Gut check...

National Review’s gut check: Can we tolerate Trump?

The conservative magazine struggles over how to cover a Republican it worked against. 

By Hadas Gold

After failing to stop Donald Trump, National Review is debating its next move: leave its opposition in the past or go on a crusade against conservatives who get in line behind a Republican the magazine detests.

It’s a decision wracking not only many of the writers at National Review but the conservative intelligentsia as well. And it signals that the wounds of the Republican civil war may nag the party well beyond November, whether Trump wins or not.

"Among many of the conservative writers and intellectuals I know who haven't capitulated to Trump, the debate boils down to whether we should wash our hands of the whole election, or continue to criticize Trump to the very end to uphold our principles and remind politicians that they'll be on-the-record caving to Trumpism,” said National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg, cautioning that he wasn’t speaking necessarily for all of the magazine’s writers.

Avoiding the Republican nominee isn’t an entirely new situation for National Review. The magazine has since its founding in 1955, famously declined to endorse any candidate in the general election several times. In 1960 for example, the magazine declined to endorse Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy, instead abstaining and washing its hands of the election. National Review recently reposted that decades-old non-endorsement with a fresh URL: “Donald Trump National Review endorsement”.

“We’ve never officially said ‘Never Trump,’” National Review editor Rich Lowry, who is also a POLITICO contributor, said in an interview. “Some of our people are ‘Never Trump,’ some of our people will vote for him over Hillary (Clinton), and our attitude is, we’ll let the campaign play out. Traditionally, we make our general-election endorsement or non-endorsement late, around October."

"Most of our writers, even the ones who will vote for him, recognize his failings and that he's not a conservative," Lowry added.

In the past, even if they did not initially support the candidate – such as John McCain – Lowry said the Republican candidate for president had at least some recognizable glimmer of conservatism in them. Not so with Trump, Lowry said.

“He has the most tenuous connection to conservatives of any candidate at least since Gerry Ford,” Lowry said.

The Trump campaign has routinely blocked and has no relationship with National Review reporters, who operate completely separately from the opinion columnists of the magazine, especially after the “against Trump” issue. That, one National Review staffer said on the condition of anonymity, has only “hardened the resolve” of some of the editors and “validated their feelings” about Trump and his campaign.

Lowry said he’s made no effort to reach out to the Trump campaign or mend fences.

“It's not that they've offended us or not that we've criticized their people in particular, it's a much bigger, much higher level than that,” Lowry said, explaining why there’s been no effort. “It’s a matter that we don't think he's a conservative. It doesn't matter how nice or not nice they are, that's just the fact, the way it is."

That’s not to say Trump hasn’t reached out to National Review. Last week Goldberg revealed on Fox News that a Trump staffer reached out to the magazine, asking for names of judges Trump should nominate to the Supreme Court. The email was circulated around the staff with the thinking that they might as well try to have some influence on the process.

But Lowry said he never responded to the request from the Trump campaign, despite circulating it among staff.

“It was a pro-forma email sent while the primaries were still ongoing,” Lowry said, noting that he didn’t send in the advice because Ted Cruz, whom National Review did endorse, was still in the race. “That was the extent of it, there hasn’t been any outreach since."

Regardless, one email wasn’t going to change their minds, Goldberg added.

“It was smart of the Trump team to take the temperature of leading conservatives to figure out who to put on that list,” Goldberg said. "But that kind of rudimentary outreach isn't enough to win over a place like National Review. Particularly given that Trump couldn't go 24 hours without signaling that the list was negotiable. Remember: Promising to appoint conservative judges is supposed to be a minimal requirement for a nominee, not a gift."

Even if the magazine did not send Trump recommendations, the Supreme Court list that Trump released was seen as a positive sign within National Review. The night before Trump unveiled his list, a column by Jim Geraghty blasted the candidate for not living up to his promise to do so. Hours later, once it was released, Geraghty skeptically voiced his approval.

“At first glance, these are all names that conservatives would want to see and no names they wouldn’t want to see. With this list, and the faith that Trump will keep his word and nominate justices from this list — cue skeptical laughter — conservatives can point to one genuine gain that a President Trump would deliver,” he wrote.

Lowry said the magazine hasn’t experienced a significant increase or decrease in subscriptions since their “Against Trump” issue. Though they lost a co-sponsorship of a Republican debate because of the issue, Lowry said the relationship with the Republican National Committee is “fine” and that no staffers or columnists have left the magazine as a result.

The magazine’s writers are now grappling, often publicly through their columns, with whether to continue to criticize Trump to the very end, pointing out self-proclaimed conservatives who jumped on the Trump Train, or whether to just let this one go and vote for “None of the Above,” as National Affairs Correspondent John Fund recently wrote:

"When confronted with the option of bad versus worse, (None of the Above) would allow people to say, ‘Give me a better choice.’ Isn’t that one of the things that America’s democracy should be about?”