Posted on 08/20/2026 9:59:58 AM PDT by Heartlander
When I first entered the public arena, the focus of my work was almost entirely on why the right needed to take power seriously. Conservatives had suffered a devastating string of political and cultural losses because they focused on argument and ideology while paying little attention to the way power actually worked. That criticism drew plenty of hostility from defenders of the status quo who did not appreciate some rookie pointing out why decades of conservative leadership had produced so little.
It turns out I was not alone. Popular voices including Matt Walsh and John Doyle now openly support conservatives taking and wielding power effectively. That disagreement has launched another round of public debate over the pursuit of power, but the argument is only a proxy for a larger battle over JD Vance, foreign policy, and the future of MAGA.
Donald Trump represented a serious threat to the established political order. Initially dismissed as a brash reality television host, he quickly demonstrated that he was tapping into something deeper than celebrity and catchy insults. Trump was not a career politician. He did not enter politics with deep ideological commitments, and he did not know or care about the established rules.
He fused law and order, economic protectionism, foreign policy restraint, immigration enforcement, and culture-war issues in a way no Republican candidate had since Pat Buchanan. Trump saw an untapped political market and, like any good businessman, gave the customers what they wanted.
Many prominent establishment figures declared themselves “NeverTrump” and vowed to resist MAGA’s takeover of the conservative movement. That strategy failed. Trump became a political steamroller. Some NeverTrumpers migrated into the Democratic coalition or created opposition “conservative” outlets such as the Bulwark. Others decided to wait.
MAGA had the populist momentum, but the establishment still controlled institutions, personnel, and much of the donor class. The bet was that it could outlast MAGA and co-opt it, just as the Republican establishment had absorbed the Tea Party.
The next opportunity came with Ron DeSantis. Establishment conservatives hoped Trump’s legal troubles would make him vulnerable to a popular governor with a record of victories. DeSantis was supposed to offer Trumpism without Trump: populist energy packaged in a form more compatible with the old ideological agenda.
It did not work. Trump’s primary and general-election victories removed any illusion that a direct assault on him from inside the party could succeed.
If the establishment could not oust Trump, the remaining option was to derail his movement and prevent anyone from carrying MAGA into future elections. Despite Republican control of the House, Senate, presidency, and Supreme Court, congressional Republicans have repeatedly clashed with the administration. The Senate has stalled key personnel and has not passed the SAVE Act. Republican politicians know they must praise Trump rhetorically, but many continue to resist important parts of his agenda.
Add a deeply unpopular war with no obvious end, and the result is an effective containment mechanism: MAGA divided, distracted, and exhausted.
That is why the fight over JD Vance matters so much. When Trump sent the vice president to negotiate a peace deal, critics who had spent years presenting themselves as Trump’s loyal allies suddenly questioned Vance’s ideology, associations, and viability as a successor. Like Trump, Vance is not wedded to neoconservative foreign policy. His role in the negotiations made clear that he is being prepared as a possible heir to the movement.
At the same time, some critics began presenting Marco Rubio as an alternative while attacking any attempt to withdraw from the conflict.
The fights over power, foreign policy, affordability, and the dangers of the New Right are therefore part of the same proxy war for control of the GOP. It is no accident that many establishment figures who favor expansive military commitments abroad also recoil from using political power aggressively at home.
We can always find money for war, but when the cost of living becomes unbearable, suddenly government action is communism. The overlap is not accidental. It reflects the old conservative settlement: Republicans may fight wars abroad and protect big business at home. They may talk endlessly about social issues, but they are not supposed to spend serious political capital addressing them.
That is why it may seem strange to watch figures such as James Lindsay, Joel Berry, and Ben Shapiro portray Matt Walsh as a socialist or JD Vance as a crypto-Nazi. The rhetoric makes more sense when viewed through coalitional politics. Whatever they think personally of Walsh or Vance, they recognize that both threaten an order that has existed for decades.
The conservative movement became comfortable as beautiful losers: controlled opposition rewarded with money, status, and institutional access while the country moved steadily left. Trump disrupted that arrangement. Vance threatens to continue disrupting it.
