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Admit it: Trump’s Victory Is a Win for Conservatives
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).
Conservatives should be the first to recognize that Donald Trump’s victory was a win for them. Indeed, many forward-looking former NeverTrumpers have welcomed the electoral outcome. And yet, a few of the usual suspects still seem fixated on the fact that Trump is not one of us; and they are only tentatively accepting the proposition that Trump’s victory is preferable to that other of the two possible outcomes.
I sense that some of our colleagues are carefully positioning themselves and patiently biding their time in preparation to pounce. For the new President will certainly violate some conservative principle at some point, and those violations will certainly deserve clusters of posts asserting his assault on conservatism. We’ll be treated to dissertations on the damage that the Orange Populist has wrought on the “conservative brand.”
I get it that the “I told you so!” card is one of the most sought after cards in the deck; and I truly appreciate that many here are devoted to defending conservatism in its purest forms. But none of that moves conservatism forward in the real world. Sen. Mike Lee (R–UT) presents some surprising ideas on the importance of populism, and I’d like to zero in on this particular passage from the most principled of principled conservatives:
The chief political weakness of conservatism is its difficulty identifying problems that are appropriate for political correction. Conservatism’s view of human nature and history teaches us that problems are inevitable in this world and that attempts to use government to solve them often only make things worse.
This insight actually makes us good at finding solutions.
…
Populists, on the other hand, have an uncanny knack for identifying social problems. It’s when pressed for solutions that populists tend to reveal their characteristic weakness. Unable to draw on a coherent philosophy, populists can tend toward inconsistent or unserious proposals.
The rough terms of a successful partnership seem obvious. Populism identifies the problems; conservatism develops the solutions…
There is much to debate in Lee’s piece, but I’d like to pick up on this simple proposition and suggest that our primary focus right now should be exploiting the many opportunities that lie before us in the wake of our populist ally’s crushing defeat of the Democrats.
By all accounts, the Democratic Party a decrepit wreck. Breathe in the feeble despair over the popular vote. The Pelosi reaffirmation confirms that the party is a slave to its progressive instincts, obliviously doubling-down on identity politics at a time when its political potency has been buried under the rubble of a collapsed blue wall.
Let’s face it: Trump’s electoral strategy was a tremendous success. He not only won the election, but he decimated conservatives’ archenemy, attacking the leftist vision for America built by Pelosi/Reid/Obama, propped up by the media, and finally repudiated by an exhausted nation. The Clinton machine was “destined” to hold the corrupt, lawless Democrat coalition together long enough for demography to determine the arc of history. Thanks to Trump, the Obama phenomenon, including most of his administrative legacy as well as his Leftist rhetoric, can be deposited in that dustbin designated for debunked ideologies.
Populist Trump defeated candidate Clinton, but he also discredited the progressive support infrastructure throughout the media and academia. It is now abundantly clear that none of the conservative candidates could have delivered this kind of defeat to progressivism. Trump’s victory was decisive, and not merely partisan. It provides the greatest opportunity in decades to enact conservative reforms. He’s bringing serious people with conservative ambitions into his administration. Let’s get to work.
Published in Politics
He has used language that makes it quite clear he is not what one would call a proponent of limited government, and he has unquestionably advocated policies that are at best inconsistent with the Constitution. We’ve been told not to take him literally, but that’s a lot easier to do here in a country which has the Constitution.
We could add, I’m sure, that more than a few of our previous presidents would have been rather more dangerous without the Constitution, too. Even the present one.
Trump’s rhetoric…take it seriously but not literally. When he says he’s going to do something it doesn’t mean that he is going to do so extra-constitutionally. All candidates do this. The difference is that Trump’s strident tone scares people.
One thing I will say in Trump’s favor: I would not have laughed so loud and for so long after reading this if any other Republican had won the election:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/250709/#respond
I DID!!!! And I love this post, I was so sad to see all the crape-hanging when Trump won the primaries. That meant we had a popular,charismatic candidate who would only get stronger–and he did! He stood there and took all the ridicule they threw at him. And he had more excrement lobbed at him than any candidate I can remember. In-effing-credible. You know why? Because he is a MAN, in the sense Kipling used it in the last line of “If”, or Shakespeare in the last line of “Julius Caesar” and in “Hamlet” :”He was a man, take him for all in all”.
Yes, admit it and be happy: we have a champion. We have a winner. We have a leader.
And as the recent contacts with Romney show, Trump is willing to bring EVERY one of us along, even those who actively worked against him.
One of the lawyers I work with is planning an Inauguration Party on Jan 20. I can’t WAIT!! I only pray Stein and Co don’t succeed in some delaying tactic to prevent this AMERICAN president from taking office.
Trump should (or should have as the deadline has likely passed) file for recounts in CA and NY. If we’re going to knock states out of the Electoral College count with pointless recounts designed to exceed deadlines, then for God’s sake get in the game.
