Great, Donald Trump Is a Nationalist

Matthew Sheffield, writing at theamericanconservative.com, explains the success of Donald Trump. Mr. Sheffield tells readers, “The American Right has become willfully disengaged from its fellow citizens.”

One of the most persistent right-wing claims against Trump has been that he is better described as a nationalist than a conservative. The accusation has no power against him, however, since he has freely admitted to it, knowing as he did that the majority of Republican voters and the nation as a whole have never been particularly interested in constitutional conservatism. The data points on this subject have been out there for years, but since most conservative political operatives have almost no grasp of political science, none of them seems to have been aware of this.

But what of Trump’s famously mercurial and vociferous temperament? Surely that sets him apart from his most ardent opponents. Well, not all of them. Take radio host Glenn Beck, for instance.

The #NeverTrumpers should never have allowed Beck within a hundred miles of National Review’s “Against Trump” issue. And yet there he was, despite his past claims that demonic forces were trying to keep his Blaze television channel off America’s cable systems, that President Obama would soon begin putting conservatives into concentration camps, and that God had “ordained” Ted Cruz to become the president.