David Somebody thinks he has to explain why he's not running for president

And you thought Trump was a narcissist.

Here.

Libertarian Charles Murray warns the world he's writing a book agreeing with Trumpism, but Trump's still not fit to be president

The response to Murray's article at National Review tells the true state of libertarianism today, and everyday.

With 3842 comments as of this moment, the top comment gets 44 up-votes, indicating an agreement rate of 1.1%.

Libertarians can't agree about their own movement let alone about the country. Meanwhile 11.5 million Republican primary voters agree with Donald Trump.

Here's Murray:

We Establishmentarians, therefore, should all go on the record about our view of Donald Trump. That includes me. I have done so in 140-character tweets, but it’s time to elaborate. Apart from that, I have a specific need to go on the record: While I am already on record with my sympathy for the grievances that energize many of Trump’s supporters, I am thinking about writing a book that is even more explicitly sympathetic with those grievances. I want to forestall any suspicion — especially if Trump is elected — that writing in sympathy with some of the content of Trumpism indicates any form of sucking up to Trump the man.

The perverse Kevin Williamson says presidents aren't in charge of the economy after Hillary says she'll put Bill in charge

Here.

Which of course means he has to discredit Reagan's economic achievement (by never mentioning it), which came because Reagan reduced the top bracket from 70% to 50% and for a brief shining moment to 28%.

Dennis Prager denies we were founded as a nation, remains ignorant of the first line of the Declaration of Independence

Where else? In National Review here:

But America was founded to be an idea, not another country. As Margaret Thatcher put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

This, of course, couldn't be more wrong, the crackpot idea of libertarians everywhere, not the least of which has been Charles Murray ("four million people founded a new nation from scratch"), offended as they are by the Declaration's opening separate but equal clause:

When . . . it becomes necessary for one people . . . to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . ..

Separate. Equal. Under God. America.

Here's a man and his family Kevin Williamson of National Review thinks should just die

And the father just might.

Their story, here.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible."

-- Kevin Williamson, quoted here

Rich Lowry of National Review almost gleefully reports on the death of white America

Please love me, please!

As if the deaths expiate his guilt.

Here, where it's a "health cataclysm", "a slow-motion economic and social meltdown", a veritable expression of "American exceptionalism".

But wait, there's more!

"The white working class is dying from the effects of a long-running alienation from the mainstream of American life", he intones, "but there is no guarantee only one generation will be lost."

He only hopes.

Scott Winship in National Review thinks only 37% can't cover a $400 expense, not 47%

The toxicity of "47" from the 2012 election remains.

Here.

How still over a third is hard put to come up with $400 for an emergency is better news describes the self-satisfactions of elite New York conservatism in the age of Obama, under whom income inequality has reached new heights along with the wonderful expanded safety net including welfare state insurance. Why, the middle class doesn't even need to save 3-months' expenses anymore, he says! Go Hillary.

The essay is otherwise full of cherry-picked dates which make the comparisons nothing more than glazed apples to preserved oranges.

Rush is reading from this right now on air: It must be the OxyContin part that finally ticked Rush off

Materialist Kevin Williamson for National Review, here:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale [Trump] communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

National Review joins Mark Levin in endorsing the guy who's been lying about his real religion

Michigan Republicans boo Romney the "loser", call for his deportation

Byron York reports here:

Trump instinctively sensed that he could bash Romney in Romney's home state with no consequences at all. "This guy Romney came out yesterday," Trump began, which brought on lots and lots of boos. "The hatred he has, the jealousy, the hatred, it's hard to believe."

More boos. "You guys should like him, right?" Trump said. Still more boos.

'Deport Romney!" yelled a man in the crowd.

"Thank you," said Trump.

"Loser," yelled a woman near me.

The anger and frustration did not stop with political figures. A number of people complained to me about conservative media, which they believe hasn't treated Trump fairly. "I'm a National Review reader," said a man who walked up to me during Trump's speech. "I can't even look at the site anymore. It looks like Salon. Nine stories tearing [Trump] apart, man. I don't get it."

National Review's latest contribution to elevating the discussion

John O'Sullivan: Rubio is the poster boy for the liberal immigration policies which Trump launched his campaign to oppose

Green card holder John O'Sullivan at National Review prefers Trump to the ever mendacious Marco Rubio, here:

[N]one of the three leading Republicans have been exactly models of truth-telling in this campaign. So the relevant question then becomes “Compared with whom?” Let’s compare Trump’s boastful and evasive untruths with the very different lies of Marco Rubio on various immigration bills he has tried to sell to conservatives (as detailed by John Fonte on NRO on Wednesday.) These amounted to a long campaign of deliberate mendacity intended to deceive allies on a matter of the greatest public interest so that they would unknowingly support what they really oppose.

