Once Trump had neutralized the video and stabilized his position, he fired a torrent of high-explosive ordnance on legal subjects: Mrs. Clinton’s ignoring a congressional subpoena and deleting 33,000 emails, the sale of government favors by both Clintons, the sleazy conduct of the Clinton Foundation, her likely perjury about the emails in particular (as the director of the FBI strongly implied), and her failure to answer 600 requests for help from the ambassador in Libya, whom Al Quaeda murdered eventually, while Secretary of State Clinton slept. The point to which this campaign was always destined was finally reached: the Democrats had thrown the kitchen sink at Trump the woman-hating, Muslim and Mexican-baiting egotist vulgarian, and he had replied to Clinton the crook, perjurer, enabler of the degrading philandering of her husband, steeped to her eyeballs in the corruption and incompetence of the last 20 years of failed American government. There is more truth to Trump’s charges than to Clinton’s, and Trump could generally answer her charges and she did not really respond to his. They recurred throughout the night and she had no serious refutation of the fact that if American prosecutors showed their customary ferocity, she was cooked. The nature of the Clinton campaign, based entirely on attacking Trump, exposes its inability to try to justify Mrs. Clinton’s record or argue for the reelection of the Democrats. In the New York Sun’s Seth Lipsky’s words, It is “the bonfire of the hypocrisies.”
If Trump can spend the last month of the campaign showing some dignity as he focuses on policy issues and regular but not excessive references to his theory that Clinton is running for the White House to avoid the jail house, he can still win. The venomous tone of the campaign among the entourages is more disturbing than the mud-slinging between the candidates. There is after all, plenty of mud to sling, both ways. The self-justification of some of the intellectual conservatives who have defected to Clinton will cause durable fissures. In this election, Trump, though a moderate, and despite his stylistic lapses, which need hardly at this stage be highlighted, is the only quasi-conservative there is, and Clinton, though she is a capable and formidable woman, will flat-line the economy buying votes for the public sector and will enthrone political correctness. Even in the debate on Sunday when prodded, she declined to mention Islamist terror. The largely neo-conservative intellectual right has led even the Clintonians and defecting traditional conservatives in denouncing Trump as a primeval, knuckle-dragging monster, repulsive in every detail. As they toil for their ancient Clinton foes, they think, like many French World War II collaborators with the Nazis did, that they are saving the integrity of their cause, thoughtful conservatism in this case. They bewail the acceptance of Trump by other, allegedly less principled conservatives.
They have read themselves into oblivion. Because Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol came quickly and cogently from the soft left to the Reagan right, where they were graciously received, and blended well with the traditional conservatives like Bill Buckley and even the paleo-conservatives like Pat Buchanan, they earned some of the stardom of the great Reagan victories. Whichever party wins this election, the heirs of the Reagan intellectual right who have noisily endorsed Hillary as the lesser of evils will be wearing sackcloth and ashes and speaking inaudibly in the wilderness for a long time. To the Democrats they are useful idiots; to the Republicans, they are deserters in battle, turncoats. As Laura Ingraham said after the debate on Sunday, “They will go back to their think tanks and devise policies that will never be enacted unless those of us who are trying to defeat Hillary Clinton are successful.” Those of the conservative intellectual right who have rallied to Trump, with reservations noted, and those who have sat it out discreetly, will have the task of rebuilding the intellectual right. It will not be easy under either scenario.
It is good to remember that Donald Trump is not a monster and Hillary Clinton is not a witch, and both surely would be better than the last two presidents, who by their failures have brought on this very nasty campaign. The election is now a bouncing (American) football and anything could happen.
This work is based on an article written for the National Review Online
