Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist that people either love, hate, love to hate, or hate to love, has written an October 24 column that neatly sums up what a lot of people are struggling with in conservative camps. Written as semi self satire, the article approach the Trump candidacy from the position of a true, Ivy League, blue blood, conservative who really doesn't support Trump, never has, but who is tortured by the fact that if you set the man aside from his demeanor, there really are reasons for conservatives to support the President's campaign for reelection.* The question is if they outweigh the reasons they perceive for not doing so.
Presented as a debate with his internal muse, Douthat looks fairly at those reasons. His article is definitely worth reading. Subtitled "A voice in my head makes the case to re-reelect the president", he does just that, while concluding that he's not voting for Trump.
Douthat puts those reasons as follows, starting off amusing ly this way:
Last Sunday this section was turned over to essays making the case against the re-election of Donald Trump. I read all of the pieces, and found more than a few points with which I disagreed. But my commitment to contrarianism only goes so far: Fundamentally I agree with my colleagues that Trump should not be …
Heyyyyyy — you aren’t even going to let me make a case here?
Excuse me?
Douthat goes on to note, in much greater detail than I'll summarize them here, the Presidents accomplishments, from a conservative position. Those are:
1. He cut immigration rates.
2. He created a looser monetary policy.
3. No new wars.
4. The beginning of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.
5. Supreme Court appointments.
Douthat acknowledged all of these things in varying degrees, but still comes out against Trump in the end for reasons he sets out. As noted, it's well worth reading.
I don't know who Douthat is voting for, as I don't read his column regularly. As The New York Times has a paywall, and as I choose not to be a subscriber of the Grey Lady, I couldn't, although I would, if I could. I briefly subscribed to the NYT podcast The Argument, of which he's a feature, but as I'm over subscribed on podcasts, I dropped back off. Off hand, I think he's said some nice things about the American Solidarity Party, which has received some conservative anti Trump endorsements this year. Rod Dreher, for example, has been saying nice things about them. The ASP provides a protest refuge for conservatives as its opposed to abortion, but if it were doing better in the polls it wouldn't receive much conservative support, as it also has what is basically an open door immigration policy. Douthat has written a book with another conservative commentator about the future of conservatism, which he sees going in another direction in the future, but I haven't read it (his muse torments him in the article for its low readership, which is probably self deprecating as it is, in fact, highly regarded).
Douthat, now 40 years old, stands as good of chance as being the next William F. Buckley as anyone.
Basically, Douthat's position is that Trump's failings as a President and as a human being outweigh his plusses, even when he acknowledges them. But this does point out, as noted, the problems that true conservatives presently have in disregarding Trump too freely.
Trump has cut immigration rates which some on the non political left argue remains at an environmentally destructive rate and many on the non political left argue remains at an economically destructive rate for the country. This is something that the overwhelming majority of Americans support addressing, but the Democrats, naively believing that all immigrants are future Democratic voters, which is true in the near term, definitely oppose. Ironically, as most immigrants also come from more traditional cultures they're helping to fuel a turn towards cultural conservatism that Democrats seem to fail to be unable to recognize, and when they gain sufficient economic strength, they turn away from Democrats, something that is a pretty clear trend, but oddly unrecognized. Be that as it may, the present population of the country really can't harmlessly endure the current ongoing immigration rate, which isn't a left right matter, but an economic and environmental one.
I don't grasp anything about monetary policy but Douthat does note that the economy was doing well before the virus and that no one President or person can be blamed for the pandemic, although Douthat condemns Trump's handling of the pandemic. As I don't know much about monetary policy, and tend towards economic views that don't fit the right tor the left well, I'll just leave that there.
Voters in 2016 did want out of the ongoing wars and didn't want to get into new ones, and like it or not, Trump has lived up to that. President Obama, on the other hand, very much did not. Take that for what its worth. Personally, my view is that we shouldn't leave Afghanistan until we've won, which nobody ever said was going to be easy, and which Donald Rumsfeld should receive the blame for poor planning on.
Finally, the liberal direction of the Court had gone on to various degrees since the 1960s and it really did need to be addressed. Over the past 50 years the Court's been converted from a real appellate court to a societal arbiter of supreme nature, which has reduced respect for the Court. Trump's picks, which were really Mitch McConnell's filtered through the Federalist Society, has gone a long ways towards addressing that. Joe Biden promises to reform the Court, but any reforms that the Democrats are likely to support are likely to disastrous. The Court needs reformation (age limits and a reduction in size would be a good start), but the type we're going to be offered isn't going to help much if anything, and likely won't get through for that matter.
So what are conservatives to do? Basically, Douthat argues that Trump is so indecent he must be let go.
That argument has been made before, but not really as cogently as Douthat makes it. Other conservatives have made the indecent argument, and tied it to other things, but not in a synthesized overall argument like the youngish columnist from the Times. Douthat argues that Trump's behavior is so corrosive that long term gains for conservatives will be overshadowed by a society wide taint that will be overall deterimentative for years to come.
