RNC Drops Conservative Magazine As Debate Sponsor After Anti-Trump Issue

Trump himself even cited Buckley as one of the proud conservatives to come from NY during the last Republican debate, in response to an attack from Senator Ted Cruz over his “New York values”.

National Review wasn’t surprised by this decision and publisher Jack Fowler wrote on a blog Thursday night the magazine’s position on the situation.

“I just think it was the wrong thing to do”, the former Florida governor said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom”.

The National Review’s editors concluded that Trump is exploiting the legitimate anxieties and anger of the GOP base.

NBC reported that Mr Trump, campaigning in Las Vegas, responded immediately to the attack from the magazine. Its flap with Trump is the latest example of how the billionaire’s prospective Republican nomination has divided conservatives who dominate the party.

With Iowa to kick off the Republican search for a presidential candidate with its February 1 caucuses, Trump and his aides reacted with scorn to the editorial in National Review, which was signed by 22 prominent conservative intellectuals.

He said he won’t be voting for Trump in the primary, though he confessed that he would vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton in a general election.

“And then they’re going to make cars, and they’re going to sell them to us, no tax, just bring them across the border, might as well have the illegals driving the vehicle, because you can get it inexpensively”, Trump taunts.

The magazine blasted Trump as clueless on foreign policy – inconsistent on how he would fight the terror group ISIS and too accepting of praise from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Can’t have a debate partner for or against any candidate”, said Sean Spicer. “Small price to pay for speaking the truth about The Donald”, said Fowler, according to the same source.

“He pledges to build a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for it. We need more fencing at the border, but the promise to make Mexico pay for it is silly bluster”.

“The late, great, William F. Buckley would be ashamed of what had happened to his prize, the dying National Review!” he tweeted.

“The National Review is a dying paper; its circulation is way down”, he told reporters. The issue, its cover emblazoned with the words “Against Trump”, features a host of essays on why the real-estate mogul shouldn’t be the Republican nominee, or president.

“Donald Trump needs more time and more testing of his new conservative convictions”, he wrote.

The NR editorial may be the most clear-headed case thus far in the 2016 campaign for the survival of mainstream conservatism against the populist onslaught of Trump (and Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina, and the Tea Party movement.) It also identifies how Trump is hurting their brand.