For Trump supporters it is loyalty above all else. Blind loyalty in the face of fascism and racism from the head of your political party is dangerous. Anyone who dares criticize Trump even if its mild, automatically branded a traitor. They have been so thoroughly brainwashed by Trump and his willing minions that their ability to accept outside credible information has atrophied.
19
"to purge populism of its bigotries and inject good policy instead." The essence of the current base of the Republican party is bigotry and anti-intelectualism. If conservatives want a voice divorced form these pillars, it has 2 choices, a third party or become the right wing of the Democratic party. I for one would welcome you all in. The only requirement is that you admit you share the same goals we have, good government, freedom for the weak as well as the powerful, and so on. The best Republicans DO share these goals. With you inside the tent, we could argue about the best solutions, not about basic facts already known or how best to torture immigrants into not coming.
40
LBJ’s voting rights act drove the Blue Dog Democrats out and Nixon’s Southern Strategy scooped them up. Now this oped says these same Blue Dogs are booting the Rino’s out of the GOP. Democrats! It’s time for a “Northern Strategy” to reach out to the disaffected Rino’s.
4
Trump now leads the amoral majority. His movement atracts amoral liberals (think Kanye) and amoral conservatives (think Mitch McConnell). The devil makes promises that sound good to those who have traded in their conscience for personal greed.
29
It's not "going left'' or right. What Trump is promoting is not "conservatism,'' or populism, for that matter - a movement grounded in real grass roots concerns. He's peddling racism, not even thinly veiled, alliances with autocrats and killers (Dutarte, Putin, MBS). As a sop to the Pence wing, he's appointing judges who believe in eroding the rights of women, and of black people to vote. None of this has anything to do with real conservative values, as embodied by Taft, Eisenhower, or even Goldwater, including fiscal responsibility and respect for individual liberty. The fact that he is occupying this space does not make it a real political movement, but a cult. Sad!
32
So basically Republicans are going to rebrand themselves by borrowing a bunch of ideas from the Democratic Party? More aid to the poor, paid parental leave? I'm all for that! Now can they just borrow the respect for women, people of color, and immigrants too??
21
Bunk. There is nothing "conservative" about Trumpian populism -- unless Douthat wants to admit that the conservative movement was always a matter of white supremacy, nativism, isolationism and misogeny. Of course, these have indeed always been factors -- at least since the white "solid South" shifted en masse to the Republican Party, remaking it as the anti-civil rights party. But for all that, there was an element of the movement motivated by the three legs of the stool -- fiscal discipline, resolute promotion of democratic values in the world, and cultural traditionalism. Who remains true to those principles more than Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot?
21
Regarding the deranged calumny that The Washington Post only prints “never Trumpers,” talk to Michael Gerson, Mark Thiessen, Gary Abernathy and yes, George F. Will, who still despises both progressives and the American government. The Post actually offers far more conservative viewpoints than the New York Times.
14
Isn't it interesting that you never give a label to your own view? Given the fact that you look forward to a lifetime of what you call "socially conservative" outcomes that will be dictated by an all powerful Kavanaugh Court that will apply your religion to run our lives I suggest you opt for a good term of the past.In the early 30's Austria established a dictatorship to control the socialists and enforce the prerogatives of Church. They called themselves Clerico _ Fascists. I would suggest you come out with this as your self definition.Of course, in fact your opposition to Trump has been whittled down to an occasional quibble with temperament. Since he is giving your minority group all power over the majorities lives maybe its time for a thank you. Looking to see you at the next rally with your MAGA hat on.
23
Of course what I'm about to say is orders of magnitude off the mark, but the conundrum "true" conservatives face in Trump-world is like writing pieces praising Hitler's full-employment policy while hoping someone can eliminate him - very soon.
One needs to explain why anyone with a moral compass can support amoral, self-serving creatures, and that means accepting that some things they do (or only say) have resonance. Resonance isn't thoughtful, it's a lizard-brain connection. I would, were I a frustrated "true" (i.e., non-Trump-world) approach the problem that way, as an attempt to explain the lizard-brain appeal of Trumpishness.
Trumpism-after-Trump is an evolutionary retrograde retrenchment. We are more than our lizard-brains. Conservatives need to excise their demons and their past.
14
I don’t understand why conservatives would support Trump. He’s not conservative. He has no principles or moral compass at all, conservative or otherwise. Likewise, what passes for conservatism in Congress right now is about winning, not about governing, principles be damned.
Of course, the modern conservative movement would be screaming about Reagan being a socialist. So there’s that...
22
Ross? Nothing about tax hikes? While you spoke of "hav[ing] been pleasantly surprised by his judicial appointments & tax cuts," no so-called conservative including yourself have railed against the Trump tariffs. Those are tax increases. Tax increases! Why aren't your columns about those darn tax increases? I thought conservatives cared.
Oh. The very wealthy, the corporations, and especially real-estate developers (wow, should anyone be surprised?) have got tax cuts -- and that's what matters.
From your paper's news pages: 'At least in part because of that perk, the Kushners’ property sales in the period covered by the documents — totaling about $2.3 billion, according to Real Capital Analytics, a research firm — generated little or no taxable income for Mr. Kushner.
Last year’s tax legislation eliminated that benefit for all industries but one: real estate.'
Read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/business/jared-kushner-taxes.html?act...
The real problem here is these very rich people don't really care to support the American teat from which they suck daily. That's for the "little people" to do. (See Leona Helmsly, another real estate person from New York.)
These people are not interested in conserving anything & certainly not the American dream or the foundation of a democratic republic: free & fair elections. You could write about that, too... I won't hold my breath, though, waiting for your column.
13
So what is conservatism now, Mr. Douthat? Here's an experiment:
Ask a conservative if they believe in global warming. According to polls, they'll say no. Then ask Republican Senators and Representatives - they'll also say it's a hoax. Finally, ask if they know that Trump's administration has declared that global warming is indeed a fact (so much so that Trump now uses that as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels). Before you ask that final question, though, you'd best stand back because their head is going to explode when they learn that even Trump says it's real.
So is a climate denier still a conservative? Or does conservatism transmogrify depending on what Trump says? That's not a good thing for "conservatives."
6
Talk about nerve: Trumpian conservatives demanding equal time in the so called liberal press, when they ban any kind of liberal representation on their own media, such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal.
Imagine how far liberals would get if they started petitioning for liberal columnists in the Wall Street Journal or on Sinclair Broadcasting.
Why is it only liberals who have to worry about fairness and balance in the media?
17
There are three parties -- the Democrats, the Republicans, and the showboat lawbreaking clown car monarchs led by Donald Trump. This third party flouts the constitution, breaks tradition, cheats, lies, tries to make corruption the new normal. We need to go back to a two party system, a pre-Nixon two party system. From what I can see, a version of this clown-town shill for Oligarchs has been preying on racism, spinning tax lies, and shaming truth-seekers since Nixon wiggled into office. Lets make America Great Again by voting the corruption OUT, and start a new era of respected, decent, moral leadership.
3
Nice. Ross. Let's throw the adults under the bus. Have fun with Trump 2020
Republicans are the lost Monarchist party.
It is also well known among higher primates that lower ranking are in the thrall of the higher ranked.
None of this is rocket science.
To the Republican Establishment - it’s about the money. They use statutes, law and administrative rules to favor the rich and corporations.
To the Democrat Establishment - it’s about the money. As “Republican Light”, they use statutes, law and administrative rules to favor the rich and the corporations.
Democrats’ ceaseless puling about minorities’ and women’s victimization at the hands of the evil whites, (especially white men); and attacks on traditional America as racist and misogynist as proof only Republicans can protect whites, (especially white men), and traditional American culture from the Democrats.
It’s all a game. Establishment Democrats understand America provides more equality and protections for women and minorities that 95% of the countries on Earth. Establishment Republicans are happy to pretend to care about more than money.
When either party nominates a modern day Teddy Roosevelt, let me know - otherwise I’ll continue to vote Republican, I enjoy the tax breaks and am annoyed at the Democrats’ blatant misandry.
3
In this era of dark money, why doesn’t Ross identify the backers of “American Principles Project”? Could it be the billionaire Kochs or billionaire Mercers?
1
What’s the matter, todays conservatives are too shamed and embarrassed to count Marc Thiessen and Ed Rogers as their own?
5
To paraphrase Douthat's theme today: "Blah blah blah blah..."
Neos, neo cons, neo neo cons, never Trumpers...not one word about how any of this impacts the current GOP's relation or non relation to reality as it applies to promoting the general Welfare of the people by our government as our Constitution mandates.
That is the real GOP issue today: a party that puts everything except good governance of We the People as it's reason to be. To Trump it is all about Trump. To his Republican critics it is all about them not losing their power of the majority while ignoring his hypocricy, bigotry, mysoginy and narcissism.
Making this government more perfect in promoting the security and general Welfare is nowhere in their agenda or in Douthat's attempt to explain his own party. In short, that objective is non existent in today's GOP. That is the explanation Douthat refuses to come to grips with.
12
Just come up with a name that includes the man's name -- trumpists or something like that (I personally like 'trumplicans'). He'll love that. Then conservatives can keep their title(s) to themselves.
1
You failed to mention David Frum. His apostasy dates from early in Obama's presidency when he recoiled from the scorched earth opposition to Obamacare which became something like the core doctrine of the Conservative Movement for a time.
I don't quite remember how fully Douthat joined in that opposition but I think I remember him characterizing Obamacare as extreme government overreach. Which to this liberal sounds borderline crazy. It may be hard for a conservative to understand that there are things like medical care where the government does need to play an important role. Look at England, which has fully socialized healthcare. Thatcher never even tried to touch the British Health Service. Why? Because it's really popular. Why is it popular? Because it works!
4
Sorry, I do not support diversity of opinion when it comes to 'Trump supporters.' The man is tearing the social fabric of this country to shreds, and trying to dismantle rule of law assumptions. He is an existential threat. I hope I live long enough to hear Ross Douthat acknowledge that and stop obliquely defending him.
8
It's rather precious, these adrift, formerly enabling, right-of-center intellectuals searching for a home. Sorry, anti-intellectualism and chauvinism aren't just features of the Trump coalition, they are what animates it. There's no policy to wrestle with. The Rubins, Boots, and Douthats of the world are trying to draw blood from a backfiring turnip truck.
3
“now-lost possibilities”: I would like to see a summary of the case for these having been possibilities of misexecution, and not merely mistaken design antithetical to reality.
No. Nationalism inevitably pits nation against nation and its nasty trickle down effect eventually manifests in person v. person, group v. group, race v. race conflict. Jennifer Rubin (WaPo conservative columnist) gets that even if Mr. Douthat does not.
3
The American Principles Project comes off as a bunch of snowflakes who demand strict groupthink and their own version of political correctness in which anyone who calls them self a conservative must support Trump no matter how un-conservative his policies and behaviors are. I subscribe to WaPo and get treated to the slobbering Trump sycophancy of Marc Thiessen, Hugh Hewitt, Ed Rogers and Gary Abernathy. Thiessen told us this past week about how Donald Trump may be the most honest president ever. Really. I don't see how any of those so-called conservatives who are in the tank for Trump ever steer their way back to being actual conservatives.
Then there is Mr. Douthat's continued insistence that Trump is a populist in the complete absence of any evidence. Sure he says populist things and then cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations, appoints corporatist anti-union anti-consumer judges and SCOTUS justices and unilaterally imposes taxes (tariffs) on American consumers which will hit the working class and red states the most. I would love to see Mr. Douthat write a column in which he outlines exactly which of Trump's policies are truly populist.
8
Why not call Never Trump conservatives “true conservatives”? From Edmund Burke to Roger Scruton, conservatism has stood for certain enduring values: prudence, respect for existing institutions, reverence for the past, understanding the complexity of life, and a wariness of unintended consequences. Trump’s followers have sold their souls to a vulgar, viscous, con man who has corrupted everything he has ever touched, including the Republican party and the conservative movement. They have abandoned conservative principles on a dizzying array of issues from fiscal responsibility to democratic norms. They are “conservatives” who follow a man who doesn’t want to conserve anything whose only principles are lining his own pocket and saving his own skin.
It’s time to face the fact that the United States doesn’t have a conservative party: it has a far-right party that masquerades as a conservative party. True conservatives have to look elsewhere.
5
Part of populism is that there must be something for all worthy people to do, and this requirement takes precedence over business freedom and profits and long-term financial stability.
