The GOP Is Campaigning for George W. Bush’s Third Term

It’s too early to conclude much about the Republican presidential field—whether it will prove to be the strongest since 1980, as some say, or is beginning to resemble the carnival show of 2012, with its pileup of fringe figures and novelty acts (Ben Carson? Carly Fiorina?). But at the upper levels of the conservative movement, where, in William F. Buckley Jr.’s formulation, “Rhetoric is the principal thing. It precedes all action,” one change is striking: The hopelessly fractured party of the Obama years, beset by internal discord and ideological division—“the establishment” vs. the “insurgents,” the ins vs. the outs, beltway “appropriators” vs. budget hawks, deal-making Senate compromisers vs. inflexible House purists—sounds once again like the well-oiled, unified-message machine of old.

The message itself is coming through clearly—at the “summit” of presidential hopefuls last month in Nashua, N.H., where Ted Cruz roused the audience with his vow to “destroy” ISIS, and last week in Greenville, S.C., where Marco Rubio demanded that “the strongest military power in the world” resume its cocky posture and put its enemies on notice (“We will find you and we will kill you,”) and Scott Walker lamented the lack, in Obama, of “a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”