National Review readers already know this, but now the Washington Post has caught on. Here comes Trump, on Hillary’s left flank:
EUGENE, Ore. — At a campaign rally here in one of the most liberal towns in America, Donald Trump offered praise for an unusual party: avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.
“Now, I’m no fan of Bernie Sanders, but he is 100 percent right,” Trump told a crowd here this weekend. “He is 100 percent right: Hillary Clinton is totally controlled by the people that put up her money. She’s totally controlled by Wall Street.”
That’s not the only area where the presumptive Republican nominee sounds like Sanders, who is challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination. On a series of issues, including free trade and foreign military intervention, Trump is effectively running to the left not only of his own party but also of Clinton
You don’t say. But in this new reality, saying that Trump is running left is completely irrelevant to his fans. There was a time — not long ago — when an entire avalanche of outrage would fall down on the candidate who deviated the least bit from conservative orthodoxy. Yet now many of the people who used to so vigilantly police conservatism, calling out RINOs with glee, are Trump’s chief cheerleaders.
So now we have to go back to basics — explaining how free trade and free markets are in fact the best engine for human flourishing and explaining why stable foreign alliances and a forward-deployed military prevent the power vacuums that our enemies so eagerly exploit. But in making that case, America’s most conservative party will have a formidable foe — its own nominee for the highest office in the land.