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Conservative authors are having meltdowns watching Donald Trump take over the GOP

By Jeff Stein

Erick Erickson helped lead the conservative revolt against Obamacare, was editor in chief of RedState.com, and recently launched a right-wing news site called the Resurgent.

But on Tuesday night, the second of the Republican National Convention, Erickson wasn’t talking up the Republican Party or its nominee. Instead, like dozens of other conservative writers, he sent dozens of tweets mocking Donald Trump and blasting the Republicans for letting Trump conquer the party:

Republican politicians have largely come around to support Trump, even if they opposed him during the primary. That was illustrated tonight by speeches from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who argued that it was important to support Trump in order to defeat Hillary Clinton.

But many top conservative writers and intellectuals have continued to resist Trump. If their reactions to the events tonight are any indication, they’ll continue to do so — regardless of what happens during the rest of the convention or leading up till Election Day.

Even as GOP politicians cave, leading conservative writers continue to oppose Trump

Of course, there are some corners of the internet where writers do voice their support for Trump, like Breitbart and the American Spectator.

But the writers at the leading conservative publications — National Review, Commentary, the Weekly Standard, the American Conservative — have continued to treat Trump as a scourge on the Republican Party. (Maybe that’s in part because conservative writers don’t need Trump voters to keep their jobs, whereas conservative politicians do.)

The conservative magazine National Review proved one of Trump’s fiercest critics during the primary, at one point publishing an entire issue with 23 different essays devoted to attacking his candidacy. But it was still a sight to see the publication’s editors and leading writers spending the second night of the convention torching the party and its nominee:

It was hard to find the leader of a conservative publication who did not strongly attack the Republican nominee tonight. Just look at the tweets from John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary; Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon; Ben Domenech, publisher of the Federalist; and Ben Shapiro, editor in chief of DailyWire.com ... though the list could go on:

Unsurprisingly, moderate conservatives — like the Atlantic’s David Frum, Business Insider’s Josh Barro, and the New York Times’s Ross Douthat — were also aghast at the spectacle tonight:

Not to be outdone, more libertarian-leaning conservative writers also took whacks at Trump:

Liberals might look at Republican politicians and argue that the party has caved with astonishing speed to an authoritarian demagogue. But for what it’s worth, leading conservative writers are still making their opposition to Trump clear, one angry tweet at a time.

The political science that predicted Trump's rise

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Republican National Convention 2016: news and updates

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