The New GOP's No-Legged Stool
Have you noticed lately, as I have, that "conservatism" isn't that conservative anymore?
I was thinking about this while perusing a recent kerfuffle on X (formerly Twitter) between a former FBI agent and conservative "citizen journalist" famed for his undercover-video exposes. Somehow, I was unfortunate enough to come across this exchange, in which the former FBI agent printed evidence of the journalist's obscene exchanges with women and the journalist said a cease-and-desist was headed his way.
Now, it's completely valid to debate whether or not the ex-agent should have put out the evidence (including private messages) for public consumption. His motives for doing so also are debatable. But nothing prepared me for the avalanche of "conservative" responses to the exchange. From what I read, few to none were outraged about the "conservative hero's" disgusting behavior, which was reprehensible on its face. Over and over again, the "conservative" fans of this hero directed both ire and indifference about the bombshells at the former FBI agent, summed up in one simple, repeated refrain:
"Big deal! No one cares about this #@*&! We have a country to save!"
And all I could think was: "THESE are the 'conservatives?'"
Then I remembered that I have spent the last few years watching myriad "conservative" media bigwigs cuss like truck drivers, spout antisemitism, feign "Christian" or "moral" bonafides just to draw in viewers, live sexually debauched lives, justify pornography, divorce their (sometimes multiple) spouses and even "marry" their same-sex "partners" and adopt babies (to hearty, public high-fives from other successful conservative-media types).
Now I guess we know why they have audiences. Most of the fans appear to be as bad as their idols. But this sure isn’t the Reagan conservatism of the 1980s, when basic morals were expected in conservatism, both among leaders and voters. Heck, it’s not even the Democrats of the 1980s, an era in which both Joe Biden and Gary Hart were run out of the race for the presidency due to plagiarism and adultery, respectively.
Morals, in fact, were central to President Reagan's three-legged stool, the coalition billed as necessary to uphold GOP conservatism: social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and national security/strong military conservatives.
Where did that coalition go?
"It's not Mr. Reagan's party anymore," Nate Cohn, The New York Times' chief political analyst, wrote in 2023. "Today, a majority of Republicans oppose many of the positions that defined (the GOP) as recently as a decade ago. .. Only around one-third of Republican voters takes the traditionally conservative side on each of same-sex marriage, entitlements and America's role in the world."
In fact, last year's NYT/Siena College poll on the subject revealed that only 7 percent -- 7 percent! -- of Republicans subscribe to all three of those legs.
In other words, the three-legged stool is all but dead.
Did Trump populism kill it off? Even those of us who voted for him knew he was far from the poster child for Christian morality, and his references to taking communion weren't able to compensate for his open admission that he'd never asked God for forgiveness for his sins. But in 2016, with great reluctance, many conservative Christians felt like there was no other choice but to back him. The alternative was the manifestly corrupt, scandal-plagued, justice-dodging, far-Left Hillary Clinton. No Christian patriot could just sit home and let her back into the White House, believing that would mean sure disaster for our country.
Also, Trump seemed genuinely friendly toward Christians, a refreshing feeling after eight years of conservative Christian-bashing from the Obama Administration. Trump also touted his pro-life commitments (note: while staying noticeably mum on the LGBTQ+ behemoth), which arguably was his best-kept campaign promise. His appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court alone clearly paved the way for the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade (full disclosure: I voted for Trump twice).
Yet his campaign-trail silence on the LGBTQ+ issue ended up mattering -- and may matter more in the future. Once elected, Trump appointed openly homosexual activist Richard Grenell, who pledged to push the gay agenda across the globe as a U.S. ambassador to Germany and continues to spearhead efforts to bring homosexual voters to the GOP in 2024. Former First Lady Melania Trump even hosted a recent fundraiser for the Log Cabin Republicans, weeks after her husband personally greenlighted a "gay" wedding at Mar-a-Lago. And don't forget how Trump blamed "pro-life Republicans" for losses in the 2022 midterms.
So much for GOP social conservatism (or dancing with one who brung you). "So what? Who else will they vote for?" is the attitude. Only a third of Republicans oppose same-sex "marriage," anyway. So chop off that stool leg. It's not 1984 anymore. Or even 2004.
