Historical Note - The Catholic Neocons of the 1990's-early 2000's on Donald J. Trump

Documenting for personal sake Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus (1936-2009), George Weigel, Michael Novak (1933-2017) and William F. Buckley (1925-2008) of the National Review insofar as where they had stood on the topic of Donald Trump.

Father Richard John Neuhaus passed on January 8, 2009. Reflecting on Neuhaus' death in 2021, Fr. Raymond de Souza noted:

Father Richard’s engagement in political activism never led him to messianic politics. He died after Barack Obama’s election but before his inauguration, and long before the current president came down the escalator at Trump Tower. He was suspicious of the messianic dimension of Obama’s candidacy and would have been troubled by those who regarded Donald Trump as having some kind of messianic anointing.

Father Richard would have been dismayed at the apocalyptic tone of politics today. The future of the republic does not hang on a presidential election, let alone a senate election in Georgia. Elections have consequences, sometimes, grave consequences, but electoral politics does not heal a corrupt culture.

“Moral progress is far from being self-evident,” Father Richard wrote. “We should at least be open to the possibility that we are today witnessing not moral progress but a dramatic moral regression.”

George Weigel in 2016 joined the likes of Robert P. George, Robert Royal, Ryan Anderson, Francis Beckwith, Eduardo Echeverria, Gerard Bradley, John P. Hittinger in "An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics" (National Review), asserting that

... there are candidates for the Republican nomination who are far more likely than Mr. Trump to address these concerns, and who do not exhibit his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and — we do not hesitate to use the word — demagoguery.

Mr. Trump’s record and his campaign show us no promise of greatness; they promise only the further degradation of our politics and our culture. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to reject his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting a genuinely reformist candidate.

Due credit for taking a stand against the tide. Weigel would go on to add that Trump "is an immoral man both in his public life and in his private life. And then it is not credible in the management of power. As I can not vote for Clinton, so I will never vote for him."

Michael Novak broke with Weigel and the authors of "An Appeal to our Fellow Catholics", expressing his relief after Trump's first election that Hillary would never be president (Silver-Linings for Never-Trumpers First Things 11/15/16). For an explication of Novak's own perspective I would refer to the excellent survey Michael Novak’s ‘Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics’ in the Trump Era, by Jesse Russel. (American Spectator January 5, 2019).

Michael Novak passed in 2017, and even so, I wonder whether he would have continued in his guarded support for Trump -- especially on or after Trump's refusal to concede the election of 2020, his trafficing in outright falsehoods and conspiracy theories contesting the election, his vocal encouragement of those who staged an attempted coup on the nation's capitol on January 6, 2021 -- and his current promise as president-elect to pardon those currently convicted for doing so.

William F. Buckley -- a Catholic conservative, howbeit not of the "neocon" persuasion -- made his displeasure known in a sharply critical editorial on Trump's narcissism and demagoguery in an article for Cigar Aficionado:

... So there we have the one problem--the encouragement given to demagogues by undiscriminating voters. The procedure here is to attract support to finance a campaign. But does the term demagogue fit in other circumstances? What about the aspirant who has a private vision to offer to the public and has the means, personal or contrived, to finance a campaign? In some cases, the vision isn't merely a program to be adopted. It is a program that includes the visionary's serving as President. Look for the narcissist. The most obvious target in today's lineup is, of course, Donald Trump. When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection. If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America.

But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something. So what does Trump say? That he is a successful businessman and that that is what America needs in the Oval Office. There is some plausibility in this, though not much. The greatest deeds of American Presidents--midwifing the new republic; freeing the slaves; harnessing the energies and vision needed to win the Cold War--had little to do with a bottom line.