Movement Conservatism Was Dying Before Trump

[corbe]

Movement Conservatism Was Dying Before Trump

By Henry Olsen|  February 24, 2018

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is upon us, and its speakers list has caused some longtime conservatives to bemoan the state of the movement. Noting the invitation of French National Front leader Marion LePen, former UKIP head Nigel Farage, and others whose provenance lay soundly in what Steve Bannon called the “economic nationalist movement,” these disaffected conservatives wonder what has happened to their movement. National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser goes so far to say “the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.”

Well. Far be it from me to question someone whose first piece for the movement’s intellectual flagship appeared 48 years ago, when I was a mere lad and the author was only 15. But I have been active in the movement since the mid-1970s and it seems to me that if the movement is dead, it was destroyed from within, not by Trump and certainly not by his admirers.

That’s not to say there are not serious questions about Trump as a man and as a president. I share many of the qualms Brookhiser and others have about him, although I suspect I see him more positively now than do they. Rather, where we differ is on what the movement’s health was before his arrival. The sad truth is that movement conservatism has been dying from sclerosis for years.

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https://amgreatness.com/2018/02/24/movement-conservatism-dying-trump/

[INVAR]

When "Conservatives" tied their fortunes to a Party that held them in contempt, and they foisted all their efforts trying to elect party leaders to explain and expand the virtues and principles of Conservatism, it's days were numbered.

When they allowed the Left to define their principles and exhausted all their efforts placating the antithesis to their thinking,  the movement was terminal.

When Conservatives could no longer define what liberty meant beyond pet issues - the movement Goldwater brought forth and Reagan articulated and established - withered.

When they refused to oust liberal Republicans from office and kept voting them and their big government oligarchy into office, over and over and over again.  Conservatism as a viable political position, died.

When it abandoned principle for pragmatism simply over a desire to "win" and tied the meaning of what it meant to be Conservatism to a lifelong NY Liberal Democrat - it no longer even understood what Conservatism was supposed to mean, and buried itself in profound irrelevance - tied to a party indistinguishable from those they said they opposed in years and decades past.

[EasyAce]

This is the piece by Richard Brookhiser cited in the OP article:

WFB Today

From the Brookhiser piece:

Trump’s first-year accomplishments testify to the conservative movement’s momentum . . . That is Trump’s business, and America’s. But what
has Trump done to conservatives?

One of Trump’s abilities, which he possesses at the level of genius, is finding and naming the weaknesses of enemies: Low-Energy Jeb, Little Marco,
Crooked Hillary. Related is his ability to create weaknesses in his supporters. A weak man needs weak supporters; strong ones might make him feel insecure,
or differ with him. And so, whether from design, or simply because it is the way things work, Trump’s conservative admirers have had to abandon and
contradict what they once professed to hold most dear.

The most egregious example is the religious Right. The religious Right is the latest version of an old model of American politics, variously incarnated by Puritans,
abolitionists, and William Jennings Bryan. It, like its predecessors, has argued that America and individual Americans need to have a godly or at least moral
character to thrive. Now the religious Right adores a thrice-married cad and casual liar. But it is not alone. Historians and psychologists of the martial virtues
salute the bone-spurred draft-dodger whose Khe Sanh was not catching the clap. Cultural critics who deplored academic fads and slipshod aesthetics explicate
a man who has never read a book, not even the ones he has signed . . .

. . . In three years (maybe seven), Donald Trump will no longer be president. But conservatives who bent the knee will still be writing and thinking. How will it
be possible to take them seriously?

The short answer is, it won’t. But that is not an answer that Bill [Buckley] would give. Minds change, hearts change. That’s why he spent so much time arguing,
with foes and friends alike. It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn.

[dfwgator]

The Bushes killed conservatism before Trump did.

[EasyAce]

The Bushes killed conservatism before Trump did.

Or, you could say they put conservatism on life support and Donaldus Minimus seems to be pulling the plug . . .

[roamer_1]

Nah. Conservatism is a way of life based upon certain and unshakeable principles.

It doesn't fail because it cannot.