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What lies behind Donald Trump’s nomination victory? Received wisdom among conservatives is that he, the outsider, sensed, marshaled, and came to represent a massive revolt of the Republican rank and file against the “establishment.” This is the narrative: GOP political leaders made promises of all kinds and received in return, during President Obama’s years, major electoral victories that gave them the House, the Senate, twelve new governorships, and 30 state houses. Yet they didn’t deliver. Exit polls consistently showed that a majority of GOP primary voters (60 percent in some states) feel “betrayed” by their leaders. #ad#Not just let down or disappointed. Betrayed. By RINOs who, corrupted by donors and lobbyists, sold out. Did they repeal Obamacare? No. Did they defund Planned Parenthood? No. Did they stop President Obama’s tax-and-spend hyperliberalism? No. Whether from incompetence or venality, they let Obama walk all over them. But then comes the paradox. If insufficient resistance to Obama’s liberalism created this sense of betrayal, why in a field of 17 did Republican voters choose the least conservative candidate? A man who until yesterday was himself a liberal. Who donated money to those very same Democrats to whom the GOP establishment is said to have caved, including Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, and Hillary Clinton. RELATED: Trump, Alack Trump has expressed sympathy for a single-payer system of socialized medicine, far to the left of Obamacare. Trump lists health care as one of the federal government’s three main responsibilities (after national security); Republicans adamantly oppose federal intervention in health care. He also lists education, which Republicans believe should instead be left to the states. As for Planned Parenthood, the very same conservatives who railed against the Republican establishment for failing to defund it now rally around a candidate who sings the praises of its good works (save for the provision of abortion). RELATED: Trump: Something New under the Political Sun More fundamentally, Trump has no affinity whatsoever for the central thrust of modern conservatism — a return to less and smaller government. If the establishment has insufficiently resisted Obama’s Big Government policies, the beneficiary should logically have been the most consistent, indeed most radical, anti-government conservative of the bunch, Ted Cruz. Cruz’s entire career has consisted of promoting tea-party constitutionalism in revolt against party leaders who had joined “the Washington cartel.” Yet when Cruz got to his one-on-one with Trump at the Indiana OK Corral, Republicans chose Trump and his nonconservative, idiosyncratic populism. #share#Which makes Indiana a truly historic inflection point. It marks the most radical transformation of the political philosophy of a major political party in our lifetime. The Democrats continue their trajectory of ever-expansive liberalism from the New Deal through the Great Society through Obama and Clinton today. While the GOP, the nation’s conservative party, its ideology refined and crystallized by Ronald Reagan, has just gone populist. It’s an ideological earthquake. How radical a reorientation? Said Trump last week: “Folks, I’m a conservative. But at this point, who cares?” RELATED: America Needs #NeverTrump Now More than Ever Who cares? Wasn’t caring about conservatism the very essence of the talk-radio, tea-party, grass-roots revolt against the so-called establishment? They cheered Cruz when he led the government shutdown in the name of conservative principles. Yet when the race came down to Cruz and Trump, these opinion-shaping conservatives who once doted on Cruz affected a studied Trump-leaning neutrality. Trump won. True, the charismatically challenged Cruz was up against a prepackaged celebrity, an already famous showman. RELATED: In Case of Trump Nomination, Break Glass True, Trump appealed to the economic anxiety of a squeezed middle class and the status anxiety of a formerly dominant white working class. But the prevailing conservative narrative — of anti-establishment fury — was different and is now exposed as a convenient fable. If Trump is a great big middle finger aimed at a Republican establishment that has abandoned its principles, isn’t it curious that the party has chosen a man without any? Trump doesn’t even pretend to have any, conservative or otherwise. He lauds his own “flexibility,” his freedom from political or philosophical consistency. And he elevates unpredictability to a foreign-policy doctrine. #related#The ideological realignment is stark. On major issues — such as the central question of retaining America’s global pre-eminence as leader of the free world, sustainer of Western alliances, and protector of the post–World War II order — the GOP candidate stands decidedly to the left of the Democrat. And who knows on what else. On entitlements? On health care? On taxes? We will soon find out. But as Trump himself says of being a conservative — at this point, who cares? As of Tuesday night, certainly not the GOP. — Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2016 The Washington Post Writers Group.

