Marco Rubio

I expected there might be some trouble at the National Conservative Conference, held earlier this week in Orlando. There had been omens. American Airlines flight cancellations had upended many attendees’ travel plans, with some unable to make it at all. I was fortunate enough to have booked on Delta, but was hit with a stomach bug as soon as I stepped on the plane. A bad portent on a personal level, but more to the point, this wasn’t the first time I had been to a conservative event with high-profile — some would say controversial — speakers. Disruptions are fairly standard fare. Years ago, I saw Newt Gingrich, of all people, speak at the New School in New York City.

The White House has announced that everyone coming into range of President Trump will be tested for COVID-19. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he won’t wear a mask when meeting other leaders — or, as he put it in order of reverse dignity, ‘presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens’.Unfortunately the worst-case scenario — that a 73-year-old might catch a dose and get seriously ill — no longer seems outlandish. On Sunday night, Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized after falling sick 10 days ago. Today he went into critical care. What if someone sneezes and Trump catches a cold?Welcome to the nasty, brutish and short Pence presidency.

'No corporate bailouts,' says Michigan Rep. Justin Amash as lawmakers debate an economic stimulus package in response to coronavirus. Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, usually somewhere in Amash's orbit if not quite a fellow traveler, demurs. She wrote that the proper response to the outbreak is, much to her chagrin, 'subsidize everything'. Libertarians are divided on coronavirus, an unusual event (the virus, that is, not intense disagreements among libertarians). Of libertarians, it has been said of late that there are none in a pandemic. We are all Andrew Yang — he of the universal basic income — now. What about conservatives? My longtime TAC colleague Matt Purple says they too are ill suited to the current crisis, as are perhaps humans more generally.