The way forward for a shattered conservative movement
Noah Rothman’s call for reconciliation between Never Trump conservatives and pro-Trump Republican voters is right in spirit, but terribly wrong in substance. I say this as a fellow Never Trump conservative: If we try to offer peace on Rothman’s terms, we will probably lose — and we will definitely deserve to lose.
Rothman, a columnist for Commentary magazine, goes off the rails early when he writes that “anti-Trump Republicans need to remember the lesson of the ‘autopsy’ as much as do pro-Trump Republicans: Electoral politics is a game of addition.”
Unfortunately, that is not the lesson of the 2012 Republican autopsy. After an election in which only 34 percent of voters said that Mitt Romney’s policies would primarily benefit the middle class, the autopsy had only the most cosmetic suggestions to revitalize the party’s sclerotic economic agenda. The only specific policy that that autopsy suggested was “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Comprehensive immigration reform could mean any number of strategies, but, by 2012, it had become a euphemism for a series of George W. Bush–supported policies that included up-front legalization for the mass of America’s unauthorized immigrants, and increased low-skill immigration. The Gang of Eight immigration bill that emerged after the autopsy was written along those lines.
We should keep in mind that this bill was not designed to get majority support. It vastly increased future immigration even though that is an incredibly unpopular policy. Only 21 percent of Americans support increasing immigration. Only 18 percent of Hispanics support increasing immigration. The bill would have primarily increased low-skill immigration despite the preference of Republicans, Democrats, and independents for shifting future immigration flows in the direction of higher skills and English-proficiency. It turned out that comprehensive immigration reform was not about addition. It was about dividing the Washington elites from the electorate, and dividing Republicans among themselves.
It can be argued that this wasn’t what the authors of the autopsy wanted, or that Rothman hasn’t explicitly called for the adoption of Gang of Eight–style immigration reform, but everybody knows what is going on. The autopsy was written by operators such as lobbyist Henry Barbour and George W. Bush operative Ari Fleisher. Rothman went on Twitter to argue that he “would be shocked if the outcome of this race isn’t that surviving Rs hold up the autopsy and declare it vindicated” and that “the immigration over all right wanted a referendum on their view. They got it. They’re set for a dramatic loss.” This can be framed as mere political analysis, but it is the kind of analysis that Rush Limbaugh practiced on Donald Trump in the GOP primary — advocacy with a patina of deniability.
You don’t have to be a political genius to figure out that Rothman’s implied argument — that Trump is collapsing because of his horrible and unstable personality, so now you have to support policies opposed by the vast majority of Americans — is bogus and self-serving.
This gets to another problem with Rothman’s peace terms for Trump supporters. Rothman writes:
The coalition cannot be reformed around two competing ideas. Trumpism exists at odds with conservatism, and the party as reconstituted in 2017 must be one built up around conservative ideals of limited government, free trade, an internationalist foreign policy, and an unqualified rejection of identity politics. In short, Republicans of all stripes must be made to acknowledge and accept that Trumpism is an experiment that failed. That’s the price of admission, and it’s a modest one given the great costs associated with sacrificing a winnable race for the White House.
Rothman is right to point out all the ways that Trump is toxic. From the beginning, Trump lacked the integrity to supervise a small town’s police force or a city’s office of the comptroller. In the case of a Trump defeat, his flaws will be obvious even to his supporters. Even the writers at the short-lived Journal of American Greatness admitted that Trump was not the representative they would have chosen. But trying to bundle a rejection of Trumpism with a rejection of Donald Trump is coming at the problem from the wrong direction.
Trump’s proposals might be wrong, but that has to be argued, and Trump’s voters need to be convinced.
I am probably much closer to Rothman than Trump on the vast majority of issues, but a large segment of Republican-leaning voters is hostile or indifferent to free trade. A large segment of Republican-leaning voters is ambivalent about our alliance system.
If and when Trump loses, these voters will know that he didn’t lose because he questioned NAFTA, or opposed the TPP, or suggested that our allies should pay protection fees. Trump has more obtrusive weaknesses. Trump’s proposals might be wrong, but that has to be argued, and Trump’s voters need to be convinced (or at least mollified). It is no good to tell these voters that they must preemptively give up their preferences and interests because of rules that Rothman made up in his head.
#related#Trying to use a Trump defeat to create an artificial consensus around unpopular or divisive policies would be repeating the mistakes that led to Trump. It would mean recognizing the autopsy for what it was — an attempt by a minority of the party impose its own policy preferences and sensibilities on the majority — and then trying to do the same thing again.
Some pro-Trump writers have suggested that they favor a better Trumpism. I’m not one of them. I favor something better than Trumpism. I am a Mike Lee, Henry Olsen, Lawrence Mead guy. But the best way to get something better than Trumpism doesn’t start with demanding repentance from Trump supporters. It starts with the rest us explaining how we (very much including myself) messed up in the years leading up to the Trump disaster. My own confessions are forthcoming.