Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Is 2017 the Best Year for Conservatives … Evah?

 

Is conservatism having a Spongebob Squarepants moment: “The Best Day Ever?”
That’s the argument Andrew Klavan makes on my podcast today:

Because people— including me—dislike Donald Trump so much, because we predicted so many terrible things might happen if he became president, no one has really noticed (except dedicated Trump supporters) that this has been the best year politically for conservatives since Reagan. No question about it.

ISIS has been destroyed. And you say you don’t want to give Donald Trump credit for that. Well, Jim Mattis said in April, “Donald Trump just told us to go destroy ISIS,” and they did. They wiped out ISIS in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere. And that’s amazing.

Sixty judges have been nominated — all of them approved by the Federalist Society — all of them Constitutional originalists. Regulations have been rolled back amazingly, the economy is doing great.

And the mainstream media is in a shambles. The mainstream media is in ruins because of Donald Trump.

I think this has been one of the best years conservatives have ever had. Which means it’s one of the best years that America has ever had.

Is Klavan right? I can think of a quick list of counter-factuals from North Korea to the deadly opioid epidemic, but so what? Things are always going wrong. We’re always under threat. That’s the norm. Things going right — ever going right — is always a surprise. And if the GOP passes the tax bill, that will cap a year in which, yeah, a lot of pretty good things happened for conservatives.

To me, the glaring exception is politics, where things have gone pretty horribly since Trump took office. Losing Alabama is a huge setback and the general surge in Democratic turnout in 2017 at every level (a net +12) as the number of people identifying as Republican is down. That’s part of this year’s story, too.

Could 2017 be the GOP’s 2009/10, when Democrats pushed through some big bills, then spent the rest of a Democrat president’s term losing state/local races and trying to hold onto those gains?

Or is this a Golden Age of Conservative Good? You tell me.

There are 9 comments.

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  1. Lash LaRoche Inactive

    Klavan is right. 2017 was the year conservatives busted a move!

    • #1
    • December 15, 2017, at 5:21 PM PST
    • 4 likes
  2. Eridemus Coolidge

    I don’t know. Legislation isn’t everything, there is always voter interpretation and that involves media-driven perceptions…which of course can eventually reverse who is in power. For example, David Brooks on tonight’s PBS News Hour called Trump “an albatross” and claimed that the Republican party is in profound disarray. Brooks is supposed to be giving opinions but there are similar and constant depictions that many who don’t dig deeper will absorb as fact.

    Of course Mark Shields of the same program when discussing the tax plan had to insert the (suddenly useful) liberal concern about our bad deficit as if it only started in the economic meltdown. Neither the moderator nor Brooks thought to ask would Democrats ever consider the most direct help = a few spending cuts? Since we know they won’t, what other ideas are there to reverse the red ink (since the “stimulus” hardly made a dent in economic growth)?

    The public has to take in a variety of sources to hear anything at all even-handed, and most don’t. People were also treated to years of Obama adoration. However, a serious segment of voters deviated from the press assumption of the election outcome; so maybe there is some mystery swirling around out there.

    • #2
    • December 15, 2017, at 7:03 PM PST
    • 1 like
  3. I Walton Member

    it’s a beginning but we have 51 Administrative states to dismantle and it’s more difficult to dismantle things than to build them. There are unintended consequences to dismantling as well and we’ll need several administrations worth of serious people to make real progress. We’ve yet to fix the educational system which is key to most things. The media, foundations, entertainment industries are all in the hands of unserious people, and one of the parties is not only unserious they are profoundly dishonest. As a result our youth are also unserious, nihilistic, intellectually and morally flabby. So we’re better off materially because we’ve been a rich country for a long time and are living off momentum, and we got rid of Obama but we’ll be dealing with the damage he did to race relations, education, and the US role in the world for many years to come. Moreover material prosperity is a by product not the purpose of sound policy.

    • #3
    • December 16, 2017, at 4:00 AM PST
    • 3 likes
  4. Randy Webster Member

    I Walton (View Comment):
    There are unintended consequences to dismantling as well and we’ll need several administrations worth of serious people to make real progress.

    Which we’ll never get.

    • #4
    • December 16, 2017, at 4:16 AM PST
    • 1 like
  5. AlanMacNeil Inactive

    Great episode. Listen every day.

    • #5
    • December 16, 2017, at 5:38 AM PST
    • 1 like
  6. Doctor Robert Member

    No, this is not the best day ever. Obamacare is still law, the Senate is evenly split, the culture wars are lost and more Millenials believe in socialism than in capitalism.

    The Conservatives’ best day ever was the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 1986.

    • #6
    • December 16, 2017, at 12:18 PM PST
    • 1 like
  7. Randal H Member

    Eridemus (View Comment):
    For example, David Brooks on tonight’s PBS News Hour called Trump “an albatross” and claimed that the Republican party is in profound disarray.

    Just imagine if Trump were an albatross. Forget the tweets – look out below!

    • #7
    • December 16, 2017, at 1:16 PM PST
    • 2 likes
  8. Randy Webster Member

    Randal H (View Comment):

    Eridemus (View Comment):
    For example, David Brooks on tonight’s PBS News Hour called Trump “an albatross” and claimed that the Republican party is in profound disarray.

    Just imagine if Trump were an albatross. Forget the tweets – look out below!

    Malcolm Reynolds’ “As I recall, an albatross was good luck until someone killed it.”

    • #8
    • December 16, 2017, at 7:41 PM PST
    • 1 like
  9. Manny Member

    I don’t know if this has been the best year ever for conservatives. Intuitively I doubt that (Obamacare should have been overturned), but it has been pretty darn good. I am really pleased with the Trump presidency. He needs to continue his effort to limit immigration, continue his pro-business policies, entice American businesses back, continue to contain abortion policies, overturn all the anti-religious policies of the previous administration, and continue to squash Islamism (the biggest enemy to freedom) across the world, both through policy and rhetoric.

    • #9
    • December 18, 2017, at 6:14 AM PST
    • Like

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