Indeed, Douthat is already on record to some degree that this is the case, having been the author along with another conservative of a book on the future of the GOP, which they argue must be rebuilt. In his column, while acknowledging real conservative gains over the past four years (some of which, the Court in particular, are very real, even unprecedented gains).
Here we should accordingly turn to history, I suppose, and see if it supports his argument. The results are mixed, but there is reason to credit him.
Perhaps the most dramatic, and disturbing, examples are those of the European right wing, non fascist, political parties that existed prior to World War Two. There were quite a few.
If we can characterize those parties, which were all national, not pan European, in character, they were all deeply conservative, tended to be monarchical in sympathies, and tended to support traditional institutions in their countries even if individual leaders of those parties tended to be poor examples of adherence to them in some occasions. They were also quasi populist in nature, and often tended to hold up agrarians as examples of national character even while, oddly enough, they were not agrarian parties. Indeed, at the time Europe had a lot of national agrarian parties that were parties of the left in some significant ways, and not in others, but which were unique unto themselves. Those parties outlasted most of the pre war European conservative parties, but not all of them.
The reaction of these parties varied during the European crisis. Some of them, like Fianna Fail, the Irish nationalist party, sailed right through period without impact, but also without becoming entangled in compromise with other forces.**
Spain and France, however, give us much different examples. In France there existed deeply right wing political parties prior to World War Two. Those parties tended to favor monarchy and tended to be anti democratic, neither of which is the case for any branch of American conservatism. They were not fascist parties, however. During World War Two they came to power in the Vichy regime and ran it. Following the war, while there was a French right, it was forever tainted by its compromise during World War Two and its never really overcome it. Strongly right wing populist movements exist in France today, but when they achieve much notoriety they begin to get associated with their pre war predecessors to their detriment. To at least some degree, that's kept them from returning to power.
This is also true of Spain, where right wing parties were allied with Franco throughout his long dictatorship. That fact has kept them essentially out of power, no matter what their overall views may be, since Franco's fall. Right wing Spanish political parties still exist, but they're marginalized as a result of their Francoist past.
In Germany, of course, World War Two had a permanent detrimental impact on the pre war right wing parties. Many just died due to their cooperation with the Nazis during Hitler's rise to power. Perhaps the fact that Hitler put an end to rival parties so quickly after he became Chancellor kept conservative German parties from dying altogether, and in fact conservative German politicians who had escaped Nazi Germany and spent Hitler's time in power in exile formed the government from May 1949, when the Federal Republic of Germany was formed, until 1968 when they lost power in that fateful year.
The mess of Italian politics gives us, however, an example where seemingly nothing was changed by the war and what it meant. Italy retains "neo fascist" political parties as well has heavily right wing parties, regional parties, and radial left wing parties. None of them seem to be effective at anything. A niece of Mussolini has been a fairly successful Italian politician in recent times in spite of being a fascist and a former pornographic actress. So go figure.
Turning to the United States, perhaps a more analogous example can be found in the Democratic Party, ironically enough. The Democrats were the nation's conservative party during much of the 19th Century and it was the party of slavery and the South. Its association with both heavily damaged it following the Civil War but it never ceased to exist. It didn't even reform, and by the late 1870s, it was back as a fully functioning national party. Reform to the Democratic Party didn't come until the 1890s, when it started, and it took until the Civil Rights Era and beyond, all the way until the 1980s, for Southern Democrats to no longer be associated with a sort of heavily tainted, populist, and racist, conservatism.
Before Republicans take too much comfort form that latter example, however, it must also be kept in mind that the early 19th Century saw the destruction of numerous American political parties, including those that had been very major parties, due to their inability to keep a cogent identifiable central position. Parties like the Federalist and Whigs rose in power, had Presidents, and then collapsed virtually overnight. That example is one that current Republicans have reason to be worried about, and some are. Efforts to keep parties like the Whigs together after they lost a central theme were impossible, and new parties, including the Republican Party, spun out of their collapse.
So what does a person take from the examples of history?
Well, perhaps not surprisingly, association with a negative does impact a political party, but often only seemingly briefly, and sometimes not at all. Given that, the GOP cannot be expected to evaporate, but suffer for an election term or two. Probably less than predicted right now. It'll reemerge different from what it presently is, but perhaps surprisingly less different than some would now predict.
Deep traumas, however, are usually, but surprisingly not universally, game changers and some deeply held positions are permanently lost, or lost for a long time. I.e., there aren't any serious German or French monarchist anymore, and there haven't been since 1945, but the Southern Democrats didn't reform for over a century. Is Trump that deep of trauma? Right now, that would depend upon who you listen to, but history would suggest probably not.
Anyway we look at it, it's safe to assume that the GOP of 2022 isn't going to be the same as the GOP of 2020, or at least that's my prediction, anyhow. My guess is that it will be younger, and much more philosophically conservative, and probably less populist. It's leaders, and probably Douthat is in that category, will start to really emerge next year. Time, of course, will tell.
*Douthat is a Harvard graduate. His father is a New Haven, Connecticut lawyer and poet. His mother is a writer. A maternal great grandfather was the Governor of Connecticut.
**Fianna Fail had the advantage, in this regard of being in power in Ireland throughout this period.
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