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Conservatism in the Trump Era
It use to take a lot of thought and study to be a true conservative. There is a long tradition of high-level debates on the right about the nature of conservatism, about trying to reconcile conflicting ideological components drawn from libertarianism versus cultural conservatism. How much can/should we borrow insights from Schumpeter, Smith, Hayek, Friedman etc? Must we be purists on free trade or can/should there be tariffs to punish cheating? Is there any role for government in health care or welfare? To what extent must we compromise with political, electoral realities to get as much of our shared agenda implemented as possible? Like the rest of the conservative intellectual heritage, ideological divides such as the old anti-communism versus isolationists required some serious historical, economic, philosophical and geopolitical study and thought.
Fortunately, we no longer have to do any of that intellectual heavy lifting. Conservatism is now solely about how we react to President Trump’s tweets and then react to each other’s reactions to those tweets.
Take a look at the chart below and select which category you usually fall into.
I am usually a Category B man, myself. We are largely invisible despite our likely large numbers precisely because we do expressly support Mr. Trump (largely because of the utterly horrific alternatives) and thus we generally refrain from expressing critical assessments.
The Category C fellows are Republican NeverTrumpers. God bless them for being Republicans and I am certain we share a vigorous agreement on virtually all substantive issues but when they enter the discussion there is that RINOesque whiff of self-congratulations with an implied wish for a Trumpian downfall to vindicate their superior judgment. Category A and B folks generally find that tiresome and oddly detached from the ideological death struggle we believe is in full force.
I try not to argue with Category A people. They see Trump as the man directing the fire that keeps statist totalitarian pirates from seizing our ship and its cargo of freedoms. They see his oppositional tendencies (even when overtly rude) as a feature, not a bug. Only someone so despised by the unworthy elites who own this utterly corrupt political order can be counted upon to bring it down. Criticism in time of war just gives aid and comfort to the enemy and should be avoided. Even when I don’t agree with Category A people, even in instances when I think they have picked a bad piece of ground upon which to fight a battle, I still gotta love ‘em (hell, sometimes I am them) and love the energy they supply and their commitment to the fight
My generally preferred position (Category B) is, of course, invariably the most reasonable option and I encourage everyone to adopt it. Frankly, it would be wonderful if Mr. Trump routinely consulted with some category B supporters (Congress is full of them) to craft and temper his various reactive outpourings. His combative wit is welcome and could still be effective if tempered as it often is in public speeches—and would be less likely to give suburban weenies the vapors.
In any event, we must always try to erect that big tent in which Categories A thru C can unite in mutual respect lest the vile Orc army that is category D devour us all.
Published in General
Here’s Trump in June 2016 talking about his views on debt.
Trump: “I’m the king of debt.”
This is right up there with “The Kurds didn’t fight with us at Normandy.”
It is understandable to wish for a time when a conservative president might at least serve a “normal” presidency. Some sugggest that Reagan was so well liked that times were different. For those not in geezerville like myself at 72, Reagan’s presidency was not like his new day in America ads. He was a handsome, pleasant fellow, whose hair never came out or changed color but, he was hated by the ruling class, the media and the Democratic base. His film and TV persona buffered him against the media’s attempt’s to make him into a monster. The media did stick him with the image of a dottering, pleasant old man, reading other people words. Even the book “In His Own Hand”, out in 2001, could not change the image of Reagan as a “amiable dunce”. Reagan did not thump Carter because Reagan was so well liked, but because the dour scold Carter was such a failure, interest rates over 12% (try buying a house), inflation over 15%, and the 400 days of hostages in Iran. Reagan then brought us, as Sam Donaldson told us repeatedly, the “Reagan Recession”. In the Midwest many city had 25% unemployment, Reagan’s getting shot probably helped neutralize the criticism of the economy. Things only started to turn around by 1982, and on top of the recession there was the “Nuclear Freeze” movement, which put a million protesters in New York’s Central Park and another 2 to 3 million protesters in Europe. Resistance to the Reagan was broad, he had the nerve to take on our “moral” equivalent USSR. The “Star Wars” missile system brought another wave of ridicule and resentment. Peter Jennings had a. Shepherd Smith Katrina moment when Reagan walked out at Reykjavik. The HIV crisis became more evidence the left and the gay community used to label Reagan bigoted and heartless. Even his own VP Bush ran against Reagan’s supposed cold heart, “Read My Lips” Bush ran on a “kinder, gentler” conservatism, yea because Ronny was soooo mean, sickening, but typical elite. For those not so old, or those who have forgotten, Reagan,were he president now,would be impeached for Iran/Contra.
