The Daily Beast: We Need to Stop Calling Far-Right Extremists ‘Conservatives’

It is 2022.

The Alt-Right is dead.

Donald Trump is no longer the president.

MAGA has become the new Republican establishment.

The True Cons have been ousted from power in the Republican Party. In their absence, the conservative base has steadily radicalized and has adopted rhetoric and positions which used to be more associated with us, which has blurred the boundary between the “fringe” and the “mainstream.”

Liz Cheney is now a fringe figure in the Republican Party while the median Republican voter is far closer to us than these people. Republican politicians are significantly older than their voters. Reaganites like Sen. Rob Portman are retiring which is gradually shifting the party in our direction.

At some point, there was a role reversal. I became a garden variety mainstream normie. There isn’t much that I believe anymore which normie conservatives don’t also believe. Everyone agrees now that White people and Christianity are under siege in this country. They have gradually come and around and embraced my positions while rejecting people like Matt Lewis and David French.

The conservative brand isn’t what it used to be. This has sparked a debate over what “conservatism” means and whether the brand should be abandoned or redefined.

The Daily Beast:

“Want proof a stopped clock is right twice a day? On Thursday, the right-wing outlet The Federalist published what could only be described as a manifesto aimed at fellow travelers, arguing that “We Need to Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives.”

As a conservative, I believe the author, John Daniel Davidson, got it 100 percent correct: It is time for right-wing nationalists to stop besmirching our good name!

Those of us who remain consistent conservatives are no longer in sync with right-wingers or GOP faithful—because they changed. By insisting on calling this new MAGA movement “conservative,” we (the media, the activists, the politicians) are rendering words useless. To be sure, political movements—like the English language, itself—evolve over time. But calling Trumpist radicals “conservative” is tantamount to saying the word “literally” means “figuratively.”

Davidson deserves credit for calling bullshit on that bait-and-switch game, and he is keen on the change, primarily (he says) because “the conservative project has largely failed.” …”

“Conservative” always meant “loser” to me.

The “conservatives” were the True Cons with Principles™. We were nationalists. I’ve spent most of my adult life thinking of myself as being an outsider who is opposed to “conservatism.”

In defense of these Principles™, the Lincoln Project has tirelessly campaigned for Democratic candidates. David French works for The Atlantic. S.E. Cupp works for CNN. Matt Lewis writes for The Daily Beast. Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes and Tim Miller regularly appear on MSNBC to shill for Joe Biden.

David French, for example, is a highly principled pro-life conservative. This is why he is agonizing over the Georgia Senate race. He is torn between Principles™, which always translates into sucking up to the liberal establishment and leading his own side to political defeat, and ending abortion.

The Atlantic:

“If ever there was a time and place for a thoughtful, patriotic conservatives to vote third party or perhaps even vote for a reasonable Democrat, it’s the 2022 election in Georgia. Herschel Walker’s past is, if possible, even more checkered than Donald Trump’s. After all, no one ever claimed that Trump threatened one of his ex-wives with a gun. …

Versions of this dilemma are being put before GOP voters in different races across the country. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania recently and explicitly reaffirmed that he doesn’t support any limits on abortion rights. In his view, the decision should be between a woman and her doctor at every stage of pregnancy. …

Right now the message to conservative anti-abortion voters is that they should risk a potential policy loss on what is for many of them their single most important issue, because the republic could be at risk. Yet, key Democrats—sensing opportunity in the weakness of Walker, or of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania—are refusing to compromise on that same issue. …

Defenders of democracy are in need of allies. And though I understand that millions of Republicans will vote for a Trump loyalist no matter the character of the man or woman on the ballot, a substantial number of conservative voters are deeply troubled by the party’s dark turn. They understand all too well the vital importance of character in American politics. And yet they are left with no good choices. …”

What should a highly principled, thoughtful, patriotic conservative whose top issue is ending abortion do in the Georgia Senate race? What should a True Conservative do?

Maybe support Joe Biden whose top priority is nuking the filibuster in order to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law in January?

