“Politicians will always disappoint you.”

Apparently National Review is getting a lot of criticism for their Against Trump symposium. Jonah Goldberg defends National Review:

let me just say up front that rather than this being a low point or an epic fail or a betrayal, this is in fact one of National Review’s finest moments. If it costs us subscribers, or readers, or advertisers (all of which I doubt), so be it. What is it the Marines say? “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Well, such losses to National Review would be like dross being skimmed off freshly forged steel.

...When Donald Trump signed that pledge to support the GOP nominee a few months ago, scads of people asked whether I would do likewise. Can they really not see the category error here? My job -- our job -- is to write and say the truth as I see it.

...There are, in fact, many establishments. One of them -- the one Sarah Palin and many others claim is the most pernicious -- is rallying to Donald Trump. The GOP-consultant and K-Street crowd is coming around to him, just like the crony-capitalist ethanol lobby in Iowa is coming around.

...The Republican party is in the election-winning business first and foremost. And that’s largely as it should be. That’s partly why former National Review publisher, the late, great Bill Rusher always used to tell the new hires at NR to be on guard: “Politicians will always disappoint you.”

The reason politicians will disappoint principled conservatives -- and, for that matter, principled liberals and libertarians -- is that there is always an inherent tradeoff between the purity of principle and the necessities of electoral politics and the limitations of what can be done via government action. National Review has always recognized this tension, which is immortalized in the rule of thumb that we should support “the most conservative candidate electable.”

...Ted Cruz isn’t my first choice, mostly because I think he will have problems getting elected (though claims he’s unelectable go too far). I’d rather Rubio or Christie. In a two-man race of Cruz vs. Trump, however, it’s no contest. The whole point of trying to elect the most conservative candidate possible is premised on the idea that one is choosing among conservatives in the first place. Going by record and evidence, in that two-candidate sample, there’s only one conservative to pick.

Read more here.