The conservative position is that if people cannot find jobs, it is because they are lazy and prefer to laze around in the safety net, so that the solution to laziness is to cut the safety net so they have to work or die. Back when most people were farmers and we had a frontier, they could seek their fortunes on the frontier. Other countries used to export their excess population here, and to South America or Australia. Especially in the South, a conservative position could survive economic downturns by embracing populism and deciding that nonwhites were unworthy and should not have jobs that white people wanted.
But ultimately populism is a threat to free markets and business hegemony and the market-oriented values of individualism and competition. Under these values, losers in the competition are ignored until they have the decency to disappear through suicide, violence, alcoholism, addiction, or overdose. The main populism that does not threaten business values is military populism, and our defense budget is to a large extent a jobs-and-profits program that can appear to be something else and thus not undercut free market values.
4
Thing is, Trump isn’t conservative. Conservative means staying the course, supporting institutions and maintaining the status quo. Trump has been upending all our institutions with his off the rails comments on Twitter and his constant campaign rhetoric since day one. He is not conservatively maintaining our values, but radically taking us to a place of intolerance of anyone or anything that doesn’t fit his worldview.
What truly chaps me in the middle of it all, he and those around him haven’t paid their fair share of the costs of those very institutions he so freely uses as president. That includes the Secret Service, military, FBI and the Justice Department.
He is the radical.
13
At least Max Boot was honest with himself in that he could see so much of what the conservative movement has become is based in racial animosity and a naked striving for power. So much of what modern conservatism supports is antithetical to its core ambitions and they only promote it to garner votes. True conservatives believe that individuals should have the right to pursue their own life's course free of government meddling, so why do they care about abortion, gay rights, and nationalism. By their own ideology, women should have the right to chose, gays should do what they want, and the government shouldn't be something you cling to for identity. Republicans gravitated to these positions because people in rural areas feel strongly about them and they could get their vote if they rang the bell loud enough.
But Republicans are no longer conservative - they are the party of the 1% as a vast majority of their positions support them and them alone. They masquerade as a party with certain ideological positions and throw out bread crumbs and red meat to their base while ignoring their needs.
The op-ed pages don't reflect this reality as most conservative writers are either drowning in the confusion or unable to be honest with themselves. The desire by the papers to be balanced should be usurped by the reality of the situation and only print things of a factual nature. There is enough stuff out there muddying the waters and the op-ed pages would be a good place to start.
12
I found this a fascinating, thought-provoking article. The political spectrum is indeed multi-faceted.
1
The deception at the heart of this column is that modern conservatism is seeking a path for genuinely serving working-class families. Whether that was ever a goal of American conservatism is arguable; it is certainly not the goal any longer. Look who has nurtured and funded the conservative movement for the past 50 years. It's entirely about duping the working class in the interests of plutocrats who could care less about democracy or the public welfare.
19
I’ve found myself wishing I could pull the voting lever for Jennifer Rubin for President. Her intellect, articulateness, consistency, morality, courage and phenomenal energy is truly inspiring.
8
Mr. Douthat is exactly right. The logical turn for the real conservatives is to go left. Real conservatives are not afraid of economic competition. Real conservatives watch their mouths. It makes complete sense why Rubin and other never-Trumpers would write centrist columns. The playing field has changed. I hold that Rubin is still conservative. The current GOP with Trump at its head is not conservative; it is fascist. It is racist. American conservatives are not afraid of immigrants and competition. Fascists are afraid of an open playing field and will cheat, scream, and cry until the playing field is skewed their direction. That is Trumpism. That is the current GOP with Trump at its head.
305
@Anthony succint, articulate, and accurate. One hopes that Americans will regain their common sense, and agree with your comments, and correct this horrifying course typified by TRUMP and his policies.
3
So people are still using the expression '#NeverTrump'? Because, you know, he's President. I'm worried about the people who are using '#EverTrump'.
2
You “ Conservatives “ got exactly what you’ve worked for, Thru decades. Nixon, Saint Reagan, the Bush Clan. Now that YOUR Frankenstein is destroying the village, you can’t disavow Him. No matter how much you backpedal and conveniently omit facts, Trump IS the GOP, and the villagers will destroy his makers, not HIM. You truly can’t fix stupid. Sending my thoughts and prayers. Very sarcastically.
33
The word for this kind of wishful thinking is "rationalizing."
6
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Today's "conservative" walks and talks like a John Bircher.
16
Except for the kowtowing to Russia. Might wanna find out who John Birch was.
1
Ohh? Is that why your esteemed colleague Bret Stephens is going out of his way these days to remind all of his conservative bona fides? I see. It's rather pathetic, don't you think?
And yes, your point is taken.
And it illustrates the intellectual vanity of the so called conservative pundit ranks.
18
Ross, please. A better question is "why does anyone support a buffoon like tRump, regardless of their party affiliation"? Why do people who once had principles support such an unprincipled, awful person?
21
Conservative and any other word falling from the mouth of the liar, means exactly what he thinks it means during the minute or so that he held the thought long enough to utter it. He is amoral, greedy and corrupt and EVERYTHING he touches is corrupted. Including our language. Fake news...right?
7
This column reads a little like a discussion of whether the Trotskyites or the Leninists have a better answer to the peasant question. What are you talking about? A pathologically lying sexual miscreant B-rate celebrity is the PRESIDENT OFTHE UNITED STATES, and currently enjoys the support of the party who nominated him, precisely because of his tax policies, judicial appointments,and rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change. Do you think he cares about what you and other conservatives with brains think about him? And what exactly, in terms of concrete policy, do you dislike about him? Why don't you talk about that, because I really don't know.
27
The Never Trumpers have been exposed for the frauds that they are. They tend to be ignorant pundits who are the token “conservative” on idiotic cable shows, but only on CNN or MSNBC. These cable networks would never have an actual conservative on.
The Never Trumpers, like Kristol, Boot and Rubin make more money being Never Trumpers. They are irrelevant. So they found their niche.
3
I am glad to see that you are opposed to the "conservative" thought police.
1
This is really silly. There is nothing conservative about the transgressive Trump and, under McConnell, the GOP has become a bunch of right-wing radicals and theocrats whose counterrevolutionary set pf priorities is marked by xenophobia, contempt for the environment, and a support for a white and male supremacy they share with Trump. I have no love for Reagan but can one imagine him cozying up to bully boys like Putin and Orban?
18
Ross - Let's attack this another way. There's a lot to dislike in the Democratic Party. But the present reality is that at this moment in our nation's history, only one party remains true to a version of American values. The Party of Donald Trump is fundamentally unAmerican. Donald Trump and the people who have adopted his values, would have sided with the British in 1776, the Confederacy during the Civil War and would have been neutral with Hitler (and probably would have sold him arms).
21
I voted Republican, conservative, for the bulk of my 50 plus years of visiting the voting booth. Trump is not a conservative. Trump is an amoral human being without any desire to do "what is right" for this once great nation..
The scary part is he received enough votes to be elected. We have serious problems.
298
If Trumpism had anything approaching intellectual honesty, maybe the idea that few papers or pundits outside of Fox support him would be a failure of intellectual diversiry.
But Trumpism is underthought at best - hey, let's start a trade war! Hey, let's make our friends irate and dictators friends! - and outright lies at worst-Mexico will pay for it! We'll have the best health plan ever! You'll get tired of winning!
Trumpism is indefensible because it is a mix of sops tossed at specific audiences, overblown and exaggerated as wins, while quietly the middle class is undercut, dismantled even. All in the name of populism. And it is festooned with lies. attacks, diversions and venal stupidity mixed with the kind of cruelty that makes its mastermind Steven Miller seem like an alien himself. The lizard kind.
I can handle other's politics. I am never-Trump because of the actual people in the administration and the sheer dearth of moral governance they embody.
4
For all the handwringing going on herein, never forget that the appalling Donald Trump would never even have occurred without the venal and duplicitous and inevitable Hillary Clinton running for the Democrats.
In a normal world, it would’ve/should’ve been Joe Biden vs. Jeb Bush (or similar) but the Democrat Party powers-that-be foisted Hillary on the nation and the Republican electorate recoiled instinctively and gave us The Donald.
Lousy election, huh.
6
@EGD
In a normal world, no Republican candidate would EVER publicly implore the Russian government to help him get elected by stealing U.S. data that might damage his opponent.
And in a normal world, the President would not be the candidate with 3M *fewer* votes than his opponent.
In a normal world, the President would not obviously lie about the size of his inauguration crowd.
In a normal world, the inauguration crowd would not be dwarfed next day by the largest assemblage in U.S. history of peaceful protesters against him.
STOP. LYING.
2
"A plague o' both your houses!"
Sorry, Mr. Douthat--and sorry, New York Times! But this assiduous plastering of LABELS on people--
--it baffles me.
Two thoughts occur to me.
(1) In graduate school, I had to read Thucydides. Boy! Tough stuff. And a phrase occurs every now and then:
TA DEONTA. "The things that are necessary."
As in--"you do the things that are NECESSARY." A job is waiting. A problem requires a solution. A crisis arises. You DO the job. You endeavor to SOLVE the problem. You try and DEFUSE the crisis. Et voila tout!
Which leads me directly to:
(2) The economic crash of ten years ago. President Bush had some interesting remarks.
Government intervention, he said, was required. That course of action--and he was pretty candid--was abhorrent to him. Conservative Republican as he was. BUT--
--the alternative was a major collapse on the order of 1929. The thing had to be done. It was required.
So--he did it.
I am not able, Mr. Douthat, to imagine myself asking myself, "Does this comport with a CONSERVATIVE view of American politics?" OR--
"Does this comport with a LIBERAL view of American politics?"
And then-- acting according to some preordained orthodoxy.
You do what has to be done.
Getting Mr. Trump's minions and enablers out of Congress I think might belong to TA DEONTA.
Getting Mr. Trump out of the White House--
--well, that too.
Maybe we'll have to wait till 2020 for that.
It can't come too soon!
2
Ross, are you serious? The current Conservative movement is one that embraces bigotry, misogyny, anti-immigration, climate change denial, a regressive tax code, tax avoidance, to say nothing of its willingness to remain silent and therefore enable murderers, cheats, villains, and those who would tear down our democratic institutions. I am appalled by your naivete. You do know that among the first victims of authoritarian governments are intellectuals and the the high-minded elite, right? What Rubin and Boot share is a disgust with the corruption of the Republican party and its complete abdication to the forces of greed and its willing embrace of a never ending stream of lies, all in service of a morally corrupt president. If you need to kick Rubin and Boot to the curb, I'd say that your brand of Conservatism is nothing but extremist right-wing blather completely lacking any sort of center other than a hatred of abortion and taxes.
7
There is no way to "purge populism of its bigotries". They are part & parcel, peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin, joined at the hip. Populism = Bigotry, if not by definition, then by history, and in this fantasy Ross dreams of a world that never was and can never be.
4
It all means nothing. It is all air. The appalling inhumanity of Trump and his minions is a looming mountain. The mountain is a mirror of the dead souls of men and women who give up their integrity and conviction to follow an ill begotten attack on the idea of a democratic republic. More so, these minions and their demigod, half man and half devil, lead an assault on the moral ideals and principles on which our civilization has been based.
17
Ross, does this portend a Newt Gingrich or Ted Cruz return to the liberal fold they were weaned upon?
These closet liberals masquerading as died in the wool conservatives can breath a sigh of relief. A book or two titled “the simple truths” or “ my life in the closet” on the best seller list.
Never let a homecoming go to waste. Coming out is hard to wear around Halloween.
So a neoneoliberal is a neoconservative who has been mugged by reality?
Gotta say, as much as this reads like a subtle outing of RINOs by a conflicted conservative intellectual who recognizes how hostile the words "conservative" and "intellectual" have become in this climate of so-called populism (read: unwashed bigotry, and inferiority complexes masquerading as superiority complexes), I do like the conclusion.
Welcome home, self-identified intellectuals of the right. Leave the party that has no place for intellectuals and loudly boasts its ignorance. take up the causes of fiscally conservative budgeting, democracy promotion via regime change, and whatever your pet ideology is, and do it among fellow Democrats. It's a big, diverse tent, and here on this side of the aisle your college degree doesn't make you an elitist egghead to be ignored.
You were deluding yourself to believe you belonged with people so easily conned by Trump to believe he is one of them. You lent intellectual legitimacy to agitprop like Fox News because you thought you had allies. But now you know better, right? I can't say all your sins will be forgiven, but you can, like the late Dr. Krauthammer, at least go out with dignity by distancing yourselves from those with no shame whatsoever.