Reagan quipped the nine most dangerous words are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” We are way past that now and probably were then. The ruling class and the bureaucracy want to rule us and will punish those who do not accept their rule, from Lerner to Comey, we have folks who follow a “higher morality”. This group in the government has six ways to Sunday to make your life miserable. I think we are lucky Trump is president, and his persona inspires our “betters” to out do themselves to openly show how they are following their “higher morality” These impeachment hearing have shown how vain and destructive our bureaucracy is, a bunch of Chelsea Mannings. The main point is there is no conservative president who will not be demonized and to obsess over Trump is only a distraction from our real hazards, the immense, immune, hostile bureaucracy.
Yes, it’s great to have a President who slept with a porn star and then reimbursed his personal attorney for the hush money.
It’s great to have a President who betrays the Kurds and then says, “The Kurds didn’t fight with us at Normandy.
It’s great to have a President who, by executive order (not by an act of Congress), spends tens of billions of dollars on farmer-welfare in order to bailout farmers who are going bankrupt due to Trump’s trade war.
It’s great to have a President who, on advice from his daughter, supports paid family leave.
It’s great to have a President who invites the Taliban to Camp David for negotiations and who blows kisses to the North Korean dictator.
We just need to keep telling ourselves that we are so lucky to have Trump as our president so that, over time, we might even believe this nonsense.
Trump has made many such initial mistakes in a left-wing direction (including healthcare reform at odds with the Freedom Caucus early in his Presidency and ‘Red Flag’ laws more recently) and then backed away and made the right decision in response to backlash from the Republican base. Pence, on the other hand, is just plain wobbly and cannot be trusted to stand up for the interests and demands of conservative voters when faced with any type of substantial opposition from business or media groups.
This is the style of talking down to those one presumably is trying to sway as Hillary Clinton did in the 2016 campaign. Or maybe @heavywater could enlighten all of us regarding why he thinks his approach is effective and appropriate, if he does.
The fascinating epiphenomena of the 2016 surprise include the amazingly common instances in which someone will recite manifestly obvious shortcomings of Donald Trump as if generating this list (a) is a demonstration of great insight and analytic skill and (b) is proof of the moral/intellectual superiority of the author of this banality.
The fact is that everyone who voted for Donald Trump did so with no illusions about these shortcomings. The really interesting question is why, especially given that the American demographic most concerned with preserving traditional morality voted for this man.
It may be that these voters were really voting against the narcissism, pseudo-morality and self-satisfaction that has caused our governance and political discourse to rot and the candidly flawed yet defiant Trump was a more effective instrument of resistance than the more easily cowed McCain or Romney.
Or in other words, the kind of mediocre intellect that, by making a Trump defect list, clearly regards himself superior to Trump voters, and does so without providing a glimmer of innovative thought or of moral empathy or insight is probably just another participant in the defective zeitgeist that made electing Trump possible or even necessary. Perhaps even Exhibit A.
“Slimeball” and “human scum” are such over the top, antagonistic terms that anything either you or @heavywater say afterward just kind of swirl around and disappear like watching a toilet flush. Now I am using my metaphor because I was in the plumbing supply business for most of my life. We used to claim we were #1 in the #2 business. What’s your excuse?
You meant January 1983, right? When the tax cuts finally went into effect.
I like how you treated this, I don’t always trust myself with that many words or points.
Around here it seems to be more of a compulsive masturbatory behavior. The long term effects are not well understood but the obvious trends toward madness will surely make the second Trump term quite entertaining.
Reagan lost 26 in 1982, admittedly due to Dole’s foolish decision to delay the tax cuts. The Democrats this time used the same method Rahm Emmanuel used in 2006. They recruited moderate candidates and then forced them to commit electoral suicide once elected. I doubt Pelosi will get the House members who were elected in Trump majority districts to vote for impeachment. That’s why she only held a vote for an “inquiry.” I suspect the poor ratings fot the TV show and the shift in Independents to approval of Trump will convince her to divert to some sort of “Censure” resolution. She does not want that Senate trial on TV.