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Good news, disgruntled Americans: As you ponder whether to vote for one of the two most-disliked, dishonest, and morally corrupt politicians ever to run for president — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — you just might have a third option. His name is Gary Johnson. He’s a popular two-term former governor of New Mexico. He’s the likely Libertarian party nominee. And he’s set to be on the ballot in the vast majority of states. Moreover, the short case for him is pretty compelling. Johnson is a self-made man, starting a handyman business in college that grew into a 1,000-employee construction firm. He ran for governor as a fiscal conservative in a blue state, won handily, and can now boast that he cut taxes, vetoed hundreds of bills, presided over significant job growth, balanced the state budget, and created a substantial reserve fund. He won reelection in a rout. #ad#Johnson is an extraordinarily strong gun-rights advocate, and he favors free trade, but he’s far too committed to relatively open borders — advocating a “simpler and more efficient” process for entering the country. He calls himself pro-choice, but he’s well to the right of Hillary Clinton — supporting late-term abortion bans, parental-notification laws, and opposing public funding for abortion — and he’s indicated that he’d appoint judges “who will interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning.” He also believes Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided because it “expanded the reach of the Federal government into areas of society never envisioned in the Constitution.” In the past, Johnson has indicated that he’d rather leave abortion policy to the states. Being generous, one could even call him a sort of peaceful Teddy Roosevelt: an adventurer politician. He’s run dozens of triathlons, he’s climbed the highest mountain on all seven continents (including Mount Everest), and he built his house with his own hands. So, on balance, Gary Johnson for president, right? So, on balance, Gary Johnson for president, right? Not so fast. This being 2016, the world has gone mad, and there are no easy choices left. Johnson is a Libertarian, and that means he’s for drug legalization. That’s not necessarily disqualifying. After all, his views are similar to those of the founder of National Review, William F. Buckley Jr., and are shared by a number of conservatives. Johnson, however, is an actual drug user — boasting recently that he’d just consumed “Cheeba Chews,” a form of “marijuana-infused taffy.” (To be fair, he claims that he does not drink alcohol.) But that’s not all, not by a long shot. In 2014, Johnson became a “pot entrepreneur.” He was named the CEO of Cannibas Sativa. The company’s intended products included medicinal oils and — get this — a “cough drop–like” pot candy. Johnson of course tried and endorsed the product, asking, “Why would anybody ever smoke marijuana given this as an alternative?” #share#But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and presume for the moment that he would not, in fact, transform the Cabinet into a highbrow version of Obama’s legendary “Choom Gang.” Are there any other reasons to worry about Gary Johnson? As a two-term governor and self-made millionaire, Johnson has serious credentials. Oddly, when it comes to religious liberty and the rights of conscience, he may not be libertarian enough. In the Libertarian party’s presidential debate, he offered a bizarre and rambling defense of forcing a Jewish baker to bake a Nazi wedding cake — in the name of ending religious discrimination. He also briefly endorsed, then walked back, using state power to ban the burqa in the United States. (On the bright side, he did indicate that he understood the political nature of sharia law and its incompatibility with American conceptions of liberty.) Regarding national defense, he’s not as extreme as some libertarians — some go so far as to view the rise of jihad as fundamentally America’s fault — but he does believe that American military interventions have made the terrorist problem “worse.” I’ve often wondered how a self-defense oriented libertarian would alter American policy once they received a full and complete national-security briefing. Libertarian purists would likely be surprised at the military aggression of a libertarian president. If Johnson were ever elected, we’d get to find out. #related#Unless and until there is another viable third-party alternative, now is the time for the Libertarian party candidate to make a serious case to the American public. As a two-term governor and self-made millionaire, Johnson has serious credentials. And he has more executive experience than either Clinton or Trump. I’d rather see Rand Paul as the libertarian alternative — he could at least get on the presidential debate stage, he’s pro-life, and he has far-more-developed and realistic policy goals. But Johnson is likely his party’s choice. Make your argument, governor. You can make the case for liberty to a nation embracing authoritarianism. You won’t win, but you can matter. This is your moment. — David French is a staff writer at National Review, and an attorney.

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