3
What about people who simply loathe Trump's morals, fear his personality-cult neo-fascism, cannot stand his incessant lying?
Or for that matter, are there any old-school Rockefeller Republicans out there? Had Rockefeller beat Nixon the entire history of the switch of the "Southern Democrats" might not have happened -- the Republicans might still be the party of Lincoln today.
Or sound-money Republicans? Any of those left, anybody over there who gives a dang about deficits as anything other than a farcical tool with which to lambaste Democrats ... when they inherit the catastrophes Republicans make?
But Ross, puleeze do not call the current Trumpismo "populist" ... though I know many do. Call it what it is: the white-people's party, or even the white male power party.
6
You’ve painted a portrait of conservatism with many different flavors and colors. But I see only two: the orthodox conservative who favors the interests of wealth, and where necessary, the application of American military power in the pursuit thereof. The other type is that of the republican base: racist. Almost all of the statements and actions of so-called conservatives can be reduced to these basic worldviews.
Liberals have their own faults and baggage. Their own dogmas that aren’t supported by evidence or logic. I guess that’s another subject.
There are of course, exceptions to every rule or stereotype. You are the best thinker and writer among Times’ columnists who self identify as “conservative”. Please continue to try to convince me that conservatism is something more. Perhaps by starting at basics, the philosophy of Edmund Burke.
5
@JFC...please expound on your 2nd paragraph. "Conservatives" will want to know what "illogical" dogma not to adopt when they "go left."
Conservatives return to "Our President," "Our Elected President" and "Our Commander-in-Chief" when one of theirs in is all the more repulsive given how they talk about Democratic presidents of any stripe at all. (None of those terms ever apply.)
2
Wshington Post does indeed have a regular columnist who is a cheerleader for Trump. That is the second of it's former GW Bush speechwriters: Marc "Torture Boy" Thiessen.
I would suggest that the problem for a newspaper wanting the diversity of having a pro-Trump columnist is that it is not possible to find one who is also intellectually coherent.
22
They also have Ed Rogers, who is less than coherent. Mr. Douthat omitted any reference to George Will who recently lamented the failure to confirm Merrick Garland as well as the deservedly declining respect for the institution known as the Supreme Court. Isn't Mr. Will a conservative by almost any reasonable understanding?
1
It is a serious error to confuse what is happening in the United States as a question of liberals vs. conservatives. It is fundamentally a matter of fighting to maintain respect for what this nation has fought and died for.
How can any remaining Republicans who have any sense of decency not realize what damage Trump is doing to their party? How can they stand idly by and watch everything they believe in as conservatives be trashed by Trump’s ignorance, massive lies and unending hatred ? Do they not realize that Republican leadership has foisted off on the American people an ignorant disgraceful criminal who thinks the US government is just a branch of his corrupt family businesses?
Any patrtiotic American including conservatives will vote against the Republicans in order to restore decency to our government. After a resounding defeat, perhaps a truly conservative Republican Party can be rebuilt.
10
A primer on the oh so many different ways to cause misery.
1
Why do you think labels, especially self-applied ones, matter all that much? Aren't they just sales pitch? Just as misleading as the logo on soup c ans? TG
4
Tax the wealthy.
Resurgence of " Robber Barons"
The richer one becomes alters the amount of compassion for the unwashed masses.....
Teachers , medical professionals other than Physicians , service workers, factory workers, on and on.
Two cars , two kids,One house no bigger than 1200 square feet on a .25 acre in a sleepy suburban town
Yup sooo wealthy and mostly dishonest and sociopathic these despots of greed are ;creating with Putin and his underling trump the 21 st century feudal system. If the earth falls apart they have their tunnels and private islands and planes.
Btw. The Saudi princes were just wandering tribal nomads before the West usurped their lifestyles and elevated radical wahabi chieftains.
12 Saudis= 9/11/01
So we sell them weapons.
We have lost our collective mind after being invaded and then invading the wrong country for Cheney ;going to the dark side.
Cannot wait .... I mailed in my ballot..... I am republican , white, professional and college educated pro life with choice and control of my own self. No man rules for us anymore. End our wars
Vote. I went straight democratic.
It feels so good to move forward and know once for all time if our grand experiment failed.
2
I was on the advance team for Bob Dole and I went to the college you went to, Ross - so don't discount my words as liberal ranting:
You're going to the mat supporting a 6-time bankrupt, philanderer who bribes his donors with tax cuts he paid for by irresponsibly exploding the deficit - who exhorts his followers to hate people who disagree with them and show that hatred through violence - who says he's a fan of conspiracy theorists who torture families of murdered children - who flatters neo-Nazis by calling them fine people - who worships brutal dictators while insulting allies who fought side by side with our veterans - who separates thousands of babies and children from their families and houses them in tents and cages, but waxes eloquent about the unborn.
I can respect, just a little bit, when someone says they support Trump because they make so much money that his tax cuts really do impact them. Why? Because at least they're being honest. But I absolutely cannot respect someone who pretends to stake any kind of moral high ground from backing this man. Not at all.
408
@common sense advocate
Great comment! Just one quibble ... Donald Trump has never waxed eloquent about anything in his life!
1
@common sense advocate This quote says it all about Trump: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -Voltaire
3
C Concerning “conservatives on Capitol Hill who are trying to forge a Trumpism-after-Trump that genuinely serves working-class families instead of just starting racially charged feuds”, I don’t doubt many Republican say this because they crave the working-class vote. The reality is all these politicians have already caved in deeds if not in words to the Republican donor class and have already done much damage to the working-class with a tax bill primarily for the rich. I hope it is not possible to indefinitely screw the working-class and keep getting their vote. The Trump con of the working class only worked because he was perceived as new and different. I don’t believe it will work with a new political generation.
I agree if Conservatives are going to have a good debate, they need to turn more reasonable, which also means more left. But not much will change until the donor class, who now writes a lot of the laws and conservative speeches is more controlled by popular will.
3
Trump is not and has never been an economic populist. Trump is a man without principle except graft and self promotion. To try to reconcile any conservatism from Kirk and Buckley to Goldwater or the Bushes and neocons to Trumpism, is a waste of time. Trump is like agent Smith in the second Matrix movie, you either resist or become Trump. It is interesting to watch people like Erickson and Dreher submit as they never had any actual political philosophy, just a set of anger grievances. Trump has made that manifest.
148
@S. Mauney You find it interesting to watch Dreher and Erickson? Nauseating is more like it.
I'm curious. Does the post Trump right believe that it will be back to business as usual once Trump is gone? That all they'll need to do is a little tweaking?
For a lot of Americans who take democracy and the rule of law seriously, who expect elected officials to treat their oath of office as a promise, who find lying on an industrial scale offensive, support for Trump, even grudging, is an indelible stain that is not going to be washed away.
A few policy papers that add "coherence and intellectual ballast" is not enough to make up for the years where they didn't forcefully speak out against Trump's attacks on democratic norms.
The trade evangelicals and other religious conservatives made of any claim to moral authority for more conservative judges is irreversible.
So go ahead and write the policy papers, and tone down the Trumpian appeals to hate, maybe propose something that helps someone in the 99%, try to develop an immigration policy where putting brown children in cages is not a central theme.
I don't care. Almost every Republican politician eventually threw in with an emotionally unstable, corrupt, anti-democracy, authoritarian. 40 years wandering the political desert may be enough time to come back from that.
But until then #NeverRepublican.
7
What is Conservative? It's a label -- an alias really -- adopted by Republicans whenever they want to be seen as Very Serious Persons.
3
Let me sort this out for you. The Republican Party was the party that represented rich people. That had been its only job since 1877 when it stopped being the Party of Lincoln and returned to its Whig roots. After WWII, Republicans began recruiting a base of voters with appeals to racism and a variety of God, gays, and guns nonsense and used their votes to cut taxes for rich people. Claiming they were conservative was like saying they were pro-life. The plan worked well until Donald Trump showed up, and it became apparent that the people Republicans thought they were conning controlled the Party. The fundamental dynamic of American politics was thrown out of kilter, and Republicans with a sense of decency had to work out a new place for themselves. We are still in the middle of that process. Pundits like Mr. Douthat and the people he cites are just talking to themselves trying to put labels on the chaos. Max Boot has the right idea: the only fix is for decent Americans to put the Republican Party out of business and then see what new structure we can build. Sadly, Democrats lack the competence to jump in and fill the void.
2
Liberal? Conservative? Maybe it's time to pull these labels out of a hat instead of desecrating the last 200+ years of political tradition. For example, running up a huge tax debt should cost Trump his conservative credentials unless his real plan is to "starve the beast", once and for all. But then, how will the next generation get value for its taxes. "No taxation without representation" presupposed responsible representatives. Why did our ancestors bother to fight for independence when a president like Trump would come along some day and sell their descendants into slavery.We'll have to redefine patriotism after this president and his party are done trampling on the concept.
4
I'm having a similar problem to Ross. In fact I was thinking about it a day or two before this column appeared. What to call the various nasty competing strains he writes about. I know "conservative" let's say is far more benign a term than is justified for the damage being caused. But reactionary while more contemptuous and maybe more accurate really feels like it is being imported from a previous time. Something more vivid, accurate and more current to the particular viscous nature of these movements needs to be come up with.
I think the same is true of the Democrats. But there is something particularly ugly about the world Ross and his clashing buddies want to create that needs to be defined more accurately and sharply.
2
According to Gallup in 2017 42% of Americans identified as "Independent", 29% as Democrats, 27% as Republicans. Where is the "Independent" (my) voice heard? Certainly not on the "Opinion" (and plurality of "News" stories that are in fact opinion masquerading as "news."
I have two takeaways:
1. Each "mainstream" political party at best represents 1/4 of the American electorate. I say "at best" since even party members frequently hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils.
2. The "Independents" have no political voice as it is
uniformly suppressed by the media - both MSM and digital.
This is unfortunate because IMHO the Independents are the Citizens who are most rational and most willing to find real solutions for problems. Of course factual (rather than hysterical) elucidation of the rationale and persuasion of the need for change doesn't generate "clicks." Sad
2
Well, a Douthat column I can understand.
First, let's not forget that all of these #Never Trumpers, many of whom were named in the column, are just that: Never Trumpers.
They are NOT Never Trump Republicans and will accept a Trump contaminated GOP if it were helmed by, say, a Mitt Romney or a John Kasich.
All of these "Vote Democratic in 2018 or die" Republicans simply want to use Democrats as stalking horses to get rid of Trump so they can bring back the Party of Reagan.
Proof? None of these Never Trumpers support the Democratic agenda, yet they want the Democrats to take power in 2018.
The problem is the failed, reactionary ideology known as conservatism, regardless of who embraces it.
Now, will Douthat also support liberal college students who object to the likes of Milo Y or Steve Bannon or Richard Spencer coming onto their campuses under the guise of calling themselves "conservative"?
1
Ross. As usual you have it completely wrong. ‘Real’ Conservatives do not support Trump! Real conservatives believe in fiscal responsibility. Real conservatives believe in decency and modesty. Real conservatives believe in an American-led world order. When will Republicans get a clue? Why are you so eager to abandon your ideals, and principles, at the alter of Populism and Authoritarianism?
3
If Trumpism is the definition of what a conservative stands for, then I fear for your country. Conservatives had principles, Trump and his idolaters don't. They may implement certain fiscal measures and appoint ultra conservative judges, but that doesn't make them conservatives. The blatant racism and nativism, for example, are not a conservative policies as near as I can tell. Otherwise you wouldn't have attracted the tens of thousands extraordinarily bright and energetic people that you did.
1
And what will you call yourself, Mr. Douthat . What do you now believe in ? I you think Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot, to name just two respected columnists among many, are no longer Conservatives, then I have to assume that you believe that "real conservatives" must be trump denizens . Is that what defines you now ?
What happened to your fiscal conservatism, to your free trade beliefs, to your moderation on the subject of immigration ? What defines your ideology or your ideals, besides what I believe to be your opposition to women's right to choose ?
You seem to join those who lament the lack of pro-trump columnists in the Nation's major newspapers . There seems to be a reason for that : no self respecting pundit, conservative or liberal can find it in her or himself to drink trump's nauseating Koolaid . For those who can, there's always fox news .
Or are you prepared to take up that mantle yourself ? Please, Ross, say it ain't so .