Obama lost 63 seats in 2010.
I said he was weak. That is the point.
Yes and the NTs wish we were back in the 50s. We aren’t. The Gramscian destruction of education is 50 years along. College professors find students who don’t know what happened at Pearl Harbor or Normandy. It’s worse in England where students think Churchill is fiction and Sherlock Holmes was real.
I guess you were there and could tell us the details. I assumed blackmail was against the law but you have corrected that impression. Clinton had DNA on a dress. Stormy has a photo at a golf tournament where there were probably another 50 such photos. Did he have sex with all of them? Please tell us the details.
Yes and we can thank Dole, “Tax collector for the welfare state” and “
The Senator from Archer Daniels Midland” for that.
Well, what do you call someone like me who hasn’t voted for a Democrat for President for 48 years? I think the world is conservative. The question might then be, what has caused you to take the extreme step to vote for a Democrat, and the answer is Trump, and his insistence that Republicans in Congress bend the knee to him.
Or the answer is that re-electing and empowering an already unstable Trump is not sufficiently excused by the possibility of waiting out Ginsberg.
When Trump, by executive order, gives farmers a brand new welfare program, that’s not considered weak.
When Trump endorses the radical transgender agenda when North Carolina is facing boycotts, that’s not considered weak.
But when Pence, governor of Indiana, reacts to the threat of boycotts against Indiana and flip-flops on RFRA, he’s considered weak.
I am simply pointing out the double standard that some commenters have engaged in.
Is this double standard obvious? Maybe that’s your point.
It works better if you just argue your point at the time a commenter says something with which you take issue.
I remembered the date, but hadn’t remembered who to thank for that delay. So thank you for that information.
You have a pointedly different way of seeing that particular action than do I, even though I am no fan of corporate welfare or any other welfare beyond “safety net” proportions. As I understood what happened, the farmers (most of whom are giant agribusiness, but nonetheless. . . ) got singled out by China as a retaliatory measure to hurt Trump with his supporters, because Trump’s tariffs were bludgeoning China. Trump used some of the extra funds coming to the Treasury to “reimburse” these corporations for their temporary drop in revenues.
But now that you brought up the subject, you have actually made a point to the President’s positive. Trump, above all previous Presidents and Congresses, has made our citizens, whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent, aware of the #1 danger to our future as a free and independent country, that China has become. They have become that threat, btw, because our previous leaders enabled them.
I’m not sure about this but I tend to view these farmers, i.e. those immediately experiencing the negative effects of China’s retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, as casualties of economic conflict and Trump’s action is designed to alleviate those effects. This I contrast to the almost constant shooting wars we have engaged in where we lose or injure our young men and women in large numbers. The latter sacrifices are not recoverable. I think the nation should prefer Trump’s way.
But Trump is a bootlicker. Trump worships dictators.
Just yesterday . . . . .
You can always count on Trump to side with the dictators.
He is a God of means. If He can use an ass (Nu. 22:23) He can use @garyrobbins. Or even me.
This makes some of Gary`s bubblegum analysis look deep. Rather embarrassing.
I’m a manager and you don’t always get to pick and choose that easily, in any organization. It’s the US government, for one thing. How easy do you think it is to fire people who work for the US government? I’m not talking about direct staff that he has plain authority to maintain or let go. It’s the dozens, hundreds, thousands, then tens of thousands, that live underneath the higher-level management that a senior executive usually interacts with.
For those you can hire and fire, yes.
There’s a few more people in the administration, and in the gov’t, than Tillerson.
You’re too kind.
So, is your point that the regular folk of today somehow less able to see through the media and so-called “ruling class” spin than they were in the 80’s? If not, then you’ve once again missed the point that I and others are trying to make about Reagan. The media were just as harsh on him as they were on Trump, but he nevertheless carried 49 states to win reelection. It stands to reason, then, that there has to be some reason other than negative press that Trump is viewed negatively by so many people outside the “ruling class.”