchanan? William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote that he could not defend Buchanan, Nixon speech writer and two-time Republican presidential candidate, against charges of anti-semitism and Buchanan all but disappeared both as a conservative and a Republican spokesman. What say they then about Sarah Palin, a Republican vice presidential nominee who just gave an anti-semitic speech for Trump? If National Review is against Trump as inauthentically conservative are they against Palin for anti-semitism as they were Buchanan and the Birchers? Are they against Trump supporters like Phyllis Schlafly and...What's her name? The blonde with the long neck? Shit, I forgot...Is National Review against Trump supporters and if so on what basis?
It's complicated, the GOP is so fractured, and I have read some people write that they are skeptical of National Review's chances at stopping Trump. Even if National Review is still a dictionary, Trump is not in that dictionary. Defining him out as a conservative doesn't define what he is. We're all looking in our dictionaries, looking up Jacksonian, populist, "Know Nothing," paleoconservative, fascist. We're looking at our atlases also and Trump cuts diagonally across the right-left maps, those road signs with arrows don't point directly toward or away from him. And we've consulted our color guides. He's not blue. Is he red or some other color altogether? I don't know.
He is Republican, whatever the definition of that is.