2
Folks like Stephens or wehner have something against Trump personally while wallowing in the same sty of racism and self important selfish privilege. Others like bruni or kristof would object to being called conservative, while in fact embracing a white agenda that is anti black (e.g. endorsing the racism of the odious Charles Murray). Still others, like most of the white South, are merely Republicans by convenience-- their bedrock principle being racism regardless of party label. That douhatt converted to the conservative camp remains astounding, as if the Israelites had marched from the desert back to Egypt.
2
Ross, it’s time to put your critical thinking cap on in a new angle. What is/was conservatism? Balanced budged? Caring for our poorest citizens in a way that accelerates their path out of poverty? Allowing market forces to decide winners in commercial ventures? Serving as a “shining city” example of democracy? Those are my conservative ideals. Perhaps yours are similar.
But then, who among the names you mention is espousing conservative values and behaviors?
You are wrestling with labels—right/left, liberal/conservative, Christian/agnostic —as if these are the critical issues. Those in power too often use the cover of the label to justify any action. Trump or McConnell calling themselves “conservatives” doesn’t make it so. Priests that abuse children are not Christians. Jennifer Rubin or George Will calling out the sham of the pretenders does not negate their conservatism, it affirms it.
We are defined by our deeds, not the labels we claim.
5
So, just what is a conservative?
How about fiscal conservatives? I have my money and don't want it spent on anybody else. If they're poor, that's their fault.
Social conservatives? I have my money and don't want it spent on anybody else. If they cannot afford food or a doctor, just let them die.
Political conservatives? I have my money and don't want it spent on anybody else. If they're not rich, they shouldn't get to vote.
Socialist? We all need to take care of everybody, rich and poor.
Is there never to be something in between?
2
Many neverTrumpers have spoken about where they fit now in the political spectrum and what will become of them if Trump’s hold on the GOP continues to deform the conservative principles which used to define it. Some have officially withdrawn from the party and are now independents. Nicole Wallace calls herself a “recovering Republican” as if she has embraced a twelve-step program.
We liberals are exhausted from resisting each day’s new Trump abomination. In a week we stagger from revelations about Trump’s family’s lifelong corruption in NYT’s epic investigation, to the sight of the president of the United States mocking a brilliant professor who he had previously called credible, to the busing of immigrant kids in the dead of night to tents in the desert, to POTUS cravenly pretending he had the permission of this nation to apologize to a scornful partisan SCOTUS nominee of whom the majority of the population disapproves, to Trump basically ignoring the UN’s climate report, to the bizarre meeting with a nearly incoherent Kanye West while bodies were being collected in the Florida panhandle and desperation was growing, to his lack of a conscience in his response to the Saudi murder of an American resident and WAPO reporter.
Ross, can you guys and we guys turn towards a common goal and work together? Can we not just for this one moment in history join together to bring down this vile president who is eroding our freedoms, our rights, our democracy and all things decent?
6
Ross, you #NeverTrump conservatives have been wandering a political desert prior to November 2016, and still don't know where to go.
There's no reason to think that the GOP, which is indeed the Party of Trump, will embrace any of you any time soon. Why any of you would ever want to return, even post-Trump, is another question.
So, you can remain a small but ineffective and maligned faction.
Or you can become independents and know that you won't be aligned with any powerful group.
And, finally, you can do the unthinkable, and put your weight behind the party that really can oppose Trump. So is it going to be #NeverTrump or #NeverDemocrats?
3
As some commenters are pointing out, "conservatism" in this country has never been free of racism; it always justified straying from its 'principles' in terms of the post-war power of the Democrats; and it was always ready to justify war anytime, anyplace as anti-communism.
So how did conservatives govern? After economically raping its voters for decades through the financialization of the economy, Republicans bamboozled them with calls to hatred -- of blacks, Latins, uppity women, pregnant women, and immigrants. The greatest delusion the GOP sold is that knowledge and expertise are a plot to take away their god-given right to be ignorant and poor.
Meanwhile, what I call the dinner table Republicans in Washington and New York, spoke more mildly, apologized more profusely, and decliamed more loudly the principles their Party was actually transgressing. So, papers like the NYT and the Post were able to pretend there was a Republican Party of principled conservatives when really there hasn't been anything but a donor-financed cabal out to destroy any impediment to their exercise of power in their own interests.
3
Churchill: Some men abandon their party for the sake of their party: others their principles for the sake of their party. (Just as true today).
1
"Op-ed pages should seek intellectual diversity, including Trump-supporting diversity" ...
Exactly what is learned or cerebral about anything that Trump says or tweets? And, do you seriously think that our nation's newspapers need to devote any space to, or, support repetitions of .. "Lock her up" .. "Lock her up"?
Conservatism has devolved to a sad, twisted parody of its former self, and, as the recent Kavanaugh hearings showed, its adherents are largely proud of it.
5
When I got to the paragraph where you referenced Sam Tanenhaus, who is talking to conservative on Capital Hill who are genuinely trying to forge a post Trumpism that genuinely serves working class families, I thought I was having a brain shower.
When did any Republican, starting with Reagan, do anything that did not hurt, let alone help working class families?
If it was meant as satire, leave it to Gail Collins, who knows how to do it.
3
This is such a confused column. It is confused because it has no basis/context in anything conservative that was recognizable before Trump won the Electoral College vote and became a minority president.
It does not derive a post-Trumpian "conservatism" from libertarian or free-market economic liberalism, nor from a limited-government Goldwaterism, nor from an American-led global pax a la Ronald Reagan. Trump is not a Republican or a conservative in any meaningful, established sense of the word. That is the source of the confusion. Trump is called a "populist," a word derived from the Latin word for "people." His political program is nationalist, which taken to an extreme is fascism, a political anomaly driven to action by emotional attachment to one's own race and traditions and characterized by mandatory loyalty to the chief and rampant coercive manipulation of the population.
Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, George Will, Steve Schneider, William Kristol, the Bush family, John McCain, Mitt Romney,
John Kasich--a roster of top leadership in the GOP--are not Trumpians. They are an honor list of conservatives. Where they go, American conservatism goes. Add to that list the Republican leaders of the CIA and FBI and DoJ who have been repudiated by the president. Get my drift?
We have a rogue administration and it is headed in an ultra-nationalist direction. Most Americans know this and resist.
1
I have always been a big tent Democrat, and although I disagree with Ross on so much, I welcome his support--or at least his antagonism against our mutual enemy. If Ross must needle straw-man versions of progressive arguments now and then to work things out, carry on! At least Ross doesn't sound totally full of it most of the time. Plus he writes well about television. You should do that more often. I liked those forays in your pre-Trump days, Ross. What do you think about Stranger Things, anyway?
"... only immigration limits and a different skills mix will promote assimilation and solidarity, and forestall class division and racial conflict, in the nations of the West."
How short-sighted. The history of immigration in this country has been one of nativists fostering class division and racial conflict about immigrants, then assimilation by immigrants' children and beyond - re: Irish, Eastern Europeans, Germans, Italians, Jews, Asians, and so on. Oh, and don't forget, the skill they usually brought with them was low wage labor.
1
Ross I generally enjoy your columns, but this one has me laughing. Only in present-day America would "populism" come to include trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich, and massive deregulation that almost solely helps giant corporations.
3
" ... if most of your conservative columnists are hostile to a Republican president, that tells you something about his flaws ... " Gee, ya think? As an Independent voter who considers myself a fiscal conservative and social moderate, I find all this Hatfield/McCoy bickering between the left and right disgusting. The goal for both major parties seems to be to "win" (definition: one more vote in Congress) by embarrassing the other side. The current holders of power, the Republicans, have no qualms about abusing that power, notably the Judge Garland fiasco led by Mr. McConnell. And who now, BTW, seems to believe a SCOTUS nominee in the next presidential election year will have hearings and a vote (since it will be a Republican president). I am reminded of a famous political question: "Have You No Sense of Decency?"
1
Jennifer Rubin is a bona fide conservative, since she is actually striving to CONSERVE something, namely our institutions and traditions that have already made America great long before Trump came along with his MAGA meme.
4
Mr. Douthat:
One of your better columns, although you still manage to avoid some obvious truths. Perhaps because your soul-searching has not yet arrived at that point of acceptance. Maturity is a painful process and false idols are not easily abandoned.
Perhaps there remains some solid core of conservatives in this country. If so, where have they been? Rock ribbed, yet sensible people of principle. You know, like perhaps, an Everett Dirksen or maybe a Howard Baker. Honest Luddites. Still, men willing to concede the constitutional intent of compromise.
It seems to me that the conservatives you talk of here may be a figment of your imagination. If not, why do they not stand for them? True conservatives are in a crisis of conscience right now. In many ways they and liberals have much in common. I believe that all of what we call America
can be summed up in one word: decency. Would you call our current state one that honors that concept?
It is time for you and the conservatives you write of to decide that your principles are being trampled on by the current political climate. You had best turn left because there is nothing for people of decency in the G.O.P.
This country is in a moment of extreme historical crisis. It grows more obvious day by day. Enough obfuscation, sir. Insanity rules the day. You know it. When are you going to
acknowledge it openly? Which side are you on?
1
The president and his policies are simply indefensible on the merits. Accordingly I have yet to see a defense of the president that could on its own merits qualify for publication on the editorial pages of this paper or the Post. A post-Trump Trumpism that is genuinely populist and no longer racist would by necessity disavow the entirety of the present Trump Republican scheme. They would provide better and cheaper health care to everybody. They wouldn't kill Social Security and Medicare. They would stop violating the voting rights of black Americans. They would agree on a humane immigration plan. They would undo the tax cuts that only helped the rich. In short, they would be Democrats.
7
This obsession with labeling or branding isn't worth much. It's rather like children choosing up sides on the playground. Look at the issue in front of you and reason it out. It's never about the author, only the writing.
1
This is gobbledegook.
Behind the clouds of pseudo-academic jousting, "conservatism" has long been and meant one thing: Economic inequality, rule of the Money, a modern form of the medieval society of corrupt Barons idling in the castles whilst the rest of us slave in the fields like Serfs.
10
Your comment "thinkers and writers who basically accept the populist turn, and whose goal is to supply coherence and intellectual ballast, to purge populism of its bigotries and inject good policy instead" leaves me incredulous.
Conservative like you Ross, usually pride themselves in their pragmatic realism. The Populism that is behind Trump is founded upon emotional distaste for those outside their tribe and has no interest whatsoever in intellectual consistency or sound policy. The "movement" is really a tribal temper tantrum (funded and focused by moneyed interests). It is only when the tantrum has run its course, or been confronted with serious and debilitating consequences that the petulance turns into a remorseful "Oh I didn't know it meant this would happen, I was just upset". Reason and intellectual ballast are not in play, and I fear will not be until an extremely serious national trauma occurs.
5
As a subscriber to both the NYT and the Post, and a conservative, and a regular reader of Rubin's output, I must say that Mr. Douthat understates the case of Jennifer Rubin. She is virulently, obsessively anti-Trump, to be sure, but she has moved far beyond that. To judge from her own writings, she is now an active member of the left, and her views on most issues are such that they play far better on MSNBC than in a conservative forum.
She's entitled to that, and I have no objection to it. What annoys me and other conservatives is precisely that she has presented herself falsely as a conservative for far too long, with the acquiescence of the Post. She continues even now to present herself as "center right". That description only makes sense at the Post, or on MSNBC, two opinion sources that veer to the hard left.
@Uplands
There is no “hard left” in America.
There are still a few places in the world that have a “hard left”. You can go and learn the difference. Please do.
I am tired of the “hard ignorant”. Help me out here and go.
5
Conservative. Liberal. Neo- this. Post- that. Labels are not informative. Reading the ingredients listed on the label will tell you what you need to know.
5
We have watched the Republican party ooze progressively deeper into moral bankruptcy ever since Ike. Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan to Bush the Lesser to it's embrace of this Current Lowest Common Denominator of Sleazy Humanity. Have they finally bottomed out? Can there possibly be another step down from He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?
What do these "conservatives" stand for? Tax "reform" that transfers ever-increasing amounts of the national wealth to the pluto-corporatocracy while the majority of our citizens suffer economically? A "robust defense" that hegemonistic Chickenhawks use to attack and invade smaller countries that have committed no offense against and represent no threat to the US? Demonization of The Other, be they blacks, browns, LGBTQ's, immigrants, non-Xtians, "intellectuals"…? "Environmental" practices that befoul our water, make the very air itself unbreathable, super-charge climate change, destroy croplands?