If conservatism is ever to become a real political movement, it must escape the ideological shackles that keep it from acting. As Russell Kirk argued in “The Conservative Mind,” conservatism should not be about preserving an abstract ideology but a particular people and their way of life.
MAGA represented that shift. It was willing to pursue policies that improved the lives of Americans even when those policies fell outside neoconservative economic or foreign-policy orthodoxy. Achieving those goals requires the right to think seriously about power and how to wield it. Even reducing the size of government requires acquiring and applying state power.
The NeverTrump project now is to poison the well around Vance, prevent him from inheriting the movement, and return the GOP to establishment politics as usual.
That is the argument underneath the latest round of conservative infighting. The personalities change, the immediate controversy changes, and the slogans change, but the stakes remain constant. Someone will define what MAGA becomes after Trump, and the establishment has no intention of surrendering that decision.
The arguments breaking out across the conservative commentariat are not separate fights. They are proxy battles over the same question: Who gets to rule the Republican Party after Trump?
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Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
I’d like to see Abbott in a big role.
If God is with America, and I think he is, he has Jesus and others who will continue to stand against the Left and, except for maybe social security because Americans have paid so much into it, BRING DOWN the 80% unconstitutional portion of the federal gov’t.
Irreplaceable. All we can hope for is a caretaker popular enough to keep the economy growing and the democrats at bay. Events will happen and the left will jump on them. It could be AI, China going after Taiwan or something in the mid-east(always expected). It might be an all out assault on the government programs and departments that just don’t work. I can’t think of a bad guy out there willing to take the arrows on our behalf.
Start with Vance, Sara Sanders, Graham to name a few very capable trustworthy people.
“Trump” could be a team of Trump’s. One, solely for the purpose of interacting with the grand-kids, who would not otherwise cooperate with the “team”. Another member of the Trump team for rallies. Then there are the Oval office pressers and events. Interactions with foreign leaders.
You know the Simpson’s seem to have a special prescience... they have Trump in 2028!
It is disgusting to me that though Republicans have the House and Senate, they refuse to adopt President Trump’s agenda. They would rather lose than give him what he and WE want. Reprehensible!
“The old Republican establishment lost control of the party once. It has no intention of letting Trump choose the political order that comes after him.”
hogwash! ... wishful thinking by a bunch of geezer has-beens ... i seriously doubt that the old guard has the juice to do much more than roll their wheelchairs out on the veranda and enjoy the sunshine before wheeling back to gum their cafeteria food at lunchtime ... they’ve been out of power for decades and have literally aged out and/or died
out ...
We'll know who is trying, most likely Bushies/Uniparty, when you see different handles here all posting the same message.
It was like a month or two ago with the JD Vance attacks (my word).
Trump officially ditched his MAGA persona with the stupid Iran military campaign. Right now, JD Vance is more "MAGA" than Trump is -- and that matters in a big way.
You mean “finishing” the Iran military campaign that started in 1979?
“JD Vance is the only “natural” successor to Trump on the national scene.”
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I like JDV on paper, but I question whether he has the charisma (in fairness, who does?). Ditto Rubio.
Don’t count out Ron DeSantis just yet (not that he’s Mr. Charisma either).
“JD Vance is the only “natural” successor to Trump on the national scene.”
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I like JDV on paper, but I question whether he has the charisma (in fairness, who does?). Ditto Rubio.
Don’t count out Ron DeSantis just yet (not that he’s Mr. Charisma either).
Don’t count out Ron DeSantis just yet (not that he’s Mr. Charisma either).
I’ll take effectiveness over charisma.
Give up on that silly talking point.
I think DeSantis put his own presidential ambitions to rest with his ridiculous primary challenge to Trump in 2023-24. That had to be one of the dumbest political moves I’ve seen in my lifetime.
The question is can someone else keep Trump’s MAGA coalition together, and if so who?
MAGA could fracture, especially if something major unexpectedly happens.
THAT is the reason they could lose in November. Not gas or Iran or silly whines about flock cameras and data centers. ( interesting the data center whiners do so eith handheld computers that use them)
It’s the Do-Nothing GOPe.
People will stay home.
Why the hell do you care? How does it effect you? You don’t live here.
Where is "here?"
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