What the Hell Happened to Bill Kristol?

[Valin]

Power Line

Steven Hayward

July 15 2021

Greetings from Budapest, where I’ll be hanging out a lot at Cafe Roger Scruton at 10 Zoltan Street over the next several days, and giving a lecture for the Danube Institute next Monday evening on the topic, “What Is Going on in America?” If there are any Power Line readers in Budapest, you may still be able to grab a limited seat for the event here. Otherwise you may run into me at the Cafe.

Lo and behold, when I arrived over here I caught up with the monster hit piece on our friends at the Claremont Institute in The Bulwark: “What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?“, by Laura Field, who hangs her shingle at the Niskanen Institute, which is one clue right there. It is a long, lugubrious piece: settle in with a pot of coffee if you want to try it. Basically the piece is one long attempted syllogism: Claremont people liked and defended Trump; Trump is evil, ergo. . .

(Snip)

So here is a mystery. Is Bill still a conservative? Republicans may be pathetic in many ways, but does he really think today’s Democratic Party is a better guardian of the American tradition of liberty? It boggles the mind to suppose so.

I’d gladly settle for Bill to offer serious new version of where Hayek settled, namely, a Whig account of our political order, though that seems unpromising. Meanwhile, I doubt he’s gaining many new friends on the left while losing so many old friends on the right.

(Snip)