(R)egressive "intellectual" columnists like Douthat and Brooks toss large bowls of word salad at us but never address the reality that the lettuce is rotten and that the America of Yore that they so revere never actually existed for much of our citizenry.
Principled writers like Rubin didn't leave the republican party. It's that our current political spectrum, which has slid so far right that Dems shamefully offer up Clintons as Progressive candidates, has changed all the labels.
5
We are in the midst of a short-term “...boom...” fueled by an explosion, increased government spending of the deficit and unsustainable tax cuts. Inflation is here, the Market is nervous, farmers in North Dakota just harvested soybeans that they have no place to sell, having put all their eggs in the China basket.
Interest rates are rising. The real estate market is slowing.
We have seen this before and it is not going to end well.
And as some other poster said- the GOP is the WMP-the White Man’s Party.
1
How unintentionally ironic that a columnist can finally convince his readers not to listen to his ilk, but to think for themselves!
At least it worked for me!
Regardless of what or how you think, just make sure you vote.
2
Focusing on labels is a deflection. The self-described conservatives are leveling legitimate criticism at the Trump Administration. How we choose to describe them is irrelevant.
Of course, the Right Wing Trump supporters are not looking for accuracy is how we identify people, they want to re-identify these conservative critics so they can simply be dismissed as closet liberals, #NeverConservative.
2
This column reads like one of those all-too-common staged surrenders by supposed conservatives these days. The following was particularly nonsensical: "Trumpism-after-Trump that genuinely serves working-class families instead of just starting racially charged feuds". Trumpism is clearly not about working-class families. It's about misleading those families while serving a different master. I don't think those working families aren't dumb, although will have to see what happens with an important early test re the Trumpism project in just a few weeks now.
128
Your ideas on the directions never-Trump conservatives will end up going are interesting, but I want to make a simpler point.
The dearth of Trump-supporting conservative columnists at mainstream papers like the Post (and indeed, the Times) follows from the simple fact that serious journalists, including columnists, think for a living. That pretty much rules out being enthusiastic for Trump.
This strikes me as a follow-on to Trump's inability to get newspaper endorsements during the 2016 election, for the same reason: persons who work at newspapers tend on balance to be well informed and thoughtful.
Take a gander at this Wikipedia article on 2016 endorsements: https://tinyurl.com/z89fp79
Every major newspaper in the country either endorsed Clinton (most), opposed Trump (a few), or withheld an endorsement (some). Only two papers endorsing Trump had circulations over 100,000. Even "conservative" papers opted for Clinton.
Sadly, the anti-intellectual Trumpists wear these realities as a badge of honor. That bodes ill for the immediate future, does it not?
16
True. Most Trump supporters look upon anyone who holds a post graduate degree as either being suspicious, or worse, their enemy for that fact alone.
2
I love this piece. The foremost unwritten point of agreement between writer and reader is that political identification is tribal and of primal religion-level importance. Are you conservative or neo-conservative? Neo-conservative or neo-libertarian?
Wow. No end in sight folks...
Look, political affiliations are models, and models are tools of guidance. One's affiliation should tell others "this is how will think things through" - full stop. When we take it to the limit of "you can't call yourself conservative because you voted for x" things get counterproductive.
No political model can be applied to successfully run a democracy or republic. William F. Buckley would routinely acknowledge the imperfection of both conservatism and liberalism. We need to stop trying to make world succumb to our beliefs and allow the world to inform them.
1
Republicans are not conservatives anymore because the policies they support don’t help the majority of Americans . Their policies simply allow the wealthy to get richer at the expense of the middle class while eliminating regulations that now drown us through climate change. Nothing conservative or patriotic or long term with this government.
They are the takers leading us down a dystopian soylent green path.
7
I could never understand how the Republican party was a single party with the very large differences between the fiscal conservative and the social conservatism. Mr. Douthat assumes the party will never collapse back into a single unified party. I suggest they were never unified except to gain power.
Since the Democratic party is moving more progressive there is more than enough room for previous Republicans to join and gain some measure of sanity against the Trump hate policies.
I now live in a red state. Seeming up close the policies of the Republican party I can't see this radical lurch to stay that way forever. Take taxation. The state here is gaining population very fast. Infrastructure is bursting due mainly to the hate Republicans have for any tax increase. Schools suffer, teachers suffer with below poverty wages, government workers get no increases and are paid way below a wage where someone can live even a modest life. I don't see how this can continue.
9
Charleston Yank.....to paraphrase Golda Meir, taxation and reality willcome when the Confederates start loving their children more than they hate liberals.
Sad.
12
It is very easy to fault Trump for all of his personal and stylistic faults and to want more of a class act to stand as our foremost national leader. That said, the Trump presidency has largely debunked the notion that Trump would not govern as a conservative. And the notion that Trump's alleged nationalism is anti-conservative is largely a progressive talking point designed to drive a wedge into the Republican voter base.
Trump's alleged nationalism, encapsulated in the MAGA catch phrase, primarily manifests itself on two issues important to conservatives: immigration and trade. Putting aside ideology for a moment, those are two issues in which America has been a sap, striking disadvantageous trade deals and allowing the world's poverty to crawl and float across our borders and right onto our entitlement rolls. The interests of our country have been too easily ignored on both of those fronts.
Trump has fought for genuinely conservative nominees to the Supreme Court, brought about the corporate tax and state tax deductibility reform we have needed for years, pulled us out of misguided and borderline illegal international agreements, pursued a relentless deregulation agenda, and would have repealed Obamacare but for gutless Senate RINOs. Even his trade initiatives have won important concessions and likely would have gotten more if foreign governments were not free to slow-walk him while awaiting the outcome of the mid-terms. Conservatism is winning under Trump.
5
@AR Clayboy
I suppose it is true that conservatism is “winning” in some respects. But my God, at what cost. I hear Trump supporters acknowledge that he violates every ethical and moral standard that they were brought up to honor. What are they thinking? Are a few pieces of gold all that their Self respect is worth?
18
@andrew I spent most of my working career practicing law in DC, including two stints as the head of an agency. During that period, I came to expect very little on any front from elected officials. Trump is an extreme, but we in the conservative movement have suffered too long under gutless RINOs who compromised our agenda whenever faced with the slightest hint of disapproval from the progressives at the Times and Post.
No matter who won the 2016 election we were going to have a wildly unpopular narcissist with an unusual relationship with the truth as our President. I would prefer one pursuing our agenda and keeping Sanders, Pelosi, Shumer and Warren away from anything important to the future of the country.
@AR Clayboy...you're right...moral/social hypocrisy across the board; facilitating tax evasion for the plutocracy (the true elitists), while exploding deficits---all cloaked in "fiscal responsibility"; reckless deregulation and trade wars to the point of idiocy, highlighting, once again, willful ignorance where history is concerned; attempting to reinterpret unambiguous wording of the Constitution, while pretending to be its purist keeper..........
Yep, it all sounds like pretty stock "conservatism" to me, too.
2
The never Trump neo cons have captured Trump. But the original Russia stole the election non sense that the never Trump people have pushed since the Clinton campaign has brought nothing but embarrassment. The Democratic establishment's forcing Clinton onto the ballot was probably one the most important issues of the Trump campaign. The never Trump crowd did not expect Trump to win and so a lot of embarrassing things were left hanging which a Clinton victory could have buried. But there is no doubt that Trump and Kushner are about as greedy as possibly be imagined. They are shameless rip offs. But these Republicans think Trump is just swell.
5
Conservatism has a clear meaning: a desire to preserve the patterns and structures of society, an unwillingness to embrace reform for fear of the unwitting harm reform could cause. All coupled with a respect for country and religiously inspired values. By these standards Trump and his supporters are not conservatives, as Orwell pointed out if we allow those in power to redefine the language, we facilitate wholesale oppression.
37
Conservatives used to represent caution. But since Reagan, the movement has represented a drift from simple caution to unfounded hatred of government. It was government that created the water and sewer monopolies that delivered clean water and ended water born diseases (by and large). It was government that surveyed the west, built dams and generally made commerce possible. But a legion of folks took over conservatism with the peculiar belief that we can do away with government - and even if we can't, we don't have to pay for it. Now we have Trump - whose really deplorable followers cheer empty promises - that everything will get better if we remove all regulations and so on.
It won't get better.
But it is easier to win cheers by telling lies than being honest that things are complex.
87
It seems that the real criterion for determining whether one is a true conservative these days, is whether one agrees with the person labeling. If you say what I like, then you're a conservative; if not, you're not. It strikes me that far too many who self-identify as conservative are merely low tax and pro-Trump: no other principles need cloud their thinking.
15
All of this raises the question: What is the purpose of America?
The purpose of America is to make money for it's sponsors. The first sponsors were governments who wished to exploit it's resources. The second wave were plantation and large businesses who exploited slaves and immigrant labor to build personal fortunes. The third wave are large corporations who exploit international labor while impoverishing America worker to enhance Wall Street driven profitability. Both the Democrat and Republican parties support this model of industrial control.
The forth wave is Trumpism--economic nationalism--is to make the economic profit machine which is America serve all Americans. It is an idea whose time has come.
1
@Michael Dowd Your point is fine in principle but does not hold water in reality. If everything must be made in the USA then the prices will rise substantially on all the goods each American buys. That means there will be less money in each American's pocket to buy other things they want/need. The economy will slow down, unemployment will rise and people will not be able to buy the things they need. Yes, in the short term, as DJT has done, by lowering taxes that puts additional money in American's pockets, but at what cost to our long term health; huge deficits just as interest rates are rising. The American "ship" is headed for a huge iceberg under the current economic policies that you and the GOP embrace. And it will be Main Street Americans who will get hurt; not the Wall Street titans.
1
@Michael Dowd, Interesting concept except for the face that deregulating environmental controls while pulling out of the Paris Climate Change Treaty (the only counry in the world to be so foolish) and supporting the absurd notion of clean coal is only accelerating the effects of climate change. Leaving America holding the bag for billions (and trillions in the next decade) of tax payer dollars that our grifter in chief (as well as his crony son-in-law) are not paying. Guess that makes the average American and our entire country a heck of a lot poorer in the long run.
1
Just as Eisenhower feared, the GOP has been sliding away from the conservatism that long-defined American Exceptionalism for decades now. Richard Nixon's southern strategy tied a neo-Confederate horse to the electoral wagon. The wildly spendthrift Ronald Reagan decoupled the GOP from fiscal responsibility. Newt Gingrich in personal immorality and dicey domestic policy, George W. Bush in foreign policy, and Dick Cheney in his attacks on basic decency -- i.e. torture -- all did their parts pulling the GOP away from conservatism. The issue is not whether today's GOP is conservative; it's the irony of Republicans deluding themselves identifying with a term -- conservatism -- that has nothing to do with the radical state-sponsored corporate welfare agenda that is their party's. The best analogy to today's GOP is Argentinian "conservatism" since Peron, more a flag to wave than a set of defining principles. It's no accident that today's Republicans so abhor flag-burning. A party without ideas, motivated by greed, special interests, and expediency, still needs symbols to rally behind. The flag makes a good one, given that it helps sell military hardware at the same time.
33
I think that what Ross is really saying is that without the race-baiting, there is nothing left of the Republican Party.
That's surely true, and is obvious to those within the Republican party and those without. I have been told many times by red state Republicans that the Republican Party is "the white man's party". The Republicans learned a long time ago that their policies aren't popular, and will not win them elections. So they turned to race-baiting. And it has worked out very well for them.
42
@expat london There would always be the religious conservative, demanding government follow his/her dogma.
2
@gusii True, but they aren't mutually exclusive - the American religious conservative adopted white supremacy many, many years ago.
I need a refresher on what ANY conservative believes. How about a manifesto, Ross?
Most of what I THINK conservatives believe seems untethered to reality. No, trickle down economics doesn't work. The 2nd Amendment does not permit unlimited ownership of weapons. Deficits DO matter. Gays are entitled to the same rights as other Americans. Regulations are important for a civil and just society.
Etc.
141
You are correct. What are those conservative “ideas”? None have worked. Instead of absurd pontificating Ross need to call the R’s in power what they are. A far right race-based plutocratic religious cult. It seems like he’s OK with the religious part so he won’t fully condemn the dire threat we are facing.
1
The never-Trump people generally never advocate for a democrat-led alternative. They aren't democrats, and they aren't of the left. They don't vote democrat in state and local elections, and generally support those republicans in congress who support Trump.
