Last Wednesday, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author George Will, who has been espousing the virtues of conservatism for decades and joined the GOP in 1964, slammed Donald Trump in an op-ed in The Washington Post, writing:
He should be taunted into putting his meager campaign funds where his ample mouth is. Every dime or day he squanders on those states will contribute to a redemptive outcome, a defeat so humiliating — so continental — that even Republicans will be edified by it … Events already have called his bluff about funding himself and thereby being uniquely his own man. His wealth is insufficient. Only he knows what he is hiding by being the first presidential nominee in two generations not to release his tax returns.
On Friday, Will told PJ Media at a Federalist Society luncheon that he was leaving the GOP and registering as unaffiliated. His message to GOP voters? “Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House.” During his speech at the luncheon, Will asserted, “This is not my party,” adding that a “President Trump” with “no opposition” from a Republican-led Congress would be worse than a Hillary Clinton presidency with a Republican-led Congress. When asked how a Trump loss would affect the Supreme Court, Will responded, “I’m also concerned with the fact that I do not really believe Republicans think clearly enough about what they really want in judges. Republicans have given us Earl Warren, Brennan, John Paul Stevens, Burger, who was kind of mediocre, Blackmun. Having a Republican president is not an answer in itself,.”
On Sunday, speaking on Fox News Sunday, Will reiterated why he left the GOP, and made it abundantly clear when Chris Wallace asked him why:
I left it for the same reason I joined it in 1964 when I voted for Barry Goldwater. Because I was a conservative. I leave for the same reason, I’m a conservative. To give you a time line, shortly after Trump became the presumptive nominee, he had a summit meeting with Paul Ryan where they stressed their common principles and their vast shared ground, which is much more important than their differences.
I thought that was puzzling doubly so because Paul Ryan still didn’t endorse him. After Trump went after the Mexican judge from northern Indiana, then Paul Ryan endorsed him. I decided that, in fact, this is not my party anymore. I changed my registration to unaffiliated 23 days ago. I hardly made an announcement. I just mentioned this in a meeting with the Federalist Society. The long and the short of it is, as Ronald Reagan said when he changed his registration, I did not leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left me.
“The long and the short of it is, as Ronald Reagan said when he changed his registration, I did not leave the Democratic party, the Democratic party left me.”
George Will
Wallace then posted onscreen Trump’s reply, which was truly amusing, as the candidate who only recently decided he was a conservative somehow twisted himself into a pretzel to insist that the lifetime conservative Will had “lost his way”:
Will responded caustically, “He has an advantage on me because he can say everything he knows about any subject in 140 characters and I can’t.”