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An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement
Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.
First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens’ United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the coauthor of the law that the decision overturned. In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that, there was George W. Bush, the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the Middle East (more about him later). And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act. I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so. I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I will vote for virtually anyone to keep the Left out of power and not because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative choice. Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the Republican party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a “conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old enough to remember the last 25 years.
Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.
Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. This strain understood that a situation where every country in the world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.
All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is required.
Third, there is the issue of the war on Islamic extremism. Let me say upfront that, as a veteran of two foreign deployments in this war, I speak with some moral authority on it. So please do not lecture me on the need to sacrifice for one’s country or the nature of the threat that we face. I have gotten on that plane twice and have the medals and t-shirt to prove it. And, as a member of the one percent who have actually put my life on the line in these wars movement conservatives consider so vital, my question for you and every other conservatives is just when the hell did being conservative mean thinking the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force? I fully understand the sad necessity to fight wars and I do not believe in “blow back” or any of the other nonsense that says the world will leave us alone if only we will do that same. At the same time, I cannot for the life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced themselves that the solution to the 9-11 attacks was to forcibly create democracy in the Islamic world. I have even less explanations for how — 15 years and 10,000 plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed and die over there to save the Iraqis who are clearly too slovenly and corrupt to save themselves.
The lowest moment of the election was when Trump said what everyone in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so called “conservatives” responded with the usual “How dare he?” Worse, they let Jeb Bush claim that Bush “kept us safe.” I can assure you that President Bush didn’t keep me safe. Do I and the other people in the military not count? Sure, we signed up to give our lives for our country and I will never regret doing so. But doesn’t our commitment require a corresponding responsibility on the part of the president to only expect us to do so when it is both necessary and in the national interest?
And since when is bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan so much in the national interest that it is worth killing or maiming 50,000 Americans to try and achieve? I don’t see that, but I am not a Wilsonian and used to, at least, be a conservative. I have these strange ideas that my government ought to act in America’s interests instead of the rest of the world’s interests. I wish conservatives could understand how galling it was to have a fat, rich, career politician who has never once risked his life for this country lecture those of us who have about how George Bush kept us safe.
Donald Trump is the only Republican candidate who seems to have any inclination to act strictly in America’s interest. More importantly, he is the only Republican candidate who is willing to even address the problem. Trump was right to say that we need to stop letting more Muslims into the country or, at least, examine the issue. And like when he said the obvious about Iraq, the first people to condemn him and deny the obvious were conservatives. Somehow, being conservative now means denying the obvious and saying idiotic fantasies like “Islam is the religion of peace,” or “Our war is not with Islam.” Uh, sorry but no it is not, and yes it is. And if getting a president who at least understands that means voting for Trump, then I guess I am not a conservative.
Fourth, I really do not care that Donald Trump is vulgar, combative, and uncivil and I would encourage you not to care as well. I would love to have our political discourse be what it was even thirty years ago and something better than what it is today. But the fact is the Democratic Party is never going to return to that and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. Over the last 15 years, I have watched the then-chairman of the DNC say the idea that President Bush knew about 9-11 and let it happen was a “serious position held by many people,” watched the vice president tell a black audience that Republicans would return them to slavery if they could, watched Harry Reid say Mitt Romney was a tax cheat without any reason to believe it was true, and seen an endless amount of appalling behavior on the part of the Democrats which is too long to list here and which I am sure you are aware. And now you tell me that I should reject Trump because he is uncivil and mean to his opponents? Is that some kind of a joke? This is not the time for civility or to worry about it in our candidates.
Fifth, I do not care that Donald Trump is in favor of big government. That is certainly not a virtue but it is not a meaningful vice since the same can be said of every single Republican in the race. I am sorry but the “we are just one more Republican victory from small government” card is maxed out. We are not getting small government no matter who wins. So Trump being big government is a wash.
Sixth, Trump offers at least the chance that he might act in the American interest instead of the world’s interest or in the blind pursuit of some fantasy ideological goals. There is more to economic policy than cutting taxes, sham free trade agreements, and hollow appeals to “cutting government” and the free market. Trump may not be good, but he at least understands that. In contrast, the rest of the GOP and everyone in Washington or the media who calls themselves a conservative has no understanding of this.
