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NeverTrumpers may think they're being true to the conservative cause, but they don't know their history.  Today we look at the history of American conservatism.  We've been in this place before but in the past we had statesman, today we have prima donnas throwing a tantrum.  We set them straight with a discussion of conservative principles and how conservatives of the past have dealt with controversy. 

Great discussion with Professor Kesler of Claremont McKenna College about his upcoming essay "Donald Trump and the Conservative Cause".  It's a long piece but it's also essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this election and American political history.  Kesler argues, among other things, that Trump may hearken back to an older form of republicanism, one that was considered mainstream from the time of Lincoln.  Listen to the whole thing.  Kesler is an expert in American political history and on the American Founding.  He's a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and the Editor In Chief of The Claremont Review of Books.  

I had a good talk with Wendy Long.  She's the nominee for U.S. Senate in New York of the Republican, Conservative, and Reform Parties running against Crooked Chuck Schumer.  Wendy clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court for Clarence Thomas, is a home schooling mom, and a brilliant conservative mind.  She's working to make Crooked Chuck get his first ever job in the private sector. Also an in depth look at the history of American conservatism and why people like Bush, Ryan, and Romney don't get it.  They don't know their history and don't understand what drives voters.  

Professor Steven Hayward of Pepperdine University and the Powerlineblog.com joined us today to discuss the history and future of American conservatism and the enduring legacy of our professor Harry Jaffa. 

Good discussion of the fallout from Trump's sweeping victory in Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania with Captain Matt Bruce. 

In 1991 Professor Harry Jaffa gave a speech in which he predicted the current Leftist craziness with scary accuracy.  At a time when the Left and much of the Right were celebrating "the end of history" brought about by Reagan's victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jaffa foresaw that while an important battle had been won, that the war was just shifting to a different and more treacherous phase.  He saw that friends of liberty would soon find the Left pursuing their same totalitarian goals but with different means and under different name.  I was a student of Jaffa's at the time and remember him both writing and delivering the speech which no one wanted to hear.  He was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.  

Great show today and covered the waterfront.  We spent a bit of time on the Trump landslide in New York but talked more about the bipartisan budget suicide pact that exists in Washington and which no one seems much interested in addressing.  And we got into a little Barney Miller trivia. 

Sam Schulman joins me today.  Sam has been fighting the good fight for many years.  He was an English professor at Boston University and has been a successful media entrepreneur.  He currently writes for The Weekly Standard.  He is also a foreign policy expert and is concerned that the anti-Trump movement is unintentionally harming U.S. foreign policy and Israel - a thought at odds with what the anti-Trump neocons believe.  Sam makes a compelling case, one that puts him outside the mainstream conservative foreign policy establishment, but his perspective is one that should be seriously considered.

We covered some ground in today's episode.  We started off with Twitter shenanigans.  The Left decided to train their fire on Bernie Sanders' campaign today because one of his surrogates used the term "whores" in an insensitive way. There is also a great piece of investigative journalism coming from a local reporter in Fargo, ND about George Soros plan to settle enclaves of middle eastern refugees in small towns around the country.  We also finish the discussion with Seth Leibsohn about the importance of marriage and the family.  

Great show today.  Ann Coulter stopped by to give us her take on the non-election in Colorado.  Always quotable, she let the Colorado GOP have it for failing to have voters make the choice instead of a small group of party insiders.  She also had a very interesting - and very provocative take on Ted Cruz, someone she admires as a Senator.  Seth and I also took a detour afterwards into an extended - and really good - discussion of marriage, the family, and the culture.  We love that stuff and don't get to do enough of it in an election year. 

State party organizations generally have a bad reputation.  There's a reason.  The latest example comes out of Colorado where the state GOP decided not to hold a primary election or a caucus in the state.  They decided they would let party insiders give the state's delegates to Ted Cruz.  As if that weren't bad enough - even if you're a die-hard Cruz supporter happy with the outcome, the process stinks - the Colorado state Republican Party then sent out a Tweet from its official accounts saying, "We did it! #NeverTrump" as if bragging about a heist.  This enraged Trump and Kasich supporters in the states and around the country. We get into what happened and why.  We also have a great interview with veteran consultant and PR expert Jason Rose and get his inside take on where we go from here. 

