Replies

This article goes off track right in the first paragraph.

Trump isn’t a movement conservative. That has nothing to do with his personal life, and everything to do with certain policy positions. Most conservatives don’t want a billion-dollar infrastructure bill, or a “reformed” healthcare bill, for example, yet President Trump has publicly thrown his support behind those things.

Most “movement” conservatives (and I speak as a lifelong conservaative who has been involved in numerous conservative organizations) believe that in general, trade is good and should be as unfettered as possible. President Trump has been a long-time advocate of tariffs, an not just on countries that are hostile. Many here agree with him, many don’t.

He tends to endorse Establishment RINOs like Ryan, Romney, McCain, and Strange over conservative challengers.

President Trump has done a lot of good things, a lot of conservative things, but let’s not kid ourselves. He’s not a Movement conservative, nor a consistent conservative. He has certain liberal views.

While I have no use for Big Government pseudocons, they’re not movement conservatives either. They may think they are, but they’re not — and I tend to be a fairly “big tent” conservative. (i.e., I have room for hard traditionalists (I did study with Russell Kirk, after all, and named my YAF chapter after him) and for reasonably conservative libertarians.)

So I’m not inclined to exclude peoplefrom the movement. I hve room for Buckley, Kirk, Meyer, Michael Savage, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, for Goldwaterites and Reaganites, for Rand. For Howard Phillips. But not Big Government people.

But again, they’re not the conservative movement.

My perspective is unusual. I’m a Midwesterner by birth who grew up in a liberal family, converted to conservatism in my early 20s, and now living in NYC and active in conservative & libertarian politics.

What I see is the convergence of various trends:

1) many newly-engaged voters in 2016, primarily voting for Trump. It remains to be seen whether they remain engaged.

2) a significant proportion of Dems are distressed at the authoritarian style and radicalism of activists and leaders in their own party. They are disaffected, but not enough to vote for an R yet.

3) a split among movement conservatives between
a) a small group with an older model of political discourse. They believe in a mainstream of policy influence. They want conservative ideas to be taken seriously across the political spectrum.

b) a much larger group that has incorporated populist and traditionalist elements into standard Buckley-style fusionism. They are less concerned with respectability, since they have become aware that their ideas were never considered mainstream ideas.

Group a) may have had a hand in influencing party platforms or key policy. They would defend Bushism, or Romneyism, etc. although my term for these policy approaches is right-statism.

Group b) is disaffected with politics. They see, as Walsh does, that Group a) has had few policy victories, nearly all of them having increased the intrusion of the state into our private lives (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Medicare Part D, etc)

Group b) has realized that it doesn’t need group a) as an intermediary or power broker, and has declared political independence.

It is a time of ideological flux, and it’s not entirely clear to me how it will settle.