When National Review unveiled its “Against Trump" issue on January 21, Jeb Bush celebrated the arrival of reinforcements. "Welcome to the fight, all. Trump is not a conservative," he tweeted.
It was an odd sentiment. National Review writers have been among the most outspoken critics of Donald Trump. Last fall, Rich Lowry, the magazine's editor, wrote along with senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru that Trump "would be a disastrous champion for conservatives." Last summer, Charles Cooke wrote of the "Trump Virus." Jonah Goldberg was criticizing the real estate mogul long before Trump announced his candidacy and has written enough about Trump to fill a small book. And Kevin Williamson has written a small book: The Case Against Trump. No one who has casually flipped through a National Review over the past several months or spent thirty seconds on its website would think to welcome the magazine to the fight against Trump.
If Bush's tweet was ignorant, it was also ironic. In the "fight" between Donald Trump and conservatism, Trump has had few better allies than Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Bush's candidacy. There will be plenty of blame to go around if Trump ends up as the Republican nominee, but Right to Rise will have earned a prominent chapter in those histories: cable and network television gave Trump endless hours of free publicity; influential conservative voices explained away his liberalism, excused his excesses, and legitimized his crazy; and Right to Rise, like an all-pro right guard, helped clear a path for Trump by blocking several of his would-be tacklers, in particular Marco Rubio.
This was no accident. It was the plan.
"If other campaigns wish that we're going to uncork money on Donald Trump, they'll be disappointed," Mike Murphy, chief strategist of Right to Rise, told the Washington Post in August. "Trump is, frankly, other people's problem." In an October interview with Bloomberg, he said: "I'd love a two-way race with Trump at the end."