Forgive me for indelicately pointing out that he is in the process of “shortening” the line of civilian authority over the military. Secondly, the fools on the left are probably gearing up for events that will appear as triggering pretext.
Yeah—and can you imagine what the reaction would be if he were to do that?
It’s better than Hillary. But who knows at this point?
Well yeah… it’s kind of the main point of doing it.
The Left LOVES losers. They’S why nobody (except Trump) is pointing out that Stein cannot possibly benefit from these recounts.
I haven’t researched this, but I HOPE his “no standing” argument succeeds.
I really do not know if I can bear it if he doesn’t take office Jan 20. Oh, I was prepared for Clinton to win, I coulda borne THAT– but to have victory weasled away from us now….
Agree 100%. Rubio could have beaten Hillary by accenting the reform aspect of the Reformicon agenda, and tapping into nearly a billion dollars of Romneybucks from the GOP establishment to market a very appealing Rubio/Haley ticket.
Yet, losing to Rubio wouldn’t have shattered the Democrats. Maybe I’m just wallowing in schadenfreude (even listening to lefty podcast from the week before the election to relish the retrospective impending schadenfreude) but the Trump win has unleashed an intellectual 28 Days After energy amongst the Dems that is ruinous.
Will Ellison’s anti-Semitic tirades preclude his selection. Don’t think so. It might cement his selection.
I doubt Rubio could have expanded beyond the W 2004 map, perhaps for the last time given the demographic changes within that map.
Trump’s win creates a new map for conservatives, and, sadly for some, a new conservative coalition which is far more center-right with some heavy upfront costs for small r Republicans to accept.
It’s exciting and a little bit appalling.
I’m guessing you are new here and don’t know our (admittedly old-fashioned) customs.
When we merely “sense” some dishonest, despicable intention like that, something motivating our colleagues that is in gross violation of our shared principles, we prefer to keep it to ourselves. (If we have any evidence for it, of course we don’t hesitate to make the accusation.)
But by far the most common thing is to assume that those we disagree with have honest reasons for their views if they give us no reason to think otherwise, and we engage in civil conversation with them to try to come to agreement.
I have watched Trump and other candidates enough to form my own opinion on that and it doesn’t fully match with yours. I’m not really interested in rehashing Trump’s campaign at this point — that’s beside the point. The point is that he has to operate within this system. The “Muslim ban” seems to have morphed into some quite reasonable immigration restrictions, and so forth. That doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s being forced to operate within certain political limits, because that’s what our Constitution does.
I was thinking about this tonight watching the news about the Mattis appointment. But then I remembered Ike, who only left the army 5 years before taking office as the civilian commander in chief.
Actually… in WI absolutely everyone is pointing that out. From the Governor to Republican election officials to Democratic election officials (who are really not happy with Stein) to conservative media to liberal media.
So far, FWIW, the WI recount is not exactly moving things much.
Thanks, you don’t need to spin this for us. We lost, you won. It can’t go back now.
FWIW, Michael Barone disagrees with my assertion that other candidates could do nearly as well as Trump with blue-collar, mid-western whites after Trump identified the opportunity. Fair enough, he knows infinitely more than I do on all electoral matters, its probably best to assume he’s correct….though I think we should also assume a substantial minority of those former Obama voters and non-voters that went to Trump would have voted Republican out of disgust with identity politics and political corruption in any case. Maybe conservatively assume a third of the Trump gains among this demographic?
That leaves Democratic turnout and the college-educated white vote as areas in which other candidates may have done better. Another candidate, with more money and a campaign apparatus and less headline-changing distractions, would have likely exploited the initial email scandals better, but there is the distinct likelihood that Russia wouldn’t have released last-minute leaks, which on the other hand helped make up for Trump’s own scandals that likely increased turnout among liberal women. I suspect Democrat turnout would’ve been less with another candidate, but its still probably best to just assume its a wash going forward (especially in light of my next post). That leaves college-educated whites, who voted much less strongly for Trump than for Romney.
An interesting variable is that, unlike other elections, 3 million more people voted for Republican congressman than for Democrats, despite Democrats winning the popular vote [continued]
[continued]
I think these two factors need to be studied and the states in which they would have made a difference pinpointed (after making adjustments for whites without college education in the mid-west) before we can say whether Trump or another candidate would have done better.
Its also doesn’t matter (I wanted to make note of new information, and I’m afraid the thinking aloud got ahead of me); what matters is that we retain Trump’s voters while winning back the people who couldn’t support him. That’s the important (and extremely difficult) job going forward…..because I don’t think we’re going to have the luxury of low Democrat turnout in 2020. Likewise, there will be no Supreme Court emergency to force the support of alienated movement conservatives.
Dishonest? No, members have been quite open about their intentions to call Trump out when he misbehaves. Despicable? No, Conservatives shouldn’t give up their principles for Trump. I’m good with all of that. I’m simply asking people to also recognize the enormous upside of having Trump in the White House (particularly when compared to the alternative, or to the current occupant).