American conservatism has problems.  It is undergoing a generational change and it isn't pretty.  We continue our discussion of where it came from and where we're going.  We also have an interview with Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard.

We covered some ground today.  The Brussels attacks were just another in a long string and the response was predictable - but brief.  The outrage at these bloody attacks keeps getting shorter and less meaningful.  For lack of a better response people use hashtags on Twitter and change their avatars on Facebook.  But that doesn't change anything in the real world.  It is often a self-indulgent method of virtue signalling.  We get into its roots and the self-referential, moralistic, therapeutic impulse.  We also get into the Cruz sex scandal.  This story keeps growing.  Senator Cruz has evaded direct questions about his faithfulness to his wife by trying to blame Donald Trump.  But multiple sources including Fox News report that it wasn't Trump, but anti-Trump operatives who planted the Cruz adultery story.  We get you up to date and discuss what might come next. 

All of the handwringing about Donald Trump's candidacy masks something else - the conservative movement identified with William F Buckley, Jr, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan has lost it's way.  The movement that was so vibrant during the Cold War era - that won the Cold War - today lacks the intellectual heft that once led it to political victories that reestablished the Republican Party as the party of free government and individual liberty.  We get into how it happened, why, and start to talk about what to do about it.  

We cover a lot of ground in this episode.  Congressman Trent Franks joins us to give the case for Ted Cruz.  A former Huckabee supporter Rep Franks lays out an intelligent brief for the Texas Senator.  He also says he would support Trump if he is the nominee.  Afterwards we talk about Trump's meeting with arch-conservative Senator Tom Cotton and other Congressional Republicans and the meltdown this caused for some conservative pundits.  The divide between anti-Trump pundits and voters is wide, but the rift is also growing between the pundits and elected Republicans who, thankfully, show more practical wisdom. And finally we talk about Trump's big Israel speech at AIPAC which was going on during the show.  He wowed what was supposedly a hostile crowd and got a standing ovation.  This speech was a game changer. 

John Kasich has lasted longer than many candidates with more support and more money.  But it's not because his support has been growing - it's because he's being used to by the people behind the NeverTrump movement to foment chaos in the elections.  Ego and ambition combine to make it impossible for Governor Kasich to see reality.  He's become the party guest who doesn't know it's time to go home. But it's late and it's time for him to call an Uber and go back to his day job as governor of Ohio. 

Violence flared as Leftists elements sponsored by MoveOn.org among others sought to deny Donald Trump the right to speak in Chicago, Ohio, and Missouri.  A police officer was injured as were ordinary citizen, property was damaged, and Donald Trump was attacked by an "activist."  These attacks all come as part of a coordinated effort from the Left to silence political opponents. Seth and I discuss how and why this has always been part of Leftist DNA.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump's Republican primary opponents took to the media to blame Trump when they should have taken the principled position in support of the 1st Amendment and against political violence.  On a lighter note we delve into a recent cover of a Velvet Underground song that we think surpasses the original.  

Donald Trump is just a messenger, but GOP elites don't like the message.  Since the end of the Reagan era there has been wide and growing chasm between GOP thought leaders and many elected Republicans & the voters they claim to represent.   Trump is the culmination of that rift. And Republican elites are doing everything they can to expand it.  Their cynical ploy to use Marco Rubio's campaign to deny the expressed will of millions of voters regardless of the harm it does to Rubio and the country abuses every notion of free government.   Seth and I dig into this. We also pay tribute to Nancy Reagan and play a few Jeff Bridges tunes from Crazy Heart.  The man is not only a great actor - he can sing!

Historian R. Scott Clark is our guest today. He is a professor at Westminster Seminary and holds a doctorate from Oxford University. Scott is also a minister, blogger, and podcaster.  We discuss the current state of politics and how technology has changed the discourse.  But we spend most of our time talking about how Christians should think about politics.  Scott argues that a proper approach to politics requires first understanding the right role of the Church in historic, orthodox Christianity.  A Christian approach to politics, he argues, should start here. Scott's perspective is not heard often today but offers much practical wisdom.