They are generally against Trump the man, but the distance between them and most of the Republican party is, from a democratic perspective, negligible.
They might be trying to turn the left into their image, since they failed with their compatriots who supported Trump, but this is a schism, and only a of a very small minority, of the right. The vast majority of people who identified as Republican before Donald Trump came on the scene, support Trump.
The question might be why do these newspapers spend so much print on people who no one listens to? Who don't have strong support from any side. Who are, politically, pretty close to being irrelevant. Somewhat like the Green Party in America, not in policy, but in just not really mattering.
A small few percentage points who will continue to support the Republican party for just about anything, but might, and might is a key word, abstain when it comes to Trump.
They aren't in play, and they don't drive the Republican party car. They are in the back seat of a party that is telling them to shut up but they aren't leaving the car, just complaining about the driver.
For all of these columnists- what is their point? cause to me it looks pointless. They don't matter.
8
@Edward Brennan
The Republicans are "fighting like marrieds."
1
Conservatism, whether pre-Trump, during the Trump era, or post-Trump will always be associated with and beholden to the nation’s economic elites. To suggest that working class American families will “genuinely” be served in some future period by the philosophical soldiers for corporate and plutocratic tax cuts, the weakening or elimination of our social safety net, and the reduction of non-military, discretionary expenditures in the federal budget is profoundly disingenuous. The “conserve” in conservatism is to conserve the economic standing, and accompanying political power, of the wealthiest amongst us. It is that simple.
43
Thanks Ross.
I did read the Time article and my conclusion?
Welcome to the establishment wing of the Democratic Party.
If you want to rebrand it as a new movement being embraced by the enlightened conservatives who are tired of the past 40 years of GOP greed and hate and divisiveness , I'm all for it.
It will make America a better country and that's all we want anyway.
If you need volunteers, this old registered Independent (formerly registered GOP) will wait by the phone for your call.
31
If Ross wants to join the Democratic wing, then he needs to get on board with progressive taxation, expansion of union representation, universal healthcare, expansion of social security by taxing all income equally, a societal wide economic revolution in green energy aimed at an end to fossil fuel use, a living wage for all workers, a tax on all financial transactions on Wall Street, re-establishing Glass-Stiegel, a return to strong anti-trust and anti-monopoly enforcement, full voter franchisement, the protection of civil rights for all Americans, residents, and visitors, and a myriad of other positions. He is welcome to support, but he should have no expectation that he can just walk in, make demands, and expect the Democrats to comply. He is more than welcome to go save his own party.
3
Ross you are confusing conservatism with republicanism. It's that simple. One can be a conservative while opposing most of what Trump says and does. For example when has conservative ism ever been defined by populism in the trumpian sense? Conservatism is not necessarily what Republicans do, it's what conservatives do. If Trump and his followers, including Congress, pass budget- busting spending bills, does that mean that conservatism does not concern itself with fiscal responsibility? I don't think so. It is the party of trump that that needs a new label, not Max Boot, George Will's and their ilk.
31
Wow. You really don't get it. Splitting hairs over who and what is a conservative while the world burns, the oceans rise, and the air we breath extinguishes us epitomizes the inability of the entire spectrum of conservatism to address the one issue where "conserving" would actually make a difference. The world the post-Trump right will inherit is not a world their grandchildren will be able to live in. Conservatives. Yeah right.
163
The signers of that petition certainly have a point. I have never seen such a marked change in political opinion as I have in the columns of Jennifer Rubin over the past year or two. Change very much for the best.
The signers claim that the Washington Post is being dishonest in how they describe Rubin's political stance.
But to champion Donald Trump and honesty at the same time is the height of hypocrisy.
39
Oh come on, people. The Post regularly runs glorified RNC press releases penned by Marc Thiessen, Ed Rogers, and that Ohio publisher guy. They are all unapologetically pro-Trump, which refutes the petition being discussed here; and whatever crass surface ugliness they display, they're also on board with a core deregulatory, theocratic, militaristic agenda that I'm sure Douthat would embrace. The spectrum of "conservative" opinion now ranges from the same business-as-usual agenda that has existed since at least the Reagan years, to now-overt manifestations of Lee Atwater's racist strategy that was implicitly embraced by GHW Bush -- in other words, not very far at all. Whether, and how much, one tut-tuts along the way is a difference of degree but not of kind.
89
Confusing disdain with DT for lack of a "true" conservative position is simplistic. Does populism mean to lack civility?
6
Trumpism after Trump? Please, no! We don't need any kind of Trumpism at all. And if Douthat thinks today'politicians who are going along with with Trump are true conservatives, he is definitely on the wrong path. These "conservatives" whose tax plan is creating a huge deficit, who are making a mockery of the dignity of Congress and the presidency, and whose twisted rhetoric tries to define its opposition as radicals, are not truly conservatives. They have chosen expediency over wise guidance of our civil government. I salute Rubin, Boot, Steve Schmidt, and many others who have opposed Trump on all fronts. They are today's political heroes.
25
"Reaganite Trump-skeptics who hate the president's temperament but have been pleasantly surprised by his judicial appointments and tax cuts."....Conservatives? Trump tax cuts? What a joke. Maybe someone should tell them that tariffs are nothing but a tax on consumers by a different name. As for Trump's great alleged tax cut that gave 85% to corporations, wait till people wake up and learn that next years budget deficit will be $1000 billion dollars. Conservative? Conservatives pay as they go. They are either not real conservatives, or they are really dumb.
26
Have you not noticed, Mr Douthat: we all agree Trump is not a conservative, and yet he chose, after flirting with the Democrats, to run as a conservative, and a sizeable chunk of the electorate went with him, and the Republicans, protest as they may, fell in behind him too. Why is that, you think? Why the Republicans, the party of personal responsibility, something Trump has not an iota?
After what they did to Clinton, a neo-liberal in sheep's clothing, even Trump, who wears ignorance as a virtue, was smart enough to know that even if Democrats were blind enough to bring him in, his past would preclude little more than a brief flameout. But on the Republican side, look at the role-call: Nixon, a crook, Reagan, who never underestimated how self-conscious the American public were about their role in the world and exploited it mightily, the W, who's ineptitude is only redeemed in comparison to Trump, now that's a pedigree one can latch on to, especially if one has no pedigree to speak of.
The Republicans have been open to Trump for a long while now, the question is, why did it take so long?
34
Is there something from Trumpism worth preserving? Trumpism though is not a set of policy initiatives, some good some bad with any coherence. It is basically a tactic of divisiveness, of inflaming a supporter base with slogans demonizing and excluding those that oppose whatever dimwitted policy rattles around Trump's loosely connected brain. And it is exploiting government institutions for personal benefit, an American version of Putinism.
Gerson, Rubin and Boot are not progressive liberals by any stretch, but they at least are intellectually honest and cannot remain so without being appalled at Trumpism. I am less certain of Brett Stephens, who for all his dislike of Trump seems willing to accept that some of the present Trump "triumphs" (like the tax cuts and Kavanaugh confirmation) are worth preserving and insistence that progressive Democrats are just as bad.
20
Today's conservatives are not conservatives or conservative. The GOP is not the party of business either. Nor is it the party of Lincoln. It lost that distinction when it welcomed in the Southern Dixiecrats in the mid 1960s. It used to be possible to be a conservative Democrat or a moderate Republican. Now one has to be completely in sync with the program to be accepted by either party although the Republicans are far more restrictive than the Democrats when it comes to accepting differences of opinion or diversity. In fact the Republicans are practicing their own form of elitism in who they accept, who they listen to, and who they help most.
I used to respect conservatives. I used to think that the GOP represented different but important views of and for Americans to reflect upon. But when a party consistently supports programs and enacts laws or changes rules to favor one group over every other one the way the GOP has I had to conclude that they don't represent most Americans. They have supported and enacted policies that hurt most of us, that allow businesses to cheat us, lie to us, and physically injure us while suffering no repercussions for these actions themselves.
The more they demonize those who differ with them the more they prove that they are not representing anyone but themselves. They can't even be bothered to listen to anyone but themselves. This is not public service. It's a travesty.
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@hen3ry
Dixiecrats voted for George Wallace, a classic southern Democrat segregationist running as an Independent, and Hubert Humphrey, a classic northern liberal in 1968; Nixon is ‘72 because George McGovern was way too Left for the electorate, and Democrat Jimmy Carter in ‘76.
Only Reagan and Bush Pete broke the spell for 12 years. Dixiecrats returned to Dems for two elections of Bill Clinton.
David Frum is another one. I think your analysis here is right.
Having agreed with the NeverTrumpers (including supporting Evan McMullin) all through the 2016 election, I'm surprised to find myself more and more won over by Trump. I'm a graduate student in economics who has never doubted Free Trade, but now I do. I no longer see globalization as inexorable. I see the virtues of nationalism and the human need for identity. I see, now, the unearned power of capital and how it works through the two major parties.
I'm not saying Trump's the guy to lead us into a worker's paradise. He's not. But he did smash the old paradigm and force a lot of us to step outside our ideological comfort zones. I don't think I'm ever going back.
5
@Tom Stringham Globalism came about because the goods being made in this country were not always of good quality. I bought a VW in the '70s because no American car could last more than a year or two without big problems. I now own Hondas. Same reason. A lot of why Americans no longer make stuff is because labor unions got huge concessions but lousy products!
4
@Tom Stringham You're come back to the globalization and free trade view once the next major war takes place which will require Americans' sons and daughters to go fight because of nationalism and all that it brings. Just read your history book and you'll see why WWI and WWII were started and nationalism was a major cause due to economic issues. I hope I am wrong, but history has already answered this question many times.
4
@Tom Stringham
And so, might means right? Have you lived outside the US? Or, are you ready to kick your neighbor to the curb as they do not have the ability to out-market you?
4
Ross is failing to understand what motivates the vast majority of American right-wingers. It's about tribe, not ideology or policy. This leopard changes its spots every single day. Big Government is only bad when they aren't governing. Hawkishness is only bad when they aren't the ones launching the invasions. Lobbyists are only bad when they aren't giving them money. States' rights are only to be respected when we're discussing red states and a blue white house. Deficits are only bad when Democrats are doing the spending. "Never Trumpers" don't leave the party. They criticize Trump a few times to get their names in the headlines, then they give up their "principles" and "convictions" and become Trumpers. It is possible that a few policy-minded politicians will align themselves with "left" (policy-minded) positions instead of "right" (tribal) positions. But if they viewed politics in terms of issues and policy instead of embracing the tribe-before-country anti-patriotism of the right, they would never have become Republicans in the first place.
128
Thanks for a provocative and worthwhile column.
I have little hope for the future - but will read all of your recommendations with an open mind. It would be great if we really could purge populism of its bigotries and inject good policy instead....
3
@Robin Marie I would be very interested in seeing what conservative policies that truly were for the benefit of the working class would look like and how they would differ from liberal policies.
14
This incorrectly defines Trump as conservative, and then lumps together people who themselves are not conservative but oppose him.
Key words are, "they never much cared for the voters who supported their candidates anyway."
They were Republicans in the sense of being part of an elite that did not like Republican voters and lied to them, manipulated them, and laughed at them. They had that in common with Trump, just the lying and the laughter.
Trump is an ugly variety of populist. He isn't conservative at all. There are far more attractive versions of populism, from the Prairie Populists of the early 20th Century to Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez today. They are not "liberals" any more than Trump is "conservative" and we are frequently told they are not even Democrats; and just so Trump is no Republican. They all just stole away the party base used and abused by so-called conservatives and liberals.
Once you see that Trump is no conservative, and the neocons are just Hillary-with-an-R, then the terms used here are revealed as nonsense. The confusion is the author's acceptance of establishment mislabeling of those who rebel against it.
18
Ross, no matter if you pull up and survey the steaming wreckage of Trumpism from 30,000 feet trying to avoid the malodor, there's no way make his policies seem less catastrophic or coarse than they actually are - and conservatives are tied to djt at the hip, so when His Unhinged Unraveling Unfitness exits the stage, there's no way for conservatives to dodge the damage they enabled him to create, or for conservatives to spin a wondrous new fabric of logic from his chaos.
As Rick Wilson says 'Everything Trump Touches Dies'.
68
A much simpler way of summarizing Douthat's premise:
Conservatives have steered themselves off the rails. The Republican Party is dead. The two-party system is totally dysfunctional.
