In an editorial in the print edition of Reason, Matt Welch takes me to task for “celebrating” the candidacy of Donald Trump, who he calls a “false prophet of anti-interventionism.” Reason’s editor cites one of my more hopeful predictions about the beneficial consequences of the Trump Effect on American politics:
“’If Trump gets the Republican nomination the neocons are through as a viable political force on the Right,’ Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo enthused at the end of February. ‘And if Trump actually wins the White House, the military-industrial complex is finished, along with the globalists who dominate foreign policy circles in Washington.’"
Welch goes on to cite similar expressions of deep satisfaction at the sight of the neocons’ hysterical panic coming from former Reagan administration budget director David Stockman and my old friend Pat Buchanan. And he even professes to see how “it’s not hard to see how the paleo crowd wound up here,” pointing to Trump’s evisceration of the Brothers Bush and his delightfully true description of how George W. Bush and his neocon advisors lied us into war. And then there’s this:
“Foreign policy, militarism, and even tear-jerking paeans to politicians who govern during crises – in other words, about 90 percent of the content at the 2004 Republican National Convention – were no longer safe political spaces for the GOP. Donald Trump is taking a battering ram to one of the Republican Party’s core identities, and not a moment too soon.”
Read the entire article
