In 1980, I was the Republican candidate for Congress in what was then Indiana’s 11th Congressional District. I was pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and I had won a Republican primary. After I lost the general election, several people told me that they just hadn’t been able to vote for me, because I was “so conservative.”
I share this story because it illustrates how political labels change. Although I have admittedly changed my position on discrete policies as I have learned more, my essential political philosophy has remained pretty consistent–and I am now considered left-wing.
The moral of this story is that one’s position on the political spectrum is a function of the Overton Window–and as the GOP moved far–far!–to the right, the perceived orientation of those of us who stayed in the center (or even center-right) shifted. Most of the old-time Republicans I once worked with have left the GOP, appalled by what it has become. (Few have followed me into the Democratic Party, unable to make that leap, although most now will admit to voting Democratic.)
One consequence of the radical change in the Republican Party has been a detachment of terminology from meaning. Pundits continue to describe MAGA’s “policies” as conservative. (I put quotations around the word policies because MAGA folks don’t really have policies–they have resentments.) I do not consider myself a classic conservative–I don’t think I ever was–but I consider it deeply unfair to label today’s GOP cultists and bigots “conservative.”
A genuine conservative agrees–and accuses MAGA and Trump of destroying American conservatism.
In an article for The Atlantic, Peter Wehner accuses Trump of killing conservatism, writing that he “has cultivated and encouraged the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene.”
Wehner begins by noting that the College Republicans have hired someone named Kai Schwemmer to be the group’s political director, despite the fact that Schwemmer has ties to the white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement. (Groypers are a loose network of white-nationalist activists and internet trolls.)
Young Republicans have refused to apologize for Schwimmer’s White nationalism, and Wehner notes that this is hardly an isolated case. Last year, Politico reported on leaked Telegram chats among leaders of Young Republican chapters in several states—chats in which chairs, vice chairs, and committee members exchanged blatantly racist and anti-Semitic messages. And the Miami Herald revealed leaked chats from a Republican student group at Florida International University in which participants used racial slurs, indicated their desires to “violently attack Black people,” and described women as “whores.”
Wehner was a lifelong Republican; he served in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations. However, in 2016, he wrote an essay for The New York Times in which he said that Republicans should not vote for Trump under any circumstances, describing him as a “virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness.” He warned that Trump’s nomination would “threaten the future of the Republican Party, because although Clinton might defeat it at the polls, only Trump could redefine it. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.”
Wehner recognized that the ugliness now so vividly on display within MAGA existed long before Trump entered politics. But for the most part, it had been confined to the fringes. No more.
Among Trump’s most consequential legacies has been his deformation of the temperament and disposition of virtually the entire Republican Party. It has been a remarkable shift to observe: The very qualities that early on made Republicans, including evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, uneasy about Trump are those they have since come to accept and embrace. He rewired their moral circuitry…
Trump has overturned many long-standing public-policy commitments of conservatives—supporting free trade, reforming entitlements, supporting foreign assistance to save lives and advance American interests, standing by NATO, and standing against Russian oppression at home and aggression abroad. But the deeper and more lasting damage he has done is to conservatism as a sensibility.
In the essay, Wehner shares numerous quotes from the conservative canon and concludes that “MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it.”
Conservatives once talked about the virtue of compassion; the importance of good character and the need to encourage courtesy and decency–opinions MAGA mocks as woke. Wehner concludes that conservatism is now politically homeless.
MAGA replaced conservatism with fascism. Call it what it is.
Democrats are the ones who now “conserve.”
I voted for you in 1980 for your stand on civil and human rights; I voted as an Independent voter. I was working for the City of Indianapolis Republican government at the time.
MAGA is the herd mentality associated with white (mostly) grievance over not getting stinking rich without being smart about it. Blame it on everyone else – especially people of color and immigrants. That’s their “platform”. It has NEVER had anything to do with conservatism, but that word must be used to try to bring the herd together to vote properly.
