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#  Editor’s Pick: Republican Elites Surrender to Trump

January 24 2016

Written by Dana Milbank.

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Late Thursday night, National Review, the storied conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, published an issue denouncing Donald Tr ump.

“Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones,” [the editors wrote](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430137/donald-trump-conservative-movement-menace). “Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.”

Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000. [**View Archive**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/dana-milbank)

The Republican National Committee reacted swiftly — immediately revoking the permission it had given National Review to host a Republican presidential debate next month. “Tonight, a top official with the RNC called me to say that National Review was being disinvited,” [the magazine’s publisher wrote online](http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/430166/houston-we-have-problem). “The reason: Our ‘Against Trump’ editorial.”

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism. *[(Read the rest.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republican-elites-surrender-to-trump/2016/01/22/32d06fee-c10a-11e5-83d4-42e3bceea902_story.html))*

*-cw*

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