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American Conservatism Is Trumpism and Trumpism Is American Conservatism

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I have long been convinced that Trump would govern as Reagan’s purest heir rather than being a Carter who would constantly fight with his party in Congress. At this point, I don’t think there’s any question that this is what’s happening:

Just as September 4, A.D. 476, is the somewhat arbitrary date many historians choose as the end of the Roman Empire, March 28, 2018, could be picked as the moment of the final collapse of conservative opposition to Donald Trump. The symbolic equivalent of the last Roman emperor being deposed by Odoacer is a column by National Review editor Rich Lowry. Two years ago, Lowry’s magazine famously published a special issue denouncing Trump. Now Lowry acknowledges Trump is, and is likely to remain, a conservative Republican in good standing, and that “the coterie of his critics among writers and activists on the Right—loosely referred to as Never Trump—often sound like they are in denial.” It is the final surrender after a long decline.

Lowry argues that, contrary to the predictions by Never Trump conservatives that Trump would betray the movement in office, he has hewed tightly to doctrine as president. Trump has, indeed, deviated less from conservative orthodoxy than any president in postwar American history. George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, increased federal oversight of education, and, like Trump, imposed tariffs on steel. Ronald Reagan was practically a liberal by modern standards, repeatedly breaking with the right to increase taxes, liberalize immigration, sign an arms control pact with the Soviets, and sign a progressive tax reform, among other things.

As Lowry notes, previous Republicans have always used some elements of nationalism and populism to sell their program. It’s no longer credible for conservatives to “pretend that he’s just going away, or that he’s a wild outlier in the contemporary GOP,” he acknowledges.

In his extremely unconvincing argument for why “diversity” compelled the hiring of more anti-Trump conservatives even though anti-Trump conservatives are already massively overrepresented, Jeffrey Goldberg asserted that pundits like Williamson had been left “ideologically” homeless by Trump’s ascension. This couldn’t be more wrong. The Trump administration has been the purest distillation of Reaganism as conservatives have defined it, much more so than either Bush or indeed Reagan himself. Anti-Trump conservatives have personal objections to Trump, but Trump hasn’t left them with a party that doesn’t reflect their ideological views. Which is precisely why anti-Trump conservatives are a minuscule rump that have no influence on the party.

Anti-Trump conservatism in 2016 — always typified by me by Ted Cruz’s wildly overpraised and egregiously misinterpreted non-endorsement non-non-endorsement of Trump at the RNC — was founded on the assumptions that 1)Trump would lose and/or that 2)Trump wouldn’t govern as a conservative. #1 was well-supported but turned out to be false, and #2 didn’t actually make much sense and has also turned out to be false. As a result, no matter how hard the nation’s elite op-ed editors try to make anti-Trump conservatism a thing it’s not, and won’t be until he leaves office and conservatives need to pull the same Conservatism Can Only Be Failed routine they did with George W. Bush.

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