This happened on Monday, and it was a radio hit Marco Rubio did on the Mike Gallagher Show. The clip goes about four and a half minutes and it’s a pretty damning indictment of Trump starting with the Corey Lewandowski-Michelle Fields mess and going forward with the oft-mentioned #NeverTrump movement and his potential membership in it.
And it’s Rubio’s contention that if the conservatives who make up the bulk of the Republican Party’s voters allow Donald Trump to get the nomination, there will be a major wakeup call when they find out what they’ve bought.
That language might be a bit overwrought, but on the other hand Rubio and Ted Cruz have taken Trump to task in each of the last three debates for his lack of fealty to, or even knowledge of, the conservative positions on major issues. It’s worth debating with respect to some of them whether Trump represents an opportunity to revisit some of those standards to see if they need updating, but then again what has Trump done to present a cogent plan for resolving them that his contemporaries or forebears haven’t already brought to the table?
It’s Rubio’s contention that Trump isn’t a conservative, and that he’s not worthy of putting in charge of protecting a constitutional republic. Rubio might be right. But if it comes down to Trump and Hillary, is Rubio willing to go full #NeverTrump and support a conservative jailbreak from the GOP? And is that a good idea?
What he says here about a “reckoning” for pro-Trump conservatives is something I hear all the time from righties on social media, incidentally. “We’re making a list!” they cry, naming all of the so-called movement conservatives who have embraced their inner nationalist this year and clambered aboard the Trump train. Fantasies of recriminations against the traitors will keep you warm on those cold, solitary nights in the wilderness, but are they realistic?