Max Boot once felt "incredulous that anyone could possibly compare Reagan to Trump"; he now sees "startling similarities."
For Nor many people, the 2016 election was a catastrophe. For Max Boot, it was a betrayal. He'd been a movement conservative: a loud voice for the Iraq War, an editor of The Weekly Standard, and an adviser to the campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio. Boot took heart when Republicans initially closed ranks against Donald Trump's candidacy.
Trump is "a madman who must be stopped," Bobby Jindal said. "The man is utterly amoral," Ted Cruz agreed.
Rubio called him "the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the Presidency." For Rick Perry, he was "a cancer on conservatism." Then, one by one, they all endorsed him, and he won.
Trump's election shook Boot's worldview. Was this what Republicanism was about? Had Boot been deluded the whole time? He wrote a book, "The Corrosion of Conservatism" (2018), about his breakup with the G.O.P. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, he could now admit, made good points. His advocacy of the war in Iraq had been a "big mistake," and he felt guilt over "all the lives lost." Boot was like a confused driver who had arrived at an unintended destination and wondered where he'd missed the off-ramp.
When was the right moment to have left the Republican Party? For many anti-Trump conservatives, the lodestar remains Ronald Reagan.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”