Despite the 2016 election receding more into memory with each day and 2020 taking shape, elite “movement” conservatives have yet to show that they fully comprehend what that contest meant for conservatism. Many have not evinced even the slightest bit of introspection or curiosity about whether conventional conservatism, in light of its manifest failures, can—or even should—continue on as it’s currently constituted. The very hint that something—anything—is amiss and needs to change sends waves of reactionary paroxysms through the offices and thought processes those selfsame elites who scoff at the Fox Network’s “gauche” worldview.
The default argument peddled by Conservatism Inc.’s members and institutions is that Donald Trump voters have forged a Faustian bargain that will “cost them their souls” for causes like the massive income tax cut, aggressive immigration policies, and populating the Supreme Court with judges more likely to eventually overturn Roe v. Wade. Rather than grudgingly giving Trump any credit, conservatives like these prefer to determine the president’s ideological purity by checklist rather than actual philosophy. Conservative constitutionalists nominated to be on the Supreme Court? Check. A cabinet even more to the right than Ronald Reagan’s? Check. They are encouraged by Trump’s actions that seem “conservative” and cast disapproval on those--such as what they term both his “protectionism” and “militant adventurism” that fly in the face of their sensibilities.
Conservatives thus measure all political phenomena by how closely they hew to what are dogmatically considered the immutable core tenets of their conservatism. Conservatism truly is, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, their “central idea from which all its minor thoughts radiate.”
1. Old Thinking
Being so highly attuned to all of the things they call “conservative,” movement conservatives often take special note of anyone who does not mouth the catechisms of philosophical orthodoxy. Seconds after Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Trump, spoke at CPAC, John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, showed no curiosity about what Bannon said concerning nationalism (or patriotism) or the rise of a globalist class who cares more about securing the good of hedge fund managers in Singapore than out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia. He offered no acknowledgment of Bannon’s argument that we must “deconstruct the administrative state” for the people to reclaim their sovereignty and rule again in their own interests.
Rather, Bannon’s unforgivable sin was that he did not once utter the word “conservative.” Podhoretz’s singular focus on needing to hear repetitions of the slogans and clichés that make up much of modern conservative rhetoric is revealing. He gives words a power akin to when God spoke the world into existence as recounted in the first chapter of Genesis. Even Protagoras would have blushed.
But words apart from political action are just that: mere words. And this lays bare the central dichotomy of the establishment who chose to battle the progressive (or liberal) Barack Obama not on the field of actual ideas or philosophy, but instead via arcane parliamentary manoeuvring and tactics rather than true philosophical debate.
What has modern conservatism done lately that has risen past words to anything fundamental? A few regulations rolled back here, a small uptick in the amount of conservative lawyers there. Yes, Republicans made major gains in statehouses nationwide, gaining nearly 1,000 seats in state legislatures President Obama, yet those gains proved to be as ephemeral as clouds on a windy day.
What exactly did these gains accomplish? The short answer was nothing as conservatives wore satisfied smiles on their faces as 44th president’s administrative state rolled on, its tendrils encroaching further into daily life.
2. What's in a Word?
Republicanism, in Publius’s Federalist 39 formulation, is defined by “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior.”
Constitutionalism reinforces republicanism by promoting the principles that must support republican government in order for it to survive for more than one generation. Important principles of American constitutionalism include the protection of natural rights, equality under the law, and a written constitution that sets down limits on the powers of government.
Conservatism, by contrast, is a political coalition formed in the mid-1950s between a number of “free-market” libertarians and traditionalist bourgeois conservatives who wanted to beat back both the Soviets and the New Deal. This coalition reached the zenith of its political power during the 1980s when Ronald Reagan and his administration began implementing some of the items on the conservative wish list.
Since that time, however, conservatism has been in steady free fall, resigned to fighting ineffective rearguard actions on the “culture wars” front and becoming an ever-shrinking coalition that has an increasingly negligible effect on the trajectory of national politics (witness the inability of presidential standard bearers such as John McCain and Mitt Romney, both men with compelling personal narratives who were unable to articulate a governmental view with enough populist appeal to resonate with large swathes of voters) . Conservatives today have largely forgotten conservatism’s political origin and instead have elevated its disparate policies created in light of specific circumstances to the level of principle itself.
This also means that, in stark contrast to commentators who label themselves as “conservative”, contemporary elite-articulated conservatism is not a “philosophy.” Philosophy in its original meaning is the quest for wisdom for the sake of attaining truth whereby opinions are replaced with knowledge. While American conservatism seeks to pass along to future generations the philosophical ideas enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, it itself is not a philosophy apart from the things which it has attempted to conserve.
3. A Term, Not a Philosophy
Ultimately, conservatism is merely a vehicle by which certain political ends that are outside of itself can be secured. The word conservative is derived from the Latin word “conservare,” which is a verb that means to keep or preserve something. “It’s a referential term. It doesn’t really mean anything of itself.” Thus if conservatism fails to secure the common good of the citizens of the United States—the only reason for its existence—then it should step aside and let another political movement that is attuned to current political realities take the reins.
Thus obsessing over whether Trump is or is not a conservative is, in the final analysis, meaningless. Beyond placating and flattering movement conservatives, such ideological introspection inverts the proper distinction between means and ends, turning conservatism into an end to which everything else -- including the good of the country -- is sacrificed.
Such discussions are driven by a wistful nostalgia for circumstances that have long since vanished.
Put another way, who is more nostalgic: Donald Trump, who has demonstrated a long-held conviction about the threats posed by unchecked globalization and its consequent overall loss of the people’s sovereignty, or a “reform” or "resistance" conservative, who wants to tinker around the edges of the administrative state but essentially offers centrist moderate strategies which might have been more appropriate for Victorian Britain? Who gets closer to one of the “primary truths” of politics which is, as Publius argued in Federalist 31, “that the means ought to be proportioned to the end”?
Combined, these errors have helped to render much of movement conservatism blind to the lessons of what happened in 2016 and even now clouds their 2020 thinking (not to mention the chimerical thinking which guides their hopes that somehow, someday someone more “conventionally conservative” like Mike Pence will succeed to the throne . They never understood that 2016 was a fundamental reordering of the political map—and one that has been in the offing for generations under both Democratic and Republican presidents. They don’t understand that the old left-right dichotomy -- if it was ever useful theoretically -- is insufficient to make sense of this new reality.
In 2016, the most consequential division was not between Democrats and Republicans but between the “court party” and the “country party” of whatever formal affiliation. There was a general dismay at the cronyism of bailouts and the stimulus package, a regulatory state with its tentacles in every aspect of individuals’ lives, trade deals that benefit multinational corporations, mass immigration, the imposition of same-sex marriage on a nation that had voted overwhelmingly against it, and the passage and subsequent sustaining by the Supreme Court of the Affordable Care Act. So too then, 2020 will be a rematch not so much between parties but between the radical new majorities of both parties and their clinging, irrelevant, establishments.
In its case, conservatism in its current form has outlived its usefulness. The particular conditions that led to its creation have ceased to exist. And it has proven to be ignorant not only to what current circumstances seem to dictate on the level of policy but what the current circumstances even are. It has lost its context.
Whatever comes in its place must focus on securing the good of the citizens of this nation. Americans need to stop worrying about the psychological state of mind of conservatism and begin to reflect about how to bring down the walls of the administrative state and allow the people to govern again, which is their constitutional right.