Mr. Walther
I read your latest think piece at TheWeek.com, “Conservatism is Dead.” As usual for you, it’s a mess. But that’s not entirely your fault. I appreciate that you acknowledge that conservatism “has never been a rigorous concept.” The problem is that your laundry list of descriptives is more or less accurate but fails to get at what conservatism actually is. And because you don’t know what conservatism is, you don’t see that conservatism isn’t only not dying, it’s thriving.
In its simplest form, conservatism attempts to conserve power by acting as a bulwark against progressive change. That’s really all there is to it. Progressivism, at its root level, is not only meliorist (i.e. the belief that the human condition can be improved through concerted effort), but that political power, social opportunity, and shared resources can and should be equally available to every citizen. Thus lies the eternal battle: spreading power vs. conserving it in the hands of the few. A horizontal vs. vertical society. The people vs. the aristocracy.
What you bemoan as the death of conservatism is merely the shedding of its veneer of civility. All Trump has done is show that winning doesn’t always require pretending anymore. Conservative tribalism has been fed upon decades of left-hating propaganda by the likes of Fox News and right wing radio, and is now so entrenched that even Roy Moore, a molester of teen girls, is preferable to any Democrat. I suspect that a key reason that Gillespie’s blatantly racist campaign for Virginia governor didn’t work is because he was a milquetoast “establishment” Republican for too long to be able to pivot to being a Trumpian White supremacist. A more authentic bigot might have been able to pull it off.
The fact that most Republicans are willing to support vile politicians with vile policy prescriptions is that they hate progressivism more. Or, more accurately, they hate what they are told about progressivism. They are disgusted by the idea of dirty immigrants raping White women while taking our jobs, lazy Blacks stealing hard-earned White income via welfare, sexual perverts getting married while recruiting children into their ranks, women heartlessly murdering babies by the millions, government thugs coming to take their life-saving tyranny-preventing guns, the destruction of “White culture” by the removal of Confederate statues, or the castration of all straight men in the name of feminism. Conservatives have been lied to for so long about what progressives believe and want that they are essentially living in a giant shared hallucination. One that you, Mr. Walther, seem to be trying to wake up from but can’t quite escape.
It is to your credit that you are seeing how untenable, how fractured conservatism has become. This isn’t because conservatism has changed, it’s because it is now in power. There are almost no Democratic checks on Republican control. There are no liberals in power to resist. Conservatives are actually in charge, and now that it is time to put up or shut up, it is suddenly revealed that they have always been an empty husk with no viable policy positions or serious direction for the country. Everything they are doing is aimed at one goal—their only goal: the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the elite.
And how could it be otherwise? Conservatism has no sense of a greater good. The notion of the common welfare is anathema to conservatives. There is no conservative goal beyond concentrating wealth and power. Yes, it is true that sometimes Republicans can act progressively. For instance, when three Republican senators joined the entire Democratic caucus to vote down the last Obamacare repeal bill, at least two did so on progressive grounds (that it would cruelly kick millions off of health insurance, leading to needless misery and death). It’s also true that conservatives do not represent a monolithic bloc—corporatists are not the same as so-called sovereign citizens or Evangelical theocrats, even while they all share in the same umbrella goal of concentrating power (they just want it concentrated in their own particular tribes).
So, no, Mr. Walther, conservatism is not dead. Not as long as there is wealth and power to concentrate. But the modern conservative coalition is starting to fracture as the incompatible priorities of the various groups start to fight with each other rather than with a convenient shared enemy. And progressivism is indeed on the rise. At the moment, this is taking the form of a popular movement—it hasn’t yet taken hold in any institutional form. The Democratic Party will resist it as long as they can, but it seems inevitable. The early signs do point to a Democratic wave in 2018 that will be driven largely by liberal and progressive voters. This won’t destroy conservatism, but hopefully it will slow the bleeding it is causing. Alas, a reversal of the damage will take decades.
Mr. Walther, I do understand why you think conservatism is dead. And in a way, it is—it is certainly absent of ideas or any ability to govern. It took getting into power to reveal that. Conservatism is at its most virile when it is in the minority, fighting against the demons conjured in conservative fever dreams. So, don’t worry, sir—when the GOP is ruthlessly kicked out of power, conservatism will rise again. It always does.