Trumpian conservatism:
“This is something he has in common with a lot of Americans. Sides and Tesler cite the work of political scientists James Stimson and Christopher Ellis, who have found that those who identify as conservatives often take liberal positions on things like the size of government. These voters are “symbolically conservative” but “operationally” liberal. According to Stimson and Ellis, that group made up nearly 25 percent of the electorate in 2008. Trump’s views on trade, which National Review called “silly and illiterate” are old-school-Democrat ones — globalization is really screwing over the little guy, huh?The idea that Trump could pick up white support that might typically go to Democrats in states like Ohio has become a truism of the 2016 race, though he lost the state to its governor, John Kasich, in the March 15 primary. “I am a commonsense conservative — Is that OK?” he asked the Super Tuesday crowd in Columbus. Trump has taken on the patina of conservatism, despite lacking a conservative orthodoxy.”
For a lot of people, conservatism is a state of mind, an attitude and a set of values about the culture and national identity and the size of government isn’t a pressing matter for them. Trump speaks for them when he calls himself a “commonsense conservative.”
Trump conservativisim is the same as regular GOP conservative orthodoxy with the exception of being againts the current system of globalized trade with cheating regimes and with unlimited illegal immigration. Also, there is now scepticism of neocon wars for no gain overseas.
is Truman Democratism.
Americans are not conservatives in any Lockean, Burkean, Buckleyan, or even Reaganian sense, because Americans are in general not philosophers but doers, not ideologues but pragmatists. They voted for Truman because he made them feel good about America and Dewey was an early version of Tricky Dick; they voted for Reagan because he made them feel good about America and Carter was Sad Sack; and they'll vote for Trump in November because he makes them feel good about America and Hillary! is Nurse Ratchet.
(Okay--please note that the following observation is not meant as a slam on Donald Trump (believe it or not). It is merely an observation of a phenomenon I have suspected for some time.)
In other words, these voters are white racial identitarians.
I used to believe that religion was objective, abstract, and universal (in fact I still do; it's one the things that make me the way I am). But I long ago noticed liberals insisted that "religion" (at least our own traditional beliefs) was an invention of white people to conquer and exploit "people of color." The same liberals who lambasted the Bible, made fun of creationists (by using mock Southern accents), and supported every immoral abomination to come into anyone's head practically worshiped Black chrstians (literalism, fundamentalism, ignorance, xenophobia, Southern accents and all) as "gxds." This didn't make any sense to me and still doesn't. I merely see now what's going on.
What we are experiencing now with the Trump phenomenon is the same thing from the opposite side--people to whom "conservatism" doesn't mean anything specific but a vague notion that America belongs to white people, who are reflexively labeled "right wing" but who basically want socialism that benefits them and doesn't demonize them. In other words: old time nineteenth century Populists (Bible-thumpers who wanted to nationalize a lot of stuff).
I must confess that in the nineteen years I've been online I have monitored and visited the web sites of neo-Nazi Jew-haters. One such site insisted that all our problems are in fact racial and could be solved simply by getting rid of all non-whites. Another said that while conservative opposition to big government was understandable, in order to solve our problems we would for a while have to have a bigger government than we have ever had.
Food for thought.