And we will never get out of this mess until the Conservatives cease their win-at-all-cost-and-refuse-to-compromise-wit-anyone-else mentality.
60
I have yet to read or hear of any "anti-Trump" Republican who's willing to even consider that the strategies and policies of the party itself over the last few decades might have something to do with the fact that 90% of their party has embraced a racist con-artist.
I am certainly willing to talk about how Democrats and their corruption (or their pusillanimity, others might say) contributed to the collapse of meaningful politics. But can you in all honesty think of any Democratic congressman, senator, or presidential candidate of the past 30 years one tenth as unqualified or dishonest as Trump?
Democrats examine themselves and look in the mirror so much they end up looking calculating and phony. Republicans have won their battle to turn all public interests over to private profiteering—and now that that means that politics is a manipulative game that makes pro-wrestling look civil and honest, all that the supposedly honorable ones are worrying about how to effectively spin their success so they can live with the fact that they depend on a fascist mob for their power. Even Mr Douthat is concerned only with which spin job will work, not how to look at the situation honestly.
78
@Martin
James Traficant.
@Martin Check out Max Boot's current writings and talks. He's the only one I know of who is examining the past 30+ years of Republican ideology. Rubin skates close at times but hasn't fully embraced examining their history. After all, she earned her "Jenghazi" nickname honestly.
1
A rowdy outtlier is Trump
Conservative just in the rump
Rubin, right or wrong
Has principles strong,
She holds to, no sign of a slump.
20
Being a Trump cultist means one supports runaway government spending, massive deficits, destruction of alliances and trade pacts, alienating allies, and demeaning the very office of the president.
Conservatives should run away from this disaster, but most don’t because they are Trump followers. They are only conservative in that they label themselves as such. In reality these people are authoritarian followers. Trump could declare he’s a pro-choice liberal and his mindless so-called “conservative” acolytes would continue to paradise him.
Conservatism as Douthat understands it is as dead as a doornail.
30
There’s one over-powering reason, which animates the #NeverTrump conservatives that Ross fails to mention – Trump, much like that other New York billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, was a Democrat, then flirted with an independent run as president in 2000, before becoming a Republican. So, Trump has never been a traditional conservative or a neo-conservative – both of whom have a defined set of principles and values. Trump is an accidental Republican, who adopted some convenient conservative values, not principles – he doesn’t have principles, only half-baked populist ideas. He hijacked the Republican Party to get elected on a populist platform, some of which (anti-trade, anti-immigration, anti-NATO, isolationist foreign policy, etc.) was anathema to true conservatives.
So, what happened to Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens, George Will, et al. was akin to what happened to Ronald Reagan in 1962 when he said, “I didn't leave the Democratic party, the Democratic Party left me.” Trump’s Republican Party has abandoned many conservatives and neo-conservatives alike. Trump has moved the Republican Party far right on some issues – mainly, social issues (abortion, guns, LGBTQ, etc.) – and far left on some issues, such as, trade, skilled immigration and post-WWII relationships with some communist nations.
Therefore, the question should not be, “Are Trump's conservative critics really conservatives anymore?” but instead, “What on earth does Trump’s Republican Party stand for?”
42
@Alan Haigh is absolutely correct about income inequality. Why haven't Democrats made a more potent issue of it even before 2016?
No label will fix this. Income equality, also, is part of the larger picture of basic fairness and civil morality that voters and our representatives at least sort of strove toward in the past.
Trump and his enablers, which include his "base," are immoral.
Trump and his enabler's pronouncements should provoke wide-spread outrage but seldom do. "Yeah! What he said!" is their mantra.
That's what 2018 is about. It's not about right, left, or center. It's about are we willing to vote to restore the civil morality that disowns bigotry, racism, degrading women; disowns exclusion of millions of our people from affordable medical care; disowns white nationalist Nazism, fascism, wanton greed, destruction of our water and air; disowns the right of workers to unionize for decent living, and disowns corruption of our judicial system that's intended to be the arbiter of fairness.
We don't need a new label. We need a return to a label we all know: the civil morality that is the glue of our democracy; the glue that makes our people want to live in and preserve our democracy.
23
Douthat, like the other NYT conservatives, Brooks & Stephens, is always a nice guy. All three of them provoke in me a kind of nostalgia for the frequent political discussions and arguments that were often passionate, but - at least with my intelligent and articulate conservative friends - never angry or hostile.
Sadly those interesting and enjoyable arguments are a thing of the past now. I can't put the entire blame on my conservative friends. I find it extremely difficult to brook any serious philosophical consideration of Trumpism or GOP tactics in the face of what I see as deconstruction of so much of what always has, and still does, makes America great.
But having said that, I think it's clear that the greater blame is on the conservative side, because coherent defenses of the "new conservativsm" are virtually nonexistent. The anti-intellectual tenor of a Trump, or a Graham or a McConnell makes for a substantively vacuous and illogical expression of either vision or goals.
81
@chichimax Ross is a nice guy? He thinks girls who were raped should be forced to carry the rapists' babies to term. Imagine what that's like (if Ross has, he's more troubled than we think). Do you still think he's "nice"?
2
Yes, "the logical turn to make goes left," but why did it take so long for conservatives to come to that conclusion, assuming they have? The Republican Party began devolving away from true conservatism as soon as racists, revanchists, evangelicals and other discontented factions began to assemble under a political tent built by plutocrats. Trump's ongoing success could not have come about without enthusiastic support from every Republican in congress. Objections to Trump from what was once the Republican establishment (the Bushes, Colin Powell, etc.) ring hollow once one considers Trump's minions were once their minions. Trump didn't take their party away from them, he revealed its true nature. The pundits may whine about it, but they should have seen it coming long ago.
38
@Eric Caine
Thank you.
Admittedly completely off topic, but Mr. Douthat is about to confront Trump at his worst. In simple terms Saudi journalist Khashoggi went in the Saudi consulate in Turkey and never came out. The Kingdom issued stern denials. The Saudis have not explained how he disappeared unseen while his fiance waited outside. They have not produced photos of him alive and well holding today's NY Times across his chest. No one from the consulate to say they respected his wishes and hustled out the back door and delivered him safely somewhere.
Trump is finally on the case and may give MBS a call to get to the bottom of this clearly tragic case. Given the facts will a denial suffice? Will Trump find comfort in the presumption of innocence finding the Saudi's not guilty? What are our intelligence folks doing to shed light on how a man disappears magically?
The death of Khashoggi offers Trump the chance to act like a President. My guess is he will water this down and walk away. An unprincipled man can do that.
47
@texsun
It's worse than that. Saudis have funded Trump and they got him and Kushner on board before the MBS takeover.
If anything, Trump is envious of their ability to kill and jail critics, and he's made it 100% clear that his followers should enact violence on anyone he criticizes.
72
I don’t know if any of these efforts can pull the post-Trump right away from anti-intellectualism and chauvinism.
******
And racism. And misogyny. and anti-science. And anti-observable truth. And anti-environment. And anti-woman. And patriarchy.
72
@Vanessa Hall There's one more you and Mr. Douthat left out. It's the biggest one and it's called fascism. You can watch it live at any Trump pep rally headed your way!
5
I think there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that are protectionist, pro-growth, and believe in a balanced immigration policy.
In fact, if you take the social issues out of the left and right in what Douthat argues, I think you will find a fair bit of consensus. Pro worker, pro growth, pro family, pro education, pro infrastructure. The disagreement with be over social issues and foreign policy.
I just don't know if you have enough people on either side of the isle to vote for politicians that will carry this issues without pulling social issues, immigration and American Leadership in the world.
Isn't it sad the issues that actually matter and we can get to compromises on are drown out by dribble over social issues on both sides.
Looking forward to a leader that will bring us together and address the economic issues that let us all buy homes and send kids to college.
12
Surely SOME of Trump's conservative critics remain true conservatives. There always was a Republican Party that embraced, pretty much, conservative principles; and then there was William F. Buckley Jr., who had been attacking Republicans as wets for decades before his death in early 2008. And there’s no reason why conservatives should SEEK a “Trumpism after Trump” – if Trump does his job successfully, there won’t be a need to.
I find it entertaining that Ross believes that Opinion pages in journals of heft should seek ideological “diversity, including Trump-supporting diversity”. Point out a columnist in the NYT or the WaPost who supports Trump. Heck, not even the WSJ can boast of more than one or two who unabashedly support Trump, despite accomplishments that even the Times occasionally acknowledges as “wins” (and even occasionally above the fold!) Those accomplishments arguably could not have happened without Trump’s persona; and the evidence of that statement is clear – nobody else with a more enlightened persona has been able to truly move us forward for a LONG time. Certainly, our philosopher-king Barack Obama failed dismally at it.
The Times needs a reliable apologist for Trump in its columnist pitching rotation.
Ross seeks to carve the roast altogether too thinly in this column, defining slices of “conservative” really to differentiate himself from them. On some issues (but by no means all), he’s socially progressive, but he’s a committed Catholic who sees …
5
… the need for governance to be informed by religious conviction, he’s profoundly anti-abortion, and he’s a strong defender (although a crafty one, like David Brooks, given where his real estate is located) of classically conservative notions, such as individual liberty, self-reliance, cultural coherence within a set of traditional fence posts and emotional anchors, and the like.
His basic conclusion is, assuming as he does that Trumpism is a permanent characteristic of our political framework, and convinced that traditional conservatism has failed and will continue to fail to impose its views on that framework, that “true” conservatives (like him) can only look for a new leftish political home. His assumptions are invalid, his conclusion is unfounded, but I welcome him to veer left, because if that left needs ANYTHING desperately, it’s FURTHER confusion of motivating impulses and already-splintered messaging.
5
@Richard Luettgen: So tell us all how much you disparaged Dubya when he was ruining, I mean running, our nation. Trump isn't a true conservative (even you have acknowledged this on occasion). What he is is a true bigot, xenophobe and iconoclast who would have gladly latched on to progressive politics had we Democrats been stupid and malevolent enough to have offered him a seat at our table. When that didn't happen he quickly dropped his party membership, moved over to the dark side and has pretended to embrace conservative politics (and conservative values!!) for the purpose of attaining power and feeding his capacious ego. He's a fraud in every way possible- excluding his bigotry, which he displays as proudly as Russian military veterans display their treasure-trove of medals.
7
@Richard Luettgen
Trump is the natural extension of Buckley's intellectual conservatism and Reagan's political conservatism.
The problem with conservatives like Brooks and Douthat is they don't get this fact.
2
Dear Mr Douthat,
This situation will drive US politics even further to the Right: The Trumpite GOP will adopt full-throated Crony-Fascsism. (It doesn't have much further to go). Out of expediency, those Former Conservatives or Never-Trumpers or whatever we may call them who don't retire or die but choose to keep resisting will be absorbed by the institutional Democratic Party which will continue supporting the Washington Consensus Empire.
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Ross, you, Max Boot, David Brooks, Jennifer Rubin didn't leave the conservative party. You are still the conservative party. You have ideals, principles, moral and ethical precepts that you stand by. Trump has none of those. He is an opportunist who will embrace anyone or anything that benefits him. That is his core, and only, belief. He can, and has, changed positions in the same afternoon. Unless lying is now the lodestar of conservatism, there is no good reason to label him a Republican, a conservative, a christian or an American. I feel sorry for serious conservatives who thought they had the pulse, and the backing, of the conservative movement. You were as fooled as the rest of the country and the editorial boards of all the major periodicals who, universally, warned against Trump and were, universally, ignored. One thing is clear, true conservatives will have to start all over when Trump leaves the stage, because the people you once appealed to have shown that they can't be trusted, when the chips are down, to stay with their traditional politics, positions or religions. Trump has shown, not only, how a large number of Americans can be conned, he's shown us all how we can con ourselves into believing that what we hold dear, patriotism for instance, is a shared value.
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@Rick Gage True conservatives would have nothing to do with Trump. To be fooled by Trump one must be deaf and blind. If you can understand him, and you approve, you're just like him: thoroughly selfish and destructive.
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Honestly, Mr. Douthat, your intellectual gyrations look good in the air: the turns and twists and the degree of difficulty suggest a new dawning of conservative thought--until the thudding landing with sprained ankles and pulled ligaments and an inability to function properly. Is this by design?
In case you haven't noticed, sir, there might, at one time, have been something called "conservativism." That may well have been when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president; no Republican president since has been a true conservative. All have been race-baiting xenophobes, some with smiling faces (Reagan and the Bushes), others with more sinister faces (Nixon and Trump).
