No, Conservatism Should Not Embrace Populism
Many political observers are over-interpreting the message sent by Trump’s election.
By Andrew C. McCarthy — November 26, 2016
Populism? No thanks.
I am not now, nor will I ever be, a populist. Evidently, that separates me from a growing number of commentators, including some conservatives, wistfully engaged in Washington’s latest fad: over-interpreting Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.
The normally sensible Mike Lee, Republican senator from Utah, took to our pages to plead the case of “principled populism” — which is akin to calling for a sober Bacchanalia. Not surprisingly, Senator Lee’s brief doesn’t get very far before strangling in its own illogic, as odes to populism inevitably do. The “characteristic weakness” of populism, he tells us, is the lack of “a coherent philosophy,” which inevitably makes its “proposals” (I’d have said “careenings”) “inconsistent” and “unserious.” Well, yes . . . that is because populism is inherently unprincipled, inconsistent, and unserious, such that arguing for “principled populism” is so much nonsense.
Lee, a very smart guy, is anything but nonsensical. He is clearly trying to exploit Trump’s supposed populist moment for conservative ends. In his telling, “principled populism” becomes a menu of conservative proposals “focused on solving the problems that face working Americans in a fracturing society and global economy.” I’m all for the menu, but that’s not “principled populism”; it’s conservatism — or, as Lee unnecessarily modifies it, “authentic conservatism.”
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/442475/print
