Posted on 08/13/2018 3:54:17 PM PDT by oblomov
The #NeverTrumpumpkins define themselves by their visceral distaste for the president. He offends their fastidious sensibilities, outrages them with his unfiltered Twitter musings, and violates their sense of propriety with his secular hedonism and sheer joy in his own vulgarity. That he’s also delivering the most conservative administration in history is, to them, beside the point—because Trump neither represents nor embodies “movement” conservatism. And therein, for them, lies the problem.
Movements are, almost by definition, attractive to the young and the emotionally immature. Followers love to follow; even more, they love to memorize catechisms and rote talking points, which they parrot on the air and in column inches, as if by simply asserting their “principles” they are proving them as well.
Eventually, though, both content and context are lost and only the talking points remain. The argument from authority becomes as circular and self-referential as any obscure religious contretemps, and of interest only to the anointed. Which is why they fall upon each other with the glee of zealots who have been given orders to purge the heretics by any means necessary.
I have coined a portmanteau term for this state of affairs: “preenciples.” You know what they are: smaller government, less regulation, free trade, federalism, etc. It’s a creed, constantly professed, acolytes of (fill in the blank: Mises, Hayek, Strauss, Buckley) reassuring each other that by consulting the sacred texts they will always have the correct views on the issues, and thus ensure their place among the elect.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Yeah, well unfortunately towards the end WFB betrayed his older self as well as his friends, as many who were close to him went on to say.
And Dr Rice...Condi? The very same who backed Obama’s pal Neel Kashkari...
It’s really a kind of paleo-leftism. Which due to the amazing leftward slouch of America, looks quite rightist today.
“I await National Review’s “The Conservative Case for NAMBLA” article, which I am sure is soon to come.”
Ha! All too true.
bkmk
“...immature children being led around by slogans and talking points...”
That sounds more like millennial yuppie students, college professors, and liberal socialists to me...
You BOTH hit the nail dead center...
Sessions used to get posts at NRO. Somebody should have known.
Too many were political Pharisees who couldn’t find the goal line.
And then there are the hard core globalists who never really were conservative. Many of them made a living out of subverting the conservative movement against its own interests.
The focus was on fighting Communism. And on cutting out Big Government. If Communism and Big Government went down, what does that leave?
It wasn't an easy question to answer. Some people assumed what was left was a global free market. I think they were wrong, but it's easy to see how they came up with their answer, since the focus was overwhelmingly on the USSR and on the federal bureaucracy. Nobody was holding anybody's feet to the fire to get them to give a different answer back then.
I don’t think “Conservative” is a bad word, its just that the Trump Haters never really believed in the original ideas of our nation’s Founders, who envisioned a much smaller government than the one they believe in.
Donald Trump is shaking things up in this country so perhaps we can get ourselves back towards something more conservative down the road.
“The pearl clutchers, moral handwringers, defeat seekers and appeasniks are recognized as being as much the enemy as those openly seeking to destroy our nation with their leftist totalitarianism.”
Well stated, Grimmy.
This article goes off track right in the first paragraph.
Trump isn’t a movement conservative. That has nothing to do with his personal life, and everything to do with certain policy positions. Most conservatives don’t want a billion-dollar infrastructure bill, or a “reformed” healthcare bill, for example, yet President Trump has publicly thrown his support behind those things.
Most “movement” conservatives (and I speak as a lifelong conservaative who has been involved in numerous conservative organizations) believe that in general, trade is good and should be as unfettered as possible. President Trump has been a long-time advocate of tariffs, an not just on countries that are hostile. Many here agree with him, many don’t.
He tends to endorse Establishment RINOs like Ryan, Romney, McCain, and Strange over conservative challengers.
President Trump has done a lot of good things, a lot of conservative things, but let’s not kid ourselves. He’s not a Movement conservative, nor a consistent conservative. He has certain liberal views.
While I have no use for Big Government pseudocons, they’re not movement conservatives either. They may think they are, but they’re not — and I tend to be a fairly “big tent” conservative. (i.e., I have room for hard traditionalists (I did study with Russell Kirk, after all, and named my YAF chapter after him) and for reasonably conservative libertarians.)
So I’m not inclined to exclude peoplefrom the movement. I hve room for Buckley, Kirk, Meyer, Michael Savage, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, for Goldwaterites and Reaganites, for Rand. For Howard Phillips. But not Big Government people.
But again, they’re not the conservative movement.
As I keep telling my NeverTrump relatives there just aren’t enough of you to win elections.
David Kahane was a fictional character in the 1992 film "The Player." Walsh took the character's name as his pseudonym.
My perspective is unusual. I’m a Midwesterner by birth who grew up in a liberal family, converted to conservatism in my early 20s, and now living in NYC and active in conservative & libertarian politics.
What I see is the convergence of various trends:
1) many newly-engaged voters in 2016, primarily voting for Trump. It remains to be seen whether they remain engaged.
2) a significant proportion of Dems are distressed at the authoritarian style and radicalism of activists and leaders in their own party. They are disaffected, but not enough to vote for an R yet.
3) a split among movement conservatives between
a) a small group with an older model of political discourse. They believe in a mainstream of policy influence. They want conservative ideas to be taken seriously across the political spectrum.
b) a much larger group that has incorporated populist and traditionalist elements into standard Buckley-style fusionism. They are less concerned with respectability, since they have become aware that their ideas were never considered mainstream ideas.
Group a) may have had a hand in influencing party platforms or key policy. They would defend Bushism, or Romneyism, etc. although my term for these policy approaches is right-statism.
Group b) is disaffected with politics. They see, as Walsh does, that Group a) has had few policy victories, nearly all of them having increased the intrusion of the state into our private lives (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Medicare Part D, etc)
Group b) has realized that it doesn’t need group a) as an intermediary or power broker, and has declared political independence.
It is a time of ideological flux, and it’s not entirely clear to me how it will settle.
The conservative movement has conserved nothing while providing an outlet to decompress any serious right wing reaction.
Fortunately, the conservative movement is dead.
1. It's the courts, stupid.
2. Media Death Star delenda est
We can talk about all the other stuff when those two things are taken care of.
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