The Performative Outrage Of ‘Conservatives’ Is Further Evidence Of Their Failure
BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON
OCTOBER 27, 2022Unable to cope with the failure of the conservative movement, its erstwhile champions resort to calling their critics fascist.The performative outrage from professional conservatives over my column last week, which argued that the conservative movement has largely failed and we should stop calling ourselves conservatives, was as revealing as it was predictable.
Bill Kristol called me a fascist. John Podhoretz said I’m a power-hungry fanatic. David French warned I was fabricating an existential threat to the American idea. Matt Lewis, perhaps the most candid of the lot, was just happy that “far-right extremists” like me will no longer besmirch the good name of conservatism, which he’d like to keep for himself.
There are two things happening here. The first is a reflexive defensiveness from a class of establishment media pundits who have, as Iowahawk explained back in 2015, worn the “conservative” label like a skinsuit for decades. To claim, as I did, that the conservative project has failed feels to them like an indictment, which it is.
The failures of conservatism stretch back more than a half-century, but over the past two decades in particular the left has made spectacular gains on nearly every front while issues that ordinary conservatives care about — immigration, traditional marriage, the ability to support a family in a decent community — have been more or less ignored by a conservative commentariat that whiled away the time on National Review cruises, agitated for endless wars abroad, and cracked jokes for octogenarian donors. It’s nice work if you can get it, but it didn’t conserve much.
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https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/27/the-performative-outrage-of-conservatives-is-further-evidence-of-their-failure/