Rubio would be — as Laura Ingram pointed out this week — nothing but a repeat of the Bush 43 administration with more blood and treasure spent on the fantasy that acting in other people’s interests indirectly helps ours. Cruz might be somewhat better, but it is unclear whether he could resist the temptations of nation building and wouldn’t get bullied into trying it again. And as much as I like Cruz on many areas he, like all of them except Trump, seems totally unwilling to admit that the government has a responsibility to act in the nation’s interests on trade policy and do something besides let every country in the world take advantage of us in the name of “free trade.”
Consider the following. Our country is going broke, half its working-age population isn’t even looking for work, faces the real threat of massive Islamic terrorist attack, and has a government incapable of doing even basic functions. Meanwhile, conservatives act like cutting Planned Parenthood off the government or stopping gays from getting marriage licenses are the great issues of the day and then have the gumption to call Donald Trump a clown. It would be downright funny if it wasn’t so sad and the situation so serious.
It is not that I think Donald Trump is some savior or an ideal candidate. I don’t. It is that I cannot for the life of me — given the sorry nature of our current political class — understand why conservatives are losing their minds over him and are willing to destroy the Republican Party and put Hillary into office to stop him. All of your objections to him either apply to many other candidates you have backed or are absurd.
I don’t expect you to agree with me or start backing Trump. I would, however, encourage you to at least think about what I and others have said and to understand that the people backing Trump are not nihilists or uneducated hillbillies looking for a job. Some of us are pretty serious people and once considered ourselves conservatives. Even if you still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that they are now willing to vote for someone you loath as much as Trump.
I would also encourage you to stop insulting Trump voters. Multiple conservative journalists — Kevin Williamson to name one — have said, in so many words, that Trump supporters are welfare queens, losers, uneducated, and bums. I am a Trump supporter. My father is a Trump supporter. We both went to war for this country. My father spent 40 years in the private sector maintaining this thing we like to call the phone system. I have spent the last 20 years in the Army and toiling away doing national security and law enforcement issues for the federal government. Just what exactly have any of the people saying these things ever done for the country? Where do they feel entitled to say these things? And more importantly, why on earth do they think it is helping their cause?
I am sorry, even if you can convince me Trump is the next Hitler, I don’t want to be associated with that. I don’t want to be associated with a movement that calls other Americans bums and welfare queens because they support the wrong candidate. If I wanted to do that, I would be a leftist.
Perhaps none of this means anything to you and the movement has left me behind. If it has, I think conservatives should understand that it is leaving a lot of people like me behind. I can’t see how that is a good thing.
Published in Politics
Well said. I agree completely on the issue of how Trump is no worse than other people we’ve been expected to vote for.
Very articulate presentation of what what Limbaugh and others have said about the nature of the national resentment against the parties and that it is no longer about finessing position statements, crafting TV ads, ‘gotcha’ MSM tactics or targeting opponents.
I have lived and worked in DC most of my life. I have been a lobbyist. I have dealt with regulatory agencies for clients. I grew up in Georgetown. The names on my paper route would have been the most exclusive social list you could imagine. I know this place.
Democrats proclaim love of the planet and the little guy then sell exemptions and relief to targeted companies and connected individuals on a retail basis. Republicans proclaim love of the free market and the little guy but cede all real authority to the agencies and courts and never roll anything back. That is why so much legislation just adds to the bureaucratic/interest monstrosity no matter who is in power.
I agree that it needs to be blown up and much rethought and redone from scratch. But that will never come from someone who lacks the discipline, experience and intellectual depth to wage the kind of war against inertia that is needed. I fully appreciate what fuels the desire for a candidate to present a middle finger. But Trump will disappoint. He lacks the depth to pull off this level of reform and his failure will bring the establishments back with a vengeance. I wish that were not true.
Promote to the main-feed ASAP!!
Amen.
Sorry, the other candidates do not flirt with white supremacists, advocate war crimes, pretend GWB saw 911 coming, run phony “universities” to bilk ordinary people, take the property of old women for their real estate screw-ups, pretend the IRS is persecuting them because they are devout Christians, brag about bedding married women, suck up to Vladimir Putin, admire the Chinese for crushing the Tiananmen Square protests, or are under the delusion that Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein killed terrorists rather than supported them. I could go on, but if that’s not enough, nothing will be.
I hold to principles of decency, honor, tradition, limited government and the free market. These are timeless principles that do not belong to any movement, and if some organization that claims to support them betrays them, the answer isn’t to turn to a populist, big government proto-fascist.