But far more important than Republican presidents is the party's saturation at the statehouse and Congressional levels who don't practice an ounce of conservative politics. It's all reactionary, featuring the seemingly-mild (Paul Ryan) and the nakedly wicked (Mitch McConnell).
The Republican party as presently constituted is interested in the extreme as personified by the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader. McConnell, were he honest, would admit that he is not interested in democratic principles; he wants to restore a (whites only) top-down hegemony across the land; the most efficient way of doing that was to block Barack Obama's federal appointments and to confirm Donald Trump's. That's not "conservatism;" it's racism.
Conservatism, the cover that Republicans splash in the mud, is an illusion.
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@Soxared, '04, '07, '13 Although I didn't (and wouldn't) vote for either of the Bush presidents, I must ask this: What possible reason is there to label them "race-baiting xenophobes?" Is there a shred of evidence to support that label?
@Soxared, '04, '07, '1y3
you are right on the money.
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"only immigration limits and a different skills mix will promote assimilation and solidarity, and forestall class division and racial conflict"
If you want to solve the fascistic tendencies of the working class, don't make them feel like failures by sticking them with poverty wages while the professional class leaves their neighborhoods and schools and low-skill workers are made to feel like the second class citizens they've become.
The glory years in this country following the Great Depression had the wealthy taxed for more than half of their income and factory workers making wages almost comparable to professionals- so they could afford to live in the same neighborhoods. Professionals couldn't afford to send their children to private schools- so better make sure public ones are good.
Stop it with all the pundit pontificating in abstractions. Anyone paying attention knows that the more egalitarian a society the more content. In the happier days after WWII CEO's "only" earned 10X the average of workers below- now it's 100X and I don't think it has made CEO's any happier.
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@alan haigh Alan, I believe you have identified correctly the reason this country is so divided and in such rapid decline: it has everything to do with the inequality in pay between the working class and the ruling class, however in my humble opinion this is not a Republican/ Democrat, Liberal/ Conservative issue nor is it a consequence of either parties governing it is a situation willfully and knowingly created by those who own and control all parties whether they be wealthy conservatives or wealthy liberals, they are all interested in their own agendas and financial advancement period, the divisive issues they attempt to get the electorate to concentrate on ranging from immigration to abortion are all just camouflage that allows them to make or steal all of the money all of the time: I don’t care if we are talking about the fabulous wealth newly minted by The Clintons since Bills exit from office armed with little more than a Rolodex or the more current example of Kushner on the front page of today’s Times, that an individual such as himself can accumulate such vast wealth courtesy of connections and the ability to sway international policy as well as the laws tailored for the new ruling class of those with only the ability to create money through financial engineering and nothing of societal value. The last twenty years have left us a divided nation with trillions in debt and thousands dead fighting other people’s wars as this crew made off with billions.
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@Ted Well, I think there is a difference between cashing in when you are in political office then when you leave and no longer have the power to move mountains for the powerful.
False equivalency in an imperfect world destroys improvement by causing people to not make the better choice between two imperfections. One is always worse than the other. Nothing wrong with getting involved and trying to give people a third choice, though.
I choose not to believe that the world is in a political trap like none before with no possible escape. There are too many positives in the mix, including a huge decline in extreme poverty in the world.
@alan haigh: Point Taken Alan: Dodd/ Frank was while in Office though, as were many other examples past and future: the human condition, in particular greed unfortunately seems to be more prevalent. Yes overcoming extreme poverty in the world is a very good thing albeit in the current case of the rise of a middle class in China and India it was at the expense of American and European working class men and women. We had a better choice incidentally, an opportunity to move the future back to that more egalitarian era post W.W.II but the powers that be of which I spoke decided they preferred the status quo so backed two equally undesirable outcomes, knowing fully well that either of them would do their bidding once the dust had settled and the chits were called in, so with all due respect I stick by my comment and see absolutely no false equivalency. Bernie was the rare exception to perhaps right the wrongs visited on our nation since the sixties, whether he would have been allowed to do anything is another story, I felt the same way about President Obama, but he too was denied the opportunity to make meaningful change, the Kushners, Trumps, Schwartzmans and Clintons are just doing too well to have any interest in change, no matter what monies they throw at the public to get their name on a building or do some modicum amount of good to whitewash their misdeeds, they like it the way it is.
Ross, there's a huge flaw underlying your thesis about "can there be a post-Trumpism after Trump?" questioning.
And that it, how on earth can you apply a label regarding a philosophy of a president that has none?
Trump doesn't act or speak or believe anything outside of himself and his own political survival or need to be loved. So, you're arguing for a debate about which type of dog--a poodle or a yellow lab--reads more books?
The answer--neither--equally applies to a man whose every governing action revolves around the answer to this one question: how is this going to benefit me (with my base, with a court of law, with my rich pals)?
I suggest you worry less about what comes after Trump than how to make sure we get rid of him asap before he does even more damage to our courts, civil liberties, image in the world, long-term economy, deficit, civil discourse, environment, and rule of law.
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@ChristineMcM You could call it the Hateism philosophy.
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Jennifer Rubin is more of a conservative in the classical sense than David Brooks and he still hasn’t come to terms with the Trump monstrosity of a president.
Rubin at least has the courage to recognize the enormous loss that we have as a country as Trumpism demeans our national identity at home and abroad.
What will Jennifer Rubin be like as a columnist when the Trump era ends and our national fever has subsided? I suspect she will go back to classical conservative positions but that’s ok with me.
She is a much needed voice in our politics and allows us to know the meaning of loyal opposition.
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For a newspaper with any degree of journalistic integrity to hire an unwavering Trump-supporter as a regular op/ed columnist would entail treating fiction as fact, hyperbole as moderation and bias against religious, racial, ethnic and gender-based demographics as reasonable. It would also require an active hostility towards science and an absolute conviction that Donald Trump is the greatest man to walk the earth since Jesus ended up on the cross ("Loser!"). Anyway, there are loads of people like that on Fox News; why not insist that THEY hire someone who believes otherwise?
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The better question is whether Democrats are Democrats anymore...
In recent months, we've seen a flurry of invitations to Republicans without a home to run as Democrats. The best known former Republican is Michael Bloomberg, whom Donna Brazile welcomed to the party on Twitter this week. But there are others who are ready to jump in or have already done so during the 2018 primaries. In Illinois, we have JB Pritzker. There were a few who didn't quite make their primaries. Will they throw their hats into the ring in 2020? That is a question that hangs over Tom Steyer.
Asking how Never Trump ends is silly. James Baldwin once wrote: "I can't believe what you say because I see what you do." He's right. When one looks at what Republicans have been doing and not what they've been saying, one can't help but notice that while they may cringe a bit at Trump's style, there's almost no disagreement on the things he wants to do (except for trade). While they may not like the look that is resulting from Trump's immigration camps, they like the boost to their cronie donors, some of which are affiliated with the DeVos family.
Those few who really objected to conservatism's leap into the void, left back in 2012. Remember former La Governor Buddy Roemer? Remember Jon Huntsman? He's still there.
Never Trump is a myth. Democrats need to take a hard look at the ground underneath. The center is made of shifting sands.
---
Things Trump did while you weren't looking
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
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Rima--I looked into my crystal ball and it predicts a brokered Democratic convention in 2020. There' isn't a potential Democratic candidate out there that the party can rally around to kick Donald Trump out of the White House. The only recourse is a compromise candidate to go through the motions of a campaign.
Better luck in 2024.
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@sharon5101
Bloomberg/Steyer 2020
@Rima Regas
Now there's a losing ticket. Hope you all are wrong.
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''Op-ed pages should seek intellectual diversity...'' - I would like black to be introduced to kettle. Say hello.
All kidding aside, this era is not being characterized as ''conservative'' but rather all people that speak truth to power (this power in this administration) are being called ''other''. It is as simple as that.
Whatever paradigms or constrictions one calls themselves conservative these days cannot be measured by a single voice, so I agree, at least on that point. However what ANY conservative writer/pundit rarely points out, is that the political spectrum as been pulled so wildly to the radical right (over several decades now), that many conservatives are being deemed ''Liberal'' within that context and within these times. - hence the petitions.
There used to be a dynamic in Congress where republicans would bargain with Democrats to keep some social issues/spending protected in lieu of reducing taxes. This went on and on to the point that there is no longer taxes that can be reduced.
This ' conservative'' administration came in (with a minority of the vote) and decided to cut taxes ridiculously for the rich anyways, and has also decided to not negotiate at all for social issues. They have just cut them as well, while jamming the court with radical right ideologues.
Of course, the backlash is immense, by not only Progressives, but any conservative with a conscience.
The pendulum swings back forcefully ...
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@FunkyIrishman
You wrote: "There used to be a dynamic in Congress where republicans would bargain with Democrats to keep some social issues/spending protected in lieu of reducing taxes."
That bargain is still in force. You may not read about it because of all the Trumpian noise, but it's definitely there, in the votes on big legislation that routinely passes with huge majorities that include the bulk of Democrats voting yea.
"he House on Wednesday passed an $854 billion spending bill to avert an October shutdown, funding large swaths of the government while pushing the funding deadline for others until Dec. 7.
The bill passed by 361-61, a week after the Senate passed an identical measure by a vote of 93-7." (See September 26 entry)
and
How the Senate Got Its Groove Back With the Power of the Purse
Against the backdrop of rising partisan rancor over the Supreme Court vacancy, an unlikely bipartisan breakthrough is quietly taking place in the Senate, where the annual spending bills are advancing in a way that hasn’t been seen in years.
While they are at one another’s throats over the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the court, top Senate Democrats and Republicans are working hand in hand to pass a series of consensus spending bills in the old-school fashion of putting them on the floor, allowing amendments to be considered and then passing the measures and sending them into future negotiations with the House. (See August 23 entry)
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
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@FunkyIrishman "the political spectrum as been pulled so wildly to the radical right (over several decades now), that many conservatives are being deemed ''Liberal'' within that context and within these times."
Indeed.
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We’re not on a left-right continuum any more. It’s become more of a sane-insane sort of thing, with the president and his sycophants being on one end, and everyone with a brain being on the other.
At this point, I feel encouraged when I hear almost any politician or commentator saying things that make sense, regardless of which side they’re on. It’s possible to argue with someone you disagree with, but not with someone who’s completely in la-la land.
It used to be that smart people ruled the day on both sides of the political divide. They made mistakes, some of the consequences being pretty awful, but they stayed within the bounds of reality. Now we’ve got a president making the most absurd, ignorant and scurrilous remarks imaginable, while his supporters pump their fists and shout their approval.
There are consequences to pervasive idiocy in government. I learned after Katrina that you can’t clean up a mess when there’s no clean place to stand. In that sense, the president, aided and abetted by a Conservative Congress, and now a Court, has created a mess so complete that it may be impossible to straighten out in the foreseeable future.
The heartland has wrested control from the brainland, and they’re so energized by their newfound power to destroy civility and common sense that it will be hard to put things right. The November elections will determine if we even have a snowball's chance to put things right.
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@gemli I agree that the right-left divide is mutating into sane vs. insane, but I wouldn’t draw the same lines as you did. It seems clear to me that the Center is feeling increasingly isolated from both the far left and the far right, with identity politics driving the wedge in both cases. We are in desperate need of a party that can unite sensible individuals who view their fellow citizens as human beings first, American second, and everything else a distant third.
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@gemli... It’s become more of a sane-insane sort of thing, with the president and his sycophants being on one end, and everyone with a brain being on the other.....Nailed it!
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@gemli
And I'd agree that the traditional conservative/liberal divide is rapidly losing meaning.
I don't know if the divide is sane/insane, though I can see how it could easily appear that way.
Perhaps it can be stated as intellectual/science and logic respecting vs., well, not.
Populism does not necessarily have a left/right dichotomy. There have been "conservative" populists and "liberal" ones. Both have been suspicious of government elites. But certain populists, in that suspicion, have thrown the baby out with the bath water and become fully blown anti-intellectual, anti-expertise, anti-scientific-proof.
And it's no surprise that if one is anti-science and logic, one tends to be much more racist, nativist, and sexist, since most scientific research doesn't produce a lot of support for any of those stances. It does allow, however, for a reliance on the greatest anti-scientific creed of all: fundamentalist religion.
It is possible to be suspicious of government elites and oligarchic self-aggrandizement and still think some people actually know something.
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