The National Review, the very legacy of William F. Buckley, has put out two hard-hitting pieces regarding the candidacy and possible nomination of Donald J. Trump as the Republican choice for president. While neither piece is going to be very persuasive to the crowd of Trump bandwagoners both among the populace and the media, they are nonetheless a line in the sand regarding unprincipled Republicanism and Conservatism. It is a line where many of us on the Right will make our stand, not because we are part of some great Establishment or RINOs, but because we believe in what we stand for.

In the movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” the villain, Bane, tells Batman that he merely adopted the Darkness, while Bane himself was born in it. This holds true for Trump, who has adopted the mantle of conservatism while many of us have been fighting under it for years, if not our whole lives. We have, time and again, fought for what we believe in, pushed candidates who hold the beliefs we do, vetted for them, and even when we lost, we felt accomplished for having done the right thing.

The campaign of Donald J. Trump is a leviathan that needs to be eradicated. It is a nomination that cannot and should not happen, if we are to hold ourselves up as any sort of conservative. We have every right to be angry with Washington D.C., and every right to demand secured borders, but we are not guaranteed that from a man who negotiates his way into power in the business world. Negotiation involves compromise, and soon enough, many of his supporters may come to realize his positions on a wall, freezing Muslim immigration, and competing against China are not final positions, but starting ones.

There is very little to feel accomplished about in voting for Donald Trump. There is very little that feels right about supporting a man whose positions for decades have been anathema to what being a Republican, and more importantly a conservative. It is telling how many conservatives on that list are willing to forgo the benefits of the legions of Trump supporters praising them in an effort to stand up for principle, while other prominent conservatives have implemented the candidacy of Donald Trump into their business strategy. Where we should have the long-standing fighters for the movement seeing what Donald J. Trump has been and will be and saying “No!” to him, we see or hear them outright defending or even openly supporting the man because of what it means in terms of viewership, readership, and listenership.

This is not right. It is not fair to the movement many of these leaders helped form into an elite force of ideology. Trump has openly supported growth in government power, government spending, the mingling of government and business, the rights of abortion, and so many other positions that in any other election year would disqualify him from seeking a Republican nomination for dogcatcher, much less president of these United States. However, a combination of star power, xenophobia, and outright hatred of the government has led to this monstrosity of a campaign that has up-ended every expectation we had for a solid race.