In other news, try to find Pete Hegseth’s “sermon” about killing our enemies. He violent rhetoric was truly shatteringly evil and scary. Old Testament nostrums squeezed through his perverted, anti-woke lexicon. It was like someone just stepped out from an old KKK rally. Now we know why Trump picked this lunatic.
I’m sure you nailed it, Vernon.
“Conservative.” It seems sadly funny, to me, recalling my grandfather’s one line caution to me, as a child, about the old Republicans: “They want to have a king.”
I don’t think that they did, at the time, but they do now. Actually, when one defines a “Republic:” Wikipedia says…
“Republic
Form of government where the head of state is elected
A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public, typically through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy.” Trump was elected, but he and MAGA do not seem to want further elections, even with Putin’s assistance, it would seem.
Heather Cox Richardson’s book “Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State Of America”, published in 2023, drives home the point time and time again in this work that the current Republican Party represents the radicals, not the Democrats.
Hearkening back to Lincoln’s time, she notes that “Lincoln emphasized that those trying to destroy democracy in his era were not the conservatives they claimed to be but were dangerous radicals whose version of America must be rejected.” Trump’s radicalization of the Republican Party depends on maintaining the right-wing myth that American history was rooted in a “pure past” that their opponents were destroying by promoting the democratic values of equality before the law, separation of church and state, an independent press, academic freedom, and free markets.
As Richardson pointedly notes, “A history that looks back to a mythologized past as the country’s perfect time is a key tool of authoritarians. It allows them to characterize anyone who opposes them as an enemy of the country’s great destiny.” She reminds us that Lincoln made clear the that the story of humanity was ‘“the eternal struggle between two principles-right and wrong-throughout the world. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself,”’ Lincoln said. And “(n)o matter in what shape it comes from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
How prophetic were Lincoln’s words when one reflects on the actions of the convicted felon and wannabe king currently occupying the White House.
Solipsism perfectly describes Orange Jesus. He can’t conceive of the notion that anyone outside of himself is really human like he is. The odd thing is that we’re in agreement that nobody is like him. He is unique in his capacity for revenge. He is unique in his ability to project his own disturbing thoughts on anyone who opposes him. He is unique in his ability to twist facts to turn his followers into babbling idiots who are with him to the bitter end. Most importantly, he is unique in his unfitness for any position of leadership, outside of Hell.
VOTE!
we forgot the tea party. this whole whos doin what was long ago a anti-government view by those who were swade by voices in their ear telling them how cool it was to be anti yourself. rush’s gush just made it justified because he became a radio,(ill leave that to your own thought,s) his presence in his stance gave the idiots of anti anything justification to squash anything. whipped into a tizzy every 11A.m on am radio. then it exploded. KNAX yankton S.D. was probably the forerunnner of the change,from saving the farm demos to anti tax assholes. of course it changed hands and gave thune a mouthpiece to crush Tom Dashel.who co authored the very legislation that saved the family farm. when the AM radio found its cash flow from the koch/media the it just flew, you,could just be a bigot or anti anything,then came social medias algorythems. kids being harmed? hell social media, it just crushed democracy in America by buying up any voice and ad it could. the tech bros have no worry,they have the money. its the working class being crushed by stupid.
when i moved to NoDak, in the first year, i met the seeds of gordon khal. and scott fauls uncle was my neighbor. my buddy was his cousin. if your reading of listening to social medias class warfare on this matter,s. try living with these people who would kill ya for,their views. they were armed 24/7 and still are today..
I always got the impression that Republicans wanted government to stay out of their business and wanted everyone to work and be of utility. There was something off-putting in their elitist, mercenary stance. A philosophy professor once said that early on the extremely wealthy people, like the Vanderbilts etc. and the working class were Democrats. The aspiring businesspeople were Republicans. I see strong remnants of that trend in the Republican Congress today. Affiliation with trump has opened the gates to dark and laundered money being paid to Representatives, Senators and SC judges for their loyalty votes. They all have been whipped into compliance by dark power and money and are holding on not just to protect trump, but to protect themselves from their maleficence coming to light.
Great column and terrific comments!! Good start to the week:-)