We want to fight these people.
If the GOP would get out of our way and let us fight them, it would be a win-win for both of us. Unfortunately, Conservatism, Inc. is hopelessly antiquated and out of touch and more so now than ever because the internal demographics of the Republican Party have shifted since 2016.
“Last September I predicted that the 2020 election would represent the most dangerous moment confronting America since the darkest days of the Civil War. The reelection of President Donald Trump, I feared, would set us on an authoritarian path that would be next to impossible to reverse. …
Today, Donald Trump is in exile and Democrats control both houses of Congress. The republic is secure and the rule of law has been restored. But just over the horizon, storm clouds are re-forming and gathering strength …
Doubling and tripling down on the Trump strategy of relying on the GOP’s white evangelical and working-class base — even at the expense of forfeiting college-educated suburbanites — has been proven to be a viable political option. …”
Allow me to explain:
THEY are Republican establishment folks.
THEY are the people who used to be the Right.
THEY are the traditional conservative movement and Republican Party.
There used to be two big clusters of voters who were conservatives and Republicans before the 2016 election. It was the True Cons or Free Marketeer types who describe themselves as liberals or moderates on social issues and as fiscal conservatives on economics. The rest of the Republican Party was the conservative base which was made up of social conservatives. Basically, there was a Mitt Romney wing (the business guys) and a Ted Cruz wing (the Religious Right guys). The common ground that united the establishment and the base was fiscal conservatism, but there was always tension on cosmopolitan issues which reflects the difference between rural voters and wealthy, college-educated suburbanites.
Donald Trump remade the Republican Party by bringing into the fold two new big clusters of nationalist and populist voters – the people who had been the Center before the 2016 election – who the media call the “far right.” These people were adjacent to the Ted Cruz wing of the party. They are social conservatives and economic moderates. These people are “far right” in the sense of being more ethnocentric and conservative on cultural issues and more moderate on foreign policy and economics than the pre-2016 Republican Party. The “far right” is now the leftwing of the Republican coalition.
The thread that now unites 85% or so of the Republican Party – the two groups of nationalists and populists and “Staunch Conservatives” – is social conservatism and specifically rejection of cosmopolitanism, modernism, mass immigration and political correctness or wokeness. This is why the more cosmopolitan Free Marketeer crowd has become the disaffected wing.
Conservatism, Inc. has not adjusted to this change.
Before the Trump presidency, there was already tension between the GOP establishment and the conservative base. Now, half of the Republican Party is newcomers loyal only to Trump and the border that separates the “Right” from “Left” has shifted to an area beyond which used to be the old Center. As a result of this change, the True Cons wing has retreated from the front lines and has a kind of blinkered perspective on things. Paleocons like Nick Fuentes are in the middle of the Republican Party. The quarrel between Nick Fuentes and Charlie Kirk is between conservatives.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election because he lost Independent voters in key swing states. He won Independent voters, however, in the 2016 election. He lost the election because he lost people like us. He lost people like us who were with him the first time because he was captured by conservatives who didn’t understand what had happened in the 2016 election and thought that they could continue with business as usual. This is why they lost the House, Senate and the White House. They are simply out of touch with the Center of the electorate because it is not where it used to be anymore.
We are the people who are closer to the Center now. We are Independents who are in the middle, not the Right. This gives us greater perspective on what is working and what is not working. We’re offering some valuable feedback and insight from the front lines to whoever is watching.
Note: The focus on immigration and political correctness/wokeness is a welcome change. The focus on tech censorship is good for extremely online activists, which is to say, not the majority of our people. Seriously though, the place where the change to the antiquated policy agenda most has to happen and where moderation will have the greatest benefit is on trade, economics and health care. Independent voters are “cross-pressured” on these issues and torn between their priorities.