Hindsight is 20/20, but it was not hard to foresee that the Left would be gunning for Donald Trump, that it wouldn’t matter whether the nominees or the policies would be good or bad, lawful or lawless; that the goal would be to delegitimize him, humiliate him, crush him, using any weapon available.  But the White House didn’t see this — or did, and didn’t care. The order should have been crafted with care and precision, the relevant officials properly informed and instructed, an airtight legal defense prepared — but none of these things happened. Was this incompetence or recklessness? There is no third option.

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There has been an unwavering level of praise for President Trump coming from the vast majority on the right since he announced that Neil Gorsuch was his nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. It was a great pick, one that is perfect when the overall strategy of the nomination and confirmation process are taken into account. With that said, the mounds of platitudes being lobbed at Trump are as meaningless as the unjustified attacks hurled at him from the left if this is the end of his embrace of Constitutional conservatism and originalism.

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This philosophy didn’t need Donald Trump to elevate it into our politics. It has always been there; it’s called conservatism. Pretending that Trump’s European-style nationalism [i.e. National Socialism] can be a vessel for American nationalism risks abandoning the only vision of American greatness that matters in favor of an alternative that can turn from benign to malignant with shocking speed.