How did the fiscal conservatism stool leg fare under Trump? Through a combination of pandemic "relief" and other fiscal measures, the Trump Administration added $8.4 trillion to the national debt over the 10-year budget window, with $2.3 trillion of that coming from spending increases, according to a Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget think tank study.
By contrast, President Obama added $8.34 trillion to the national debt -- over two terms -- a figure conservatives rightly trumpeted as outrageous. Few squawked, though, when Trump exceeded that figure in half the time. Did piling up insane amounts of debt and leveraging our children's and grandchildren's futures suddenly become fiscally responsible (and moral) just because a Republican did it? Thomas Jefferson said it well: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." But what did he know?
Even the national security/strong-military stool leg is not what it used to be. In 2005, 53 percent of Republicans thought America should be active abroad, a number that dipped to 24 percent in 2023. Trump hit a nerve when he advocated putting a stop to "endless wars," primarily because conservatives had grown angry about the misleading Iraq War justifications and an overrun southern border. Today, between Biden's massive illegal-alien border invasion and the solvency-busting funding of the Ukraine war, Republican voters really aren't in the mood for endless overseas intervention. Then again, Reagan's era was focused on ending communism abroad. The bigger concern today is the proliferating communism we have at home.
Which brings us back to who the GOP really is these days. In a follow-up piece on the aforementioned 2023 poll, The New York Times identified six categories of voters in today's GOP: Right Wingers (26%); Traditional Conservatives (26%); Moderate Establishment voters (14%); Libertarian Conservatives (14%); Blue Collar Populists (12%); and Newcomers (8%).
Notably, the Times described Trump's "Right Wing" voters as not only "very conservative and disproportionately evangelical," but as those "who love Mr. Trump more than any other group."
What this really means is that those who most identify as "evangelical" (a loose term these days, at best) and "very conservative" are the most ardent Trump supporters -- likely for the reason that The Times also noted: "They believe America is on the brink of catastrophe."
But hang on a minute. Shouldn't the hapless, corrupt, old and clearly mentally compromised Joe Biden be the easiest president in history to beat? Then why didn't those in this most-evangelical, most-conservative wing of the GOP go for the candidate most likely to uphold the pillars of conservatism? For example, why did this wing overwhelmingly go for a similarly old candidate who's only able to serve one term if elected, who's embroiled in tremendous legal battles and who - let's be honest - botched his handling of the pandemic (without apology), never built the wall and didn't even uproot the Deep State? Why didn't this wing strongly back the younger Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has a much stronger track record than Trump of successfully upholding conservative principles, while also winning multiple battles against the Left?
If there were still a strong three-legged stool upholding conservatism -- three main groups of conservative people, united into one principled conservative GOP coalition -- DeSantis probably would have won the GOP primaries. But Republicans today are not the Republicans of 1980 or 1984. They're identified primarily by their anger about what the Left did and is doing to America and their anger at what the Left did and is doing to Trump. Well, we're all mad about those things. Yet the average GOP voter -- even the "Right Wing/evangelical/true conservative" -- is now reducing his entire vote to "stopping the Left and saving America." To these voters, only embattled Trump can serve as the appropriate agent of their comeback. Without a principled three-legged stool, this is how too many "Right Wing GOP conservatives" now think about politics.
I agree that the Left has to be stopped. I agree that we must fight to save our country. What I'm wondering is this: If those goals have no root in any remaining conviction about basic and important conservative principles regarding our Constitution, the rule of law, the family, our morals, our fiscal responsibility or our national security -- i.e., what we need to conserve -- then exactly what is it about America that is actually worth saving?
We need the three-legged stool back. Today's GOP is looking more each day like the Democrats of the Clinton era, and that is because too many are operating out of panic instead of principle. Rebuilding this nation will take more than a few political adjustments. It will require the people of this nation to take stock of how far they have strayed from the God who blessed us with our liberty in the first place and return both to Him and to the moral and constitutional principles that must be conserved.
Regardless of what happens in November, we need to get back to the message that gave President Reagan a landslide two-term presidency, articulated in his 1989 Farewell Address to the Nation:
"An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. .. But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection.
... Four years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, `'We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.'' Well, let's help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are."