UPDATE: Please note I’ve said nothing about Trump supporters. Trump himself is an ignorant, egotistical, loud-mouthed braggart who has no problem crushing any “little guys” in his path. I understand the anger of Trump supporters, but their answer will make things worse rather than better.
The best, most comprehensive treatise on the rationale for supporting Trump. Thank you.
I’m for Cruz, but I’ll take Trump if he’s the nominee. Despite all the teeth-gnashing, there will be silver linings to his Presidency that I can see.
One is a complete reshuffling of the GOP overdue and badly needed.
The Bush family has disgraced itself by trying to establish a dynasty in America – or at least within the Republican Party.
Foreign adventurism is now a no-go zone for me, and my patriotism tank is running on fumes.
When the same old – same old folks attack Trump it makes me want to vomit, and they actually remind me that Trump might be the only answer. Yes, I see all the flaws and drawbacks to Trump but these people need to be thrown out before anything positive happens.
Trump’s biggest success is in convincing people he’s not one of “those people.” He’s spent his whole career being a crony capitalist and sucking up to powerful interests. And he’s admitted everything is negotiable including his famous Mexican wall. Republican establishment types like Bob Dole prefer Trump to Cruz because they understand what Trump supporters don’t – Trump is really part of the system and will play ball once he is in power. Talk about the mother of all long cons.
That said, I would vote for Trump over Hillary simply because Hillary has dead bodies on her resume and Trump doesn’t. But he won’t be the revolutionary guy his supporters seem to think he’d be.
Unfortunately, J Climacus is right about Trump. Because he is such a flawed vessel, he taints any position he takes. If he wins the nomination, the most likely outcome will be a Democrat in the White House and Democrats controlling both the Senate and the House.
J Climacus-
Your screed was duly noted. To me it reads like a Mother Jones editorial filled with half truths and deliberate misunderstandings.
I stopped interacting with unhinged mal-informed partisans years ago. They were mostly Democrats. Now I see that Republicans have their own echo chamber of virtue signaling around the horrors of Trump and know better not to bother trying to undo their delusions. Waste of time and effort. See ya at the voting booth!
Especially after that painful, Letter to America post from yesterday.
Not done reading yet, but what exactly are fanatical libertarian economics?
Well said.
It seems to me that when establishment types say “conservative” what they really mean is “globalist.”
I’ve had enough of that, so I’m done too.
This was priceless! Thanks for a well written and well thought-out post.
My feeling exactly. Cruz is the man for this time. But it is not clear at all to me that Trump will be a terrible president, and I am similarly uncertain if he will be a good one. Those who want Trump are wanting to lob a bomb at the whole government establishment. Those of us who want Cruz, want targeted and surgical destruction, but minimal damage to the framework. But if we can’t use a Cruz missile, then I will enjoy the blast resulting from a Trump bomb.
Well said John Kluge. This needs to go to main feed.
Where the market place is proposed as the supplier of traditional government roles: where even the police, courts, and fire services are private companies.
Except that wasn’t all Trump said nor — I think — what most people took objection to.
In response to whether or not he still believed Bush 43 should have been impeached for lying us into war, Trump said:
I’ve a lot of issues with the administration on this point, but saying that they knowingly lied about the WMD is both calumny and crazy-talk.
On crony capitalism:
Because of how leftists with the help of many influential Republicans have allowed our government to grow, anyone in business must be “crony capitalists”.
Romney wasn’t? Murdoch isn’t?
But politicians and the system are the real culprits here. Taking bribes is the offense. Giving them is required.
People who use this line of attack show me they don’t understand the problem.
Tom, as you can see from earlier comments, Trump supporters are not interested in defending anything he says. Like Trump, they just insult anyone who opposes them and move on. Keep up the good fight.
BTW, this was an extremely well-written post. And welcome to Ricochet!
Franco,
JC made some specific claims about Trump’s statements and positions (list provided below). Rather than address them, you dismiss them as a “screed” and him as “unhinged and mal-informed.” Specifically, with which of JC’s claims do you disagree and why? Thanks.
Say what you will about the political positions of some of the most recent Republican nominees and/or office holders: They were all at least good men and while I may have had my disagreements with them about issues at the margin, they were honorable. Not to mention, they were better than the available alternative.
