George Will lamented that the Republican Party no longer had room for conservatives like himself, and he offered a disturbing explanation for that dynamic.
The Washington Post columnist appeared Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where he lamented the rightward drift of the party he once called home but no longer feels any affinity toward after Donald Trump took it over.
"Whatever populism is conservatism isn't," Will said. "Populism believes that everything is clear, known to the public and should be directed into the policy and not be refined in the Constitution. That is the antithesis of conservatism."
The veteran columnist explained that Republican elected officials didn't necessarily agree with their party's direction, but they were afraid to push back against their increasingly radicalized right-wing base.
"There is no place for conservatism in the Republican Party right now because we have an absolutely unique situation," Will said. "We have a Republican Party who are -- they won't say this -- are frightened of their voters, and because they're frightened of them, they don't much like them. Because they don't like them, they don't respect them. It's a very tension-ridden relationship between the Republican's elected officials and the Republican base. Until the Republican Party gets back to something like the principles that made it a vibrant force in the '80s and '90s, conservatives are, as I say, orphans."
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