IN AT least one sense, Donald Trump’s rise is terrific news for principled conservatives. Right-wingers have long endured allegations that many of their cherished ideas—promoting free markets or seeking to devolve power away from Washington—are cover for a cruder, nastier agenda. However unfairly, when American conservatives promote individual liberty and limited government, they are charged by critics with appealing to the worst, I-got-mine instincts of their supporters. When Republicans suggest that government safety-nets will have to be trimmed back before they grow unaffordable, Democrats and their allies do not see hard-headed prudence. Instead conservatives are accused of having, or pandering to, hard hearts.
Here is the good news for conservatives. Mr Trump shows that their principles and heartlessness are not the same thing. The presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign fairly drips with nastiness, but is strikingly uninterested in limiting the powers or costs of government. Short of designing himself a uniform involving ermine and red velvet, he could hardly make it clearer that he dreams of reigning over, rather than governing,...Continue reading
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