Obviously, the world would be a much better place had Al Gore been elected President. No? Perhaps John Kerry was more to your liking than George W. Bush? I know where I come down on those issues.
You’re self-indulgently assuming that all of these alternate history titans could have done something different or better; essentially, you’re a great Monday morning quarterback, insulated from the need to be accountable for the policies (I see nothing coherent, logical or achievable here) you advocate for, while hiding behind your outrage and saying “j’accuse!”
Donald Trump is nothing like even the Haughty John Kerry or the contemptible Al Gore. He’s worse.
Donald Trump is a knave, a serial philanderer, a liar, a fraud and a bigot. I would sooner see the Republican Party burned to the ground than have his fell influence plastered all over my good name and the ideals I stand for.
He is the antithesis of the thing you claim to want, but your principled response is to say something along the lines of: “YOLO!”
Please.
From what I gather, the real problem with Trump is that he wins primaries. No one would mind if he lost.
I often see things reflectively. So if one person tells another they are stupid, delusional, and not looking at the facts, I wonder if that person is not also stupid, delusional, and not looking at the facts. Usually the facts are different but they are usually there.
Haven’t finished yet, but yes, welcome! Look forward to seeing you around.
Majestyk,
I am not seeing the “obviously”. Was there something in the OP that said this?
Finally, an articulate and rational explanation of the Trump phenomenon. Bravo.
Really, until those opposed to Trump begin to understand the point of this post, they have no chance of being competitive. Not just in this election, but going forward.
If I thought for a moment that Donald Trump loved this country more than himself, that he loved it because he understood its founding principles and that he was devastated by the way they’ve been overturned, ignored and abused by decades of politicians on both the right and the left, and that the sole purpose on his campaign and the singular governing principle of his presidency would be to return this nation to its original values, and the freedom and responsibility that the founders cherished for its citizens, I would be in full agreement with this post.
Sadly, I think that Trump is a narcissistic bully who hasn’t the foggiest idea what principles this country was founded on (he rarely refers to them unprompted, and when he does make a tentative foray, he gets himself into no end of trouble), who has no ideology or principles, and who is guided only by how he can turn everything into a ‘deal,’ that will make him look like a winner. He talks a great, and very beguiling, game although most of what he said is largely fact-free and unmoored from the considerations of mundane reality. But boy, it sounds really good. And fun.
This election will be the ultimate test of whether you can replace something (that’s pretty rotten), with nothing (but gaseous sound bites and the promise of better days to come without my having to do much to bring it about). I guess we’ll see soon.
In the meantime, I will be praying for Mitt Romney to enthusiastically endorse Donald Trump at 11:30 this morning. He’s said nice things about Donald in the past, so perhaps it’s going to happen. I can hope. Cross your fingers.
We understand the point and share the anger. We just don’t agree that Trump is the answer. If nothing else, his history shows he uses bombast to get attention but when it comes down to it he cozies up to the powerful and screws the little guy. People play the way they practice – and Trump will be just fine with all the “terrific people” in Washington once he gets there. You don’t believe Bob Dole when he says Trump is someone the Washington establishment can work with?
The only thing I disagree with is that Trump is as big a part of the problem as the bums we want to throw out. His only virtue is that he is willing to be politically incorrect and that is refreshing. Trump is what happens when a system becomes so clogged up, dysfunctional, and rotten that it must be swept clean. So Trump is a man on horseback. The thing is we’ve seen it many times before in history and in other countries and it doesn’t fix things it ends the chance to fix them. Of course Germany and Italy had the benefit of being invaded and set right, Argentina and others prone to men on horseback never recuperated. If you want to sweep something clean you need people who know how to do that. Of all the candidates I’d have said Carly, Jindal and Cruz promised good change. Only Cruz remains.
Just for the record, I do not support Trump, and agree he isn’t the answer. My point is that until the party can wrap their heads around what is happening before their eyes, they can only make things worse.
I have seen numerous attempts to explain why Trump seems to have a political Midas touch, and they all start with how stupid, mislead and irrational his supporters are- when the truth is, they are just reacting to years of frustration with party leadership that is dishonest and ineffective.
White supremacists are people too. Trump has categorically disavowed them he just wasn’t going to do the dance on cue.
That’s your first point! It’s TDS right off the bat.
I’ll address other points – some of which are valid – when all the half truths are covered. But y’all have your narrative tied up in a little bow and you will cling to it for life.