I’m not sure why you’ve mistakenly sensed some sort of dishonest, despicable intention on my part rather than assuming that I have honest reasons for my views, but I’ll cut you some slack because you’re new here.
We’ll see lots more of that kind of morphing into compliance with political realities. And, I have no doubt that Trump intends to operate within the bounds of the Constitution.
Ha, Ha, Ha. I’m guessing you’re so new here you don’t know how to look at the date in a member’s profile.
I’d be absolutely shocked out of my mind if Donald Trump operated within the bounds of the Constitution. No one operates inside the bounds of the Constitution anymore. Congress certainly doesn’t pay any attention to A1S8 or the 10th amendment. The executive branch doesn’t even pretend to care about separation of powers in many areas given how gruesome the administrative state has become. And the judicial branch has been pretty lawless for quite some time now.
We’re in a post-Constitutional era. The Constitution that was given to us by the Founders is dead as stone. The political class kept the structural stuff (well, when they weren’t destroying it by nonsense like the 17th amendment) and kind of pays attention to the Bill of Rights, but we’ve long since ceased to be a Republic.
We’re some sort of weird democratic oligarchy thingy at this point. The ruling class runs the show, but they have factions that absolutely despise each other and the voters get to pick which faction is dominant at any given time.
You’re not quite following what I’m trying to say. I very much doubt that Trump would be operating within the bounds of the Constitution if we didn’t have the Constitution. I’m thankful we do have it.
That immigration policy isn’t even necessarily a constitutional matter, but the Constitution is changing what Trump can do anyway, because the Constitution doesn’t just set boundaries (respected or not), it shapes the political system so that it affects what is politically viable and what is not. I’m positing that many #NeverTrumpers underestimated how that would affect Trump: I’m not surprised, and they shouldn’t be, to see Trump, at least now, shaping many of his campaign promises into molds that are Constitutionally legitimate and politically viable within the Constitutional framework. And I believe the shape of his victory strengthened that dynamic. No, I don’t buy that all of this is only what Trump wanted to do all along — I think he’s reading the situation and acting accordingly, like any other president in history ever.
Would we be seeing that precise new version of the immigration policy if Trump had been elected absolute dictator of a land with no constitution? We don’t know exactly. And one could go down the list.
I was with a small group of caucus voters at our precinct in Utah in which Mike Lee is a voter as well. Cruz prevailed in that vote easily but while we waited for vote tabulation someone asked Mike about his thinking on Trump, who was obviously on the rise at that time. Mike said he could not support Trump over Cruz and the reasoning was that he did not know what Trump stood for in principle nor what Trump’s positions would be across a range of issues. At that time most of Trump’s campaigning had been on trade and jobs, immigration, terrorism, and the almost 20 trillion dollar federal debt plus constant fighting with the other candidates. Things changed after the convention and when Bannon and Conway entered the fray and now with his election and transition the picture appears clearer. I read Lee’s article on the confluence of conservatism and populism as well as #neverTrump Andrew McCarthy’s criticism of Lee’s thinking and I agree pretty much with Lee, who will continue to be the Senate’s most conservative constitutionalist. I am happy to see that Lee will work with Trump to move the country in the right direction.
In college basketball one normally waits until the end of the game to declare victory, although sometimes in a blowout people will announce their conclusions midway through the second half.
Maybe this exuberant early approval is a reaction to the high intensity naysaying during the campaign.
Or, maybe it’s a response to those idiot leftists spending all their time talking about the non-existent ‘national’ popular vote and recounting votes in states not even close. Conservative is used in the title of this post so I have something to say about that. Our War for Independence was conservative and our Constitution is conservative. Those who consider themselves conservatives should be thankful for the conservative approach (the electoral college) for electing a president of our conservatively created federal republic. In an earlier comment it was suggested that conservatives should be aware of how lucky they were that Hillary’s votes were concentrated in such a way as to minimize her electoral votes. I would just say be thankful for a conservative constitution.
The latest Gallup Poll(gallup.com) just released shows republican/republican leaning support for electing POTUS by national popular vote is now at 19% compared to 54% when surveyed in 2011. This, in turn, has dropped the overall support from a majority to under 50%.
Well, I am thankful it has turned out the way it has so far, but it’s unseemly to demand thankfulness from others. I say let the maysayers come around in their own good time, and give them room to do so rather than try to push them into a corner. Their objections to Trump were not without foundation, and at this point we don’t know how it will turn out in the end. One of the reasons Trump is behaving himself fairly well is likely that the naysayers’ objections are having an indirect influence. Let’s not try to take them out of the game.
I did not intend to demand thankfulness and certainly don’t want to act unseemly. My reference to naysayers was focused on the campaign’s high intensity effect and not the players themselves, not many of whom do I think would support the ‘mob rule’ outcome of a national popular vote.