How the Republican Foreign Policy Elites Misdiagnosed Trumpism

Mainstream foreign policy experts have no fix for blue-collar Americans enraged at the failures of the liberal world order.

Donald Trump is still on the rampage in the Republican primaries. From a foreign policy perspective, the establishment attacks against him have failed. Take, for example, the open letter published on March 2 by members of the Republican foreign policy community on the website War on the Rocks.

The letter rehearsed the standard critiques of Trump from both left and right: He's a Muslim hater, a Mexican baiter, a Putin admirer, and a torture enthusiast — a man "utterly unfitted to the office" of president, as the letter concludes appropriately. But if this standard liturgy of attacks on Trump — salvos that have been fired relentlessly throughout this election cycle — were effective, why is he winning?

Because the letter is symptomatic of the very sickness for which it purports to be the remedy....

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