I Agree With Donald Trump (For Once)
Photo by Matt Johnson from Omaha, Nebraska, United States, CC BY 2.0
If you’ve followed me long, you know that I am no fan of Donald Trump. I never voted Trump in either primary or general elections, but I do try to be objective. As president, Trump did do some things that I applauded and agreed with and from time to time, he does make sense. As the old Southern saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day (although ironically, a clock that is five minutes slow or fast will never be right).
That was the case recently when The Former Guy spoke to a crowd of Republican elites at the Four Seasons in Nashville (this time it was the hotel rather than the landscaping company that Rudy Giuliani used). The gathering was closed to the public, but Politico did obtain a copy of Trump’s remarks.
Trump told Republican donors that the “old Republican Party is gone, and it is never coming back.” Sadly, I agree.
As many of you know, I was a lifelong Republican until the spring of 2016 when the party lost its way. I ceased to be a Republican, but I remain a conservative. I think that the lack of partisan blinders helped me to see how the GOP changed around me over the subsequent few years where most people who remained within the party did not sense the transformation. As I’ve said many times, watching my friends get on the Trump Train was like living out “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
It’s like the parable of the frog in the gradually warming water that eventually boils to death. The story is not true with respect to frogs. They jump out when the water gets too warm. It is true for Republicans who stayed in their party even as it came to represent something very different from what it used to stand for.
What did the old Republican Party use to stand for? According to Trump, “Republicans were a party known for starting wars overseas, cutting Social Security and Medicare at home, and pushing mass amnesty for illegal aliens.”
I can quibble with his phrasing, but I agree that Republicans used to stand for strong international cooperation against aggression, entitlement reform, and fair treatment of immigrants. Potato/po-TAH-to, I guess.
I could add other examples. Republicans used to be for free trade over protectionism. They used to favor the rule of law over cronyism and “common good” judicial philosophies. They used to preach equality of opportunity rather than ethnic nationalism. They used to favor individual freedom over a right-wing nanny state. I could go on. The party even flirted with gun control under Trump and couldn’t find it within themselves to rebuke The Former Guy’s bureaucratic bump-stock ban (but if Obama or Biden did it you’d hear about it!).
For a limited-government conservative (the few of us who are left), the new GOP is not an attractive option. Neither are the Democrats, although I do believe that, liberal as he is, Joe Biden was the conservative choice in 2020 and may be again in 2024. I’m not saying that Biden is a conservative, only that he’s more conservative than Trump, who isn’t conservative in any sense of the word.
Back in 2016, I hoped that the Republican flirtation with Trump would be short-lived. And I think it might have been except that Trump was only the second-worst candidate to ever run for president on a national party ticket. When Trump won and then spent four years telling Republicans what they wanted to hear, that Democrats and RINOs are destroying the country and “I alone can fix it,” he achieved cult status and irrevocably changed the Republican Party. At this point, it’s never going back to the limited government, constitutionalist party that it was.
I’m not going to pretend that the change was all due to Trump though. A large segment of the GOP was already antsy and ripe for populism. If Trump hadn’t grabbed the reins of the party with his demagoguery, Ted Cruz probably would have run the same campaign with different signs.
By 2016, I had been watching and disliking Ted Cruz for years. While much of the base loved him, I saw him for the snake oil salesman that he is. Cruz’s path to prominence in the party was through violating Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment and attacking his fellow Republicans as RINOs. Cruz and others like him perverted Reagan’s 80-percent rule to say that anyone who deviated from the Republican orthodoxy one iota was a traitor and RINO.
No episode is more illustrative of the damage that Ted Cruz and his minions did to the party than the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare. Cruz planned to “defund” Obamacare by refusing to pass a funding bill that included money for the Affordable Care Act. The only problem was that Democrats controlled the Senate and could simply not pass Cruz’s preferred budget. Anyone who watched Schoolhouse Rock and understood how a bill becomes a law could understand that Cruz was doomed to lose on a party-line vote unless he got Democrats to cross the aisle.
Or they should have. Cruz and his henchmen attacked their fellow Republicans for refusing to fight and blamed them when Republicans predictably lost the disastrous battle over the shutdown even though they never had the votes to win.
Shutdowns don’t work. They typically hurt the party that forces the issue, which means they generally hurt Republicans. And yet, in 2023 there is a sizeable contingent of Republicans that would not only like to shut down the government again this year but cause it to default.
Republicans lost the 2013 shutdown, but Ted Cruz won the political battle at the expense of the rest of the party. If it wasn’t apparent before that Cruz was dishonest and a political con man, it should have been then.
At that point, it also should have been apparent that the Republican base wasn’t as smart as it thought it was. Not only that, but it seemed ripe for a pied-piper politician to lead the party astray. But people don’t like to see or admit their own flaws, and the pied-piper scenario is exactly what happened.
It was around this time that I, along with some other online friends, got tired of being called RINOs for stating these obvious facts. We coalesced together in a Facebook group dedicated to “Reasonable Republicans” and took a rhino as our mascot. It was the same principle as MAGA embracing the “deplorable” epithet.
At any rate, after 2016, I was only mildly surprised that the GOP didn’t reject Trump as his behavior became more erratic, his lies became more flagrant, and the fact that he was in way over his head became more obvious. After all, Republicans had been training to follow a strong, charismatic leader for years at this point.
