The shameful complicity of Republican leaders in
PresidentTrump’s torrent of deceit about our election tells us there is little hope for a more reasonable post-Trump GOP. But what about conservatism as a philosophy? Is it equally discredited?Let’s begin by just saying it: The country owes the Never Trump conservatives a debt.
Yes, many progressives have been uneasy with these unusual allies. They insist that Trump was not some alien imposition on conservatism but rather the product of long-standing trends in Republican politics. Trafficking in racial division and racism, nativism, extremism, conspiracy theories and voter suppression did not start with Trump. Progressives are entirely right about this. But the Never Trumpers deserve our respect precisely because so many of them stood against these tendencies and, in more cases than not, undertook a deeper critique of their own side.
This applies to many of my conservative Post Opinion colleagues; the folks over at the Bulwark, the online journal that owes its existence to the right-of-center rebellion against Trump; and many of those ad-makers at the Lincoln Project.
For those of us arrayed from the center to the left, the awfulness of Trump is so obvious — it was brought home again on Saturday night by his 100-minute ranting ode to victimhood in Georgia — that we can underestimate how hard it is to walk away from the people who were your comrades for so long. . . . . . the Never Trumpers were denounced as renegades and traitors — and also saddled with far uglier, unprintable monikers.
True, these rebels-with-a-good-cause were a minority in their camp, but they were far from alone. Exit polls are imperfect, but the Edison survey suggests that perhaps 8 million of President-elect Joe Biden’s more than 81 million votes came from self-described conservatives, and 3 million from Republicans (which doesn’t include those who left the party because of Trump).
For a significant part of the anti-Trump Right, however, the moral corruption of the conservative movement over the past four years is a source of genuine anguish and has prompted a crisis of belief.
As it should have. Conservatism has its attractive sides. But it is often a creed that devotes itself simply to the preservation of the power, wealth and privilege of existing elites. This view was outlined brilliantly by the scholar Corey Robin. He argued in his 2011 book “The Reactionary Mind” that when you dig down, conservatism ends up being about keeping the “subordinate classes” subordinate.
The pro-Trump conservatives offered a lot of evidence for Robin’s point by rallying to a man entirely unsuited to power in a democracy because he gave them what they wanted. Trump consistently served the interests of the best-off and sought to lock in their gains by tilting the judiciary rightward.
A more humane conservatism can suit the elites, too, but its central purpose is to call our attention to those aspects of an existing order that are worth preserving because they serve not just the fortunate but all of us.
But with a humane Oakeshottian conservatism, progressives can either make common cause at times of crisis (after all, we on the left and center-left are preservationists in our own way when it comes to protecting liberal democracy) or engage in good-faith debate (the “actual” often isn’t good enough, and what is “sufficient” for some is often insufficient for the many who are left out).
Of course, I’d like the anti-Trump conservatives to admit the error of their ways and fully join my side of politics. But failing that, I still appreciate what they did. And I hope at least they can now champion a brand of conservatism that is about more than making the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.
2 comments:
i think one of the things that people really need to start waking up to is that trump republicans aren't conservative at all it one is to go by the classic definition of conservative. they're not careful, they're not thoughtful, they're not prone to look at all sides to a story.
it's to be assumed, i guess, that the fact that they're not really conservative is the big reason why people like jennifer rubin, max boot, rick wilson, et. al. are so opposed to the trumpist movement.
I think that one major difficulty is that neither normal people nor many people who call themselves "conservative" differentiate between conservatives in the classical sense of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and I myself am perfectly fine the way things are" and reactionaries, such as the trumpanzees, the teatotalitarians, and the majority of injustices on the Supreme Court, who long for a non-existent time when when everyone knew their place -- or else.
Think, for example, of Injustice Clarence "Uncle" Thomas' recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which he basically asserts that his most recent personal marriage should be annulled because Southern Baptists reject interracial marriage (some of them still), co-authored by Samuel Alito, who apparently believes in the "unitary executive," which apparently gives presidents the rights of dictators -- as long as the presidents are Republiscum.
I don't see a ready way forward, or sideways, for the Never Trumpers. Following the Civil Rights laws, the Dixiecrats found a warm welcome in the Republiscum Party, which they were able to take over in concert with the large number of existing nativists and bigots. But I know of no sociopathic equivalent in the Democratic Party, and there are far too few people in the Libertarian Party for people to see a meaningful place for them in that. Although, of course, at one time the GOP was quite small.
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