RUTHFULLY YOURS

My wife and I surprised ourselves. We didn’t move to the right or the left. We did what we believed to be sensible, and the responsible thing for ourselves and our children. We moved into a retirement community. We are not old. (Of course, that allegation is relative. I turn 75 later this month and Caroline is two years older.) We are physically active and have all our marbles, or, at least, I believe I do; though my grandchildren don’t always find my sense of humor amusing.

We did not make this move to escape what seems an increasingly discombobulated political environment. However, I admit that a respite is desirable, if just to maintain one’s sense of moral balance. This is especially true in an election year, and particularly so when the leading candidates are as distant from the center as they are. But extremism begets extremism. When dissatisfaction with the present and disillusionment for the future is rampant as it is, candidates and the electorate to whom they appeal hug the fringes. It is enough to make one want to slip beneath the counterpane, wishing for the morrow.

Speaking of retiring, President Obama gave his final State of the Union address last week. It is the moment when exiting Presidents look back and cite their accomplishments, or, at least, present what they have done in a favorable light, and then present their vision for the future. It is the natural way.

Mr. Obama is a good speaker, as long as his teleprompters function. Last Tuesday he was his eloquent self. He told the usual lies and made the expected exaggerations. He took more than the usual jibes at the opposition. His narcissism, as usual was on display. But, with a straight face, he said his biggest regret was a lack of compromise, an increase in unilateral decisions and a corresponding decline in civility. Most of us share that regret. But where does blame lie? Who was it in early 2009 that responded to a query from Representative Paul Ryan: “I won; you lost!”? Who was it that said to Republicans later that same year: “I’m driving; you’re in the back seat!”? Which Speaker admonished skeptical members of Congress when the Affordable Care Act was being considered: “We must pass this bill to find out what’s in it!”? If Mr. Obama had deliberately set out to sabotage any sense of commonality, he could not have done better.

For more than 30 years, Iowa’s obsession with its ethanol fuel industry has played an outsize role in its presidential caucuses. The winner of every caucus in both parties during that period has strongly backed federal subsidies or mandates for the corn-grown fuel. That winning streak could end this year if Senator Ted Cruz takes Iowa. Polls currently show him with a narrow lead.

In 2008, Fred Thompson told me he didn’t see merit in subsidizing one fuel over another, but in Iowa’s GOP caucus that year “opposing ethanol was like pushing against a mountain.” Hillary Clinton voted against ethanol a total of 17 times in the U.S. Senate, saying she found it “impossible to understand why any pro-consumer, pro-health, pro-environment, anti-government member” could vote for ethanol mandates. In 2007, as she announced for president, she took a sharp turn on the Road to Des Moines and embraced ethanol. This year, she calls ethanol “a success for Iowa and much of rural America.”

But on the Republican side, two candidates have broken ranks. Senator Rand Paul, true to his libertarian principles, supports an immediate phase-out of subsidies. And Cruz addressed the Iowa Agriculture Summit, run by ethanol and wind-subsidy interests, in March 2015. His message: The federal mandate on ethanol, which has cost consumers at least $10 billion since 2007, had to end. In front of a crowd of pro-ethanol farmers and moneymen, Cruz said:

I don’t think Washington should be picking winners and losers. I have every bit of faith that businesses can continue to compete, can continue to do well without having to go on bended knee to Washington asking for subsidies, asking for special favors. I think that’s how we got in this problem to begin with.

A specter is haunting the conservative movement. From the dark underbelly of corrupt Washington, D.C., an unyielding “Republican establishment” has come out to feast upon the mutilated corpses of Reagan, Goldwater, and Buckley. The smarmy hucksters who make up its rank are masters of disguise: During the day, they insist that they represent the great silent majority of conservative Americans; at night, they prove that they’re in it only for the money, the power, and the Georgetown social scene. The monsters have names — such as Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Nikki Haley, Trey Gowdy, Mike Lee, and . . . wait, what?

To turn on talk radio or to sift through the murkier regions of the Internet is, invariably, to be told that the leaders of today’s reform conservative movement are RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — through and through. According to many who inhabit the Right, even those men and women who rose in the 2010 tea-party wave have fallen now to the dark side. Once, they led the fightback against Barack Obama; now, just a few short years later, they have allied themselves with official Washington in a dastardly scheme to maintain the status quo.

Is this claim true? No, it is not. Indeed, by simply taking a look back at the last five years of conservative commentary on three well-known reform conservatives, we can see that the storyline of “tea-party champion becomes establishment stooge” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.