O'Sullivan correctly acknowledges that Trump's is a non-ideological conservatism which is widely shared among Americans:

Conservatives in practice accept that their realism about human nature shouldn’t (or can’t) stop at the door of the voting booth. What there is of Trump’s conservatism seems to be of that kind. And that seems also to be true of “ordinary” conservatives outside Washington, as several writers such as Rod Dreher have pointed out. They tend not to have highly consistent ideologies but to tolerate contradictions within a broadly conservative outlook. One very likely effect of a GOP conservatism influenced by Trumpery, therefore, is that it will remain conservative but in a less consistently ideological way. It is likely to be more spasmodically interventionist in economic policy, more concerned with directly protecting the interests of Americans (and especially the voting groups who have surged up to back Trump), more anxious about how to solve the problems identified by Charles Murray in Fishtown without spending too much more on them, more protective of entitlements, and more loudly patriotic in general. As a fully paid-up Thatcherite, I will find a lot of this irksome and mistaken. It will remind me of the pre-Thatcher Tory party and its bumbling resistance to economic rationality. And I’m beginning to feel grouchily that I want to hear a little less about American exceptionalism until the U.S. manages not to lose a war. 

Rush Limbaugh oversleeps and asks "Where's the conservatism?" when it's wherever Trump holds a rally

Here, today:

But there are a lot of people who have been donating to Republicans, and a lot of people who think they've been giving money to conservatives and conservative causes, and they've started asking themselves, what are they getting for it? Where is all this conservatism? People solicit money in Washington to keep conservatism alive, in Washington, in the Republican Party. "We're the guys that can do it. We have the contacts. We help 'em write policy. We help 'em understand policy." Great, great, that's fabulous, but where is it, a lot of people are asking.

Where is all the conservatism? Is it on Fox News? Is it National Review? Is it over at the American Spectator? Where is it? It isn't in the Republican Party. That is for darn sure, and so many people are livid about that. I'm talking about the party establishment. Yes, Ted Cruz. Look, what more do you want me to say? Ted Cruz is the closest living thing to Ronald Reagan we're ever gonna have in our lifetimes. I don't know what more I can say about Ted Cruz.

Trump was right: While solicitor general of Texas Ted Cruz wrote on behalf of John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court

You know, on behalf of the guy who TWICE had the chance to deep six Obamacare, but didn't.

Here, in National Review, July 20, 2005.

Do you think National Review's candidate is Marco Rubio or what?

Headlines about Marco so far today at The Corner are 50% of the fourteen since the debate began last night at 8:00 PM (the other 50% are mostly about Hillary):

"Rubio Better Buckle His Chin Strap" 

"Rubio vs. Christie and Bush on Life" 

"Rubio's Tough Night"

"On Marco Rubio and Chris Christie's Brutal Exchange" 

"Christie Bests Rubio in GOP debate while Cruz and Trump Coast" 

"How Much of a Stumble?" 

"What a Bad Debate Night Means for Marco Rubio". 

Sam Clovis, chief policy adviser to Donald Trump, calls himself a Russell Kirk conservative

Just now on the Laura Ingraham show.

Sam Clovis said as much on Anderson Cooper on January 22nd here, defending Trump against National Review's anti-Trump issue.

Former editor of National Review thinks Ted Cruz is the leader of the Tea Party: Sarah Palin would beg to differ

Here:

'Mr. Obama’s conservative opponents, on the other hand, have responded to his bold assertion of executive prerogative in two quite different ways. Some cite it as an argument for stronger checks on presidential power; others plainly believe that this unchecked power would be a fine thing if only it were exercised in pursuit of their interests.

'The first of those reactions produced the Tea Party movement, which advocated fiscal discipline, limited government and fidelity to the Constitution. Half of it joined the conservative wing of the GOP and fought elections with mixed success; the other half became an independent conservative faction out of frustration with a Republican leadership they believe has betrayed them. Many Tea Partiers now tell pollsters that they are “independents.” But the obvious leader of the entire movement is Sen. Ted Cruz.'

The Hegelian dialectic was never so useful for so little.

Trump's attacks on Cruz in December struck Rush Limbaugh as "Democrat", but we had narry a word today criticizing National Review's cooperation with Politico against Trump

Here was Limbaugh in mid-December:

'But even people who are not particularly aligned with Cruz on the right have gotta be curious about this because this is no different than what the media would say about Ted Cruz.  This is no different than what the Democrat Party would say.  I mean, this is what the Republican establishment would say, for crying out loud.  I mean, this is akin to saying, "I'm the guy who can cross the aisle and work with the other side."  That hasn't been the way Trump has come off up 'til now.  He's not positioned that way.'

National Review provided its anti-Trump issue in advance to Politico, for whom Rich Lowry has written a regular column for many years.

So who's crossing the aisle now to work with the opposition? Who's adopting the methods of the left?

Remember Republican Lowell Weicker losing to Democrat Joe Lieberman in 1988 because of National Review's overt support of Lieberman?

Remember Jeffrey Hart et al. voting for Obama?

Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly have both joined Laura Ingraham on her show so far today addressing the excommunication of Donald Trump by National Review

Phyllis Schlafly said she's never recognized National Review's authority on conservatism.

She pointed out that the magazine was never any help in her long battle to stop the Equal Rights Amendment.

And she also pointed out that William F. Buckley Jr. was for giving the Panama Canal to Panama, which most conservatives of the time opposed. 

Trump gets 2.5 times the circulation of NR in Drudge Super Poll same day magazine launches anti-Trump issue

National Review's 2012 circulation was reportedly 166,755.