So, yes, I agree with Donald Trump that the “old Republican Party is gone, and it is never coming back.” Even if Trump doesn’t win the nomination next year, we won’t see a traditional Republican conservative step to the helm of the party. There really isn’t a traditional conservative in the top tier of candidates, especially one who is untainted by six years of Trumpism. And yes, even after being indicted, Trump is still the heavy favorite to be the 2024 nominee.
Even if the recent ABC News poll that shows Trump’s favorability at 25 percent is a harbinger of things to come. It’s likely that the best Republicans can hope for is Ron DeSantis, a governor who seems just as prone to use the police power of government to restrict personal freedom and crush dissent as Trump ever was. DeSantis is no limited-government constitutionalist.
But I don’t think we’ll have to worry about a DeSantis presidency because Donald Trump is still way out in front in the polling and he’s likely to stay there. The indictment may help him win the nomination.
The Republican Party is irretrievably, irreparably changed from just a few years ago. It’s not going back to the way it was. The genie that emerged from Pandora’s box (to mix metaphors) will not be shoved back in. Maybe yet another drubbing by Democrats will point Republicans in a new direction, but I’m not sure even that will do it.
If you wonder why, just ask the gang in the Reasonable Republicans group. They’re all Trump apologists now.
This makes me very sad.
Not surprised, but sad.Report
one more drubbing isn’t going to do it. maybe 2 or 3 and the years it will take for those cycles. in the end cultural change, which isn’t directed or controlled, wears away so much and the R’s are doing their best to fight the tide.Report
Oh it will take much longer than that. The Republicans were a party in political minority from 1932-1952 before they learned to be more moderate re New Deal stuff. Labour was in the minority from 1979-1997 before regaining power via the moderate “New Labour.” This included some swings to the left in general elections.
Unfortunately, the Federalized political structure of the United States means it is unlikely for the GOP to sustain the long periods of minority government required to moderate. Things can change but it the current foreseeable future looks like the parties will either have small majorities in Congress or they will split control over the Houses. It is plausible that 2024 could result in Democrats regaining the House but narrowly losing the Senate.
If they manage to keep the Senate and regain the House, the margins will be small and many states will be firmly in GOP control.
The GOP needs to suffer at least 15 years of holding less than 200 seats in the House and less than 45 Senate seats before they learn along with being frozen out of the White House.Report
Also too, they can retain enough power in states to keep hope alive almost indefinitely.
And Republicans have been virtually shut out of power in California for over 20 years without any sign of growing moderate but in fact becoming ever more radical.
Further, they could attract new blood by capitalizing on misogyny or homophobia, or finding some new caste to become the Untouchables.Report
And let’s not forget the propensity of Dems to eff things up, which will induce the voters to punish them, especially after the conservative media acts like whatever the Dems do to eff things up (which we needn’t defend here) gets portrayed as the very death knell of the Republic and a moral catastrophe on par with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and/or the innovation of no-fault divorce. This will obscure whatever lesson the GOP would otherwise have been learning because, once in power, they will assume that literally everything their candidate did was what the voters wanted and they needn’t moderate at all, as opposed to “well, our guy wasn’t all that great but the Dem did just get caught with bricks of cash wrapped in aluminum foil in his freezer and his male member inside someone who wasn’t his wife so maybe this was not so much us winning as it was them doing bad things.”Report
What drubbing? The Trumpist GOP took the House, came close in the Senate, and completely controls many states.Report
You can argue that the Trumpist candidates cost the GOP the Senate. Blake Masters comes to mind on that one. There’s another state or two that comes to mind (GA, NH?)Report
Compared to expectations it was a drubbing, though viewed in isolation it was a technical victory.Report
You mention 8 issues here: foreign intervention, entitlement reform, limits on immigration, free trade, rule of law, equality of opportunity, individual freedom, and gun rights. (I altered the phrasing for yea or nay consistency.)
Let me take two off the table, foreign intervention and free trade. While I think Republicans are more sympathetic to both, neither party necessarily owns them, and generally foreign policy is more reactive than any candidate would like you to believe.
On the remaining six, I’d say that the Republican Party represents the center-to-yea, and the Democratic Party the center-to-nay. On only entitlement reform does Trump stand against the dominant Republican tradition. Is he a terrible person and terrible president? Sure. And he would and has dropped any of his planks on a whim, grudge, or perceived advantage. But a Republican and/or conservative wouldn’t have to explain himself if he supported immigration reform, rule of law, equality of opportunity, individual freedom, or gun rights, and would expect Trump to lean in the same direction.
You don’t mention social issues, though, and in this area I think Trump’s rhetoric, conservative principles, and Republican voters line up as well. So I’m not seeing the reason to write off the current Republican Party.Report
Don’t you think you missed one?
Ron DeSantis, a governor who seems just as prone to use the police power of government to restrict personal freedom and crush dissent as Trump ever was. DeSantis is no limited-government constitutionalist.
Freedom of speech, yea or nay?
Rule of law, yea or nay?Report
The law protects but does not bind republicans Chip.Report
I’m struggling to find any policies or laws enacted under Republicans that would support the small government notion.Report
I appreciate the clear recognition of how great a departure Donald Trump was on policy from standard Republican Party doctrines, but think you’re writing off Ron DeSantis as a vehicle for restoration unfairly or at least prematurely here.
I think you can count on him to seek to cut taxes, cut entitlements, cut spending on services like education, pursue deregulation/privatization (including in education), pursue bipartisan immigration reform meanwhile being fairly accommodating of undocumented or exigent migrants (his interior-removal stunts being actually an example of accommodation not rejection of illegal/irregular (asylum-seