We commented yesterday at the bad timing involved in National Review's 22-conservative hit piece on Donald Trump, and we stand by what we wrote. Trump may in fact be a bad idea but he has done the party a vast favor by raising issues wealthy donors don't want raised: illegal immigration, Muslim refugees, and the refusal to put our national interests first.
On the other hand, NR raises legitimate questions about the Trump candidacy. If you have an interest in what NR's editor and publisher were thinking in putting together the issue, see an interview with NR editor Rich Lowry in The Washington Post.
Conservative heavyweights who contributed to the anti-Trump NR issue includes Thomas Sowell, William Kristol, Glenn Beck, Mona Charen, Ben Domenech, Erick Erickson, Steven Hayward, Yuval Levin, Dana Loesch, Andrew C. McCarthy, Michael Medved, Edwin Meese III, Michael B. Mukasey, John Podhoretz, and Cal Thomas. Unlisted are seven others less well-known to me.
A "phantom" contributor is NR founder William F. Buckley, Jr. - long-dead of course. NR reruns something he wrote years ago about distrusting demagogues, which Trump is, a bit.
Implicitly, I believe NR did Sen. Ted Cruz - the other "outsider" candidate still in contention - a favor. I almost characterized it as "an enormous favor" and pulled up short, perhaps few Trump supporters read NR.
