National Review is devoting
next month's issue to attacking Donald Trump because "we're doing what we need to do to stay true to our principals," columnist Andrew McCarthy told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
"National Review is a beacon of the leadership of the conservative movement — and part of our role is to keep the Republican establishment honest," McCarthy, one of 22 prominent conservatives who contributed essays to the Feb. 15 issue, told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner.
"We fought this way and fought for this movement for over half a century, and the thought that we would now abandon everything that we've ever stood for in order to hand over the leadership of our movement to somebody who's not a part of the movement, who's actually spent a professional lifetime mainly working against the movement, is just absurd."
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He told Berliner that the nomination process is still in its early stages for voters to be dead-set on choosing Trump and that he is doing well because conservatives have not been effective in convincing Americans that conservatism is best for the country.
"This is what the process is about: It's about actually scrutinizing people's records — not what they say they're going to do, but what we can judge that they will do on the basis of what they have done," McCarthy said. "I'd say we're still early on.
"This is the same country that's elected Barack Obama twice, against the country's interests," he later added. "So, you could probably say for our part that maybe we haven't made our case effectively enough.
"The way to make an effective case is to stay true to what your true principals are — and that's what we're trying to do here."
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