Sam Tanenhaus, Columnist

Conservatives in Congress Won't Stand for a Caesar

Trump, Ryan and rule by "congressional majority."

May 6, 2016 at 5:50 PM UTC

Corrected

May 7, 2016 at 11:57 PM UTC

Sam Tanenhaus, the author of “The Death of Conservatism” and “Whittaker Chambers,” is working on a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. He was editor of the New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013.

Tough crowd.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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As the Republican Party reaches an uneasy truce with Donald Trump, ideological conservatives still insist that he is not one of them and that his victory is a defeat for their ideas.

Such skepticism isn’t new for conservatives, especially when it comes to presidents.