To hear Max Boot tell it, he feels as forlorn as the despondent, battered elephant on the cover of his new book, “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right.” Boot minutely describes a disillusionment that wasn't only “painful and prolonged” but “existential.” Here he is — a lifelong Republican with sterling neoconservative credentials (an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War and a champion of “American empire”) — explaining why he's eager for the day when “the G.O.P. as currently constituted is burned to the ground.”
The scorched-earth rhetoric reflects not just a pro-war pedigree but also a profound feeling of betrayal. In the run-up to the November 2016 election, Boot was a vocal Never Trump conservative who couldn't fathom that a “crudely xenophobic” reality television star would become the standard-bearer of the Grand Old Party, much less president of the United States. Along with Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse's “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal,” another new volume by a Republican critic of Trump, Boot's book attempts to answer a looming question for conservatives unhappy with the current occupant of the White House: What now?
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