Maybe vote for Raphael Warnock to save American Democracy who supports ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law?

Maybe vote for John Fetterman in Pennsylvania who supports ending the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law and who also believes there should be no limits whatsoever on abortion? Fetterman supports aborting fully formed, viable nine month old babies.

This is a real tough one. A real dilemma.

After decades of these people talking up and and congratulating themselves over their Principles™ , you would think that the True Cons would be ecstatic that the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade. You would think they would be supporting Republican politicians who actually succeeded in banning abortion. You would think it would be a straightforward choice – preserve Dobbs by taking the Senate and ban abortion at the state level, OR, codify Roe at the federal level with no limits on abortion. There are few choices in politics which are that simple. It is as simple as life or death.

No, the only principle that True Cons like David French really believe in is being a chump or a loser. Conservatives who have come around to our way of thinking in recent years should ditch the brand in favor of nationalism. In spite of recent changes, the conservative brand still means “loser” or “false opposition” to lots of young people because of the memory of people like George Will and David French.

13 Comments

  1. I think that The Establishment/Left is right to take note that, in the Republican Party and out, there are those who have decided that they will not be ‘conserving’ a great deal of what ‘Conservatives’ have ‘conserved’ since WWII

    Of course, this is also a tactic to try and stigmatize, to intimidate, Americans from pursuing a political agenda that they, The Establishment/Left, do not accept.

    The problem is that they are essentially anathematizing many tens of millions of Americans, instead of finding dialogue and compromise.

    Historian Shelby Foote once remarked about The War Between The States : ‘The war occurred because Americans failed to do what Americans failed to find compromise. Though Americans like to pride themselves on being uncompromising and unyielding, the reality is that Americans have always been very good at finding compromise.”

    This tact of the Establishment/Left governing this nation by herding people psychologically through pronouncing taboos and misinformation, though it worked well in the 20th century, is not working in the 21st century.

  2. Conservatism completely failed to conserve a single thing of value. It richly deserves to be tossed on the ash heap of history, along with the memory of spineless assclowns like Bill Buckley, George Will, and David French.

    • They failed to conserve anything worth conservation – not even the ladies’ room. Some act as if this was a bug when it was always a feature. They did actually conserve one kind of thing quite consistently: the gains made by the Church of Woke and its ancestors. Chesterton wasn’t even the first to catch onto this. Some of the old Southerners from the antebellum era were even waking up to the scam. HW even introduced us to some of these now largely forgotten men.

  3. Conservatism has been Irish-ized, corrupted by a morally bankrupt money hungry sect of whoring ne’er-do-wells. Who will the the first conservative to say no more tax cuts for the rich? Bet you bottom dollar it won’t be an Irishmen.

    • I don’t know you’re talking about the Biden’s, but it sounds just like them, greedy ne’er do wells.

  4. I stopped calling neocons/neolibs conservatives long ago.
    Principled?
    The only thing you can count on them for is tax cuts for the rich, and slashing spending on the poor, meanwhile they spend enormous sums of money we don’t have on things we don’t need like bankster/corporate bailouts, militarism and Israel.
    The vast majority of them don’t care about the bill of rights, constitution, traditional morals and values, about America’s people, security and sovereignty.

    If you want principled, you gotta go with paleocons/classical libs like Pat Buchan and Ron Paul.
    If you want to put the interests of Joe and Jane average first, you gotta go with national populists.
    That’s why neocons/neolibs are finally beginning to lose out to them, for decades we elected the wrong people because special interests bought up the MSM and we drank the cool aid.
    Every cuckservative from Eisenhauer on was a bad joke that got progressively worse.
    Reagan the actor sucked and W was absolute shit, Dump was marginally better.

    As for the mainstream left, I don’t call them liberals or progressives, nothing liberal or progressive about them.
    Call them libtards/shitlibs, regressives, woke, crypto/Neomarxist filth.
    These people are all trash that’s been lying around festering for decades.
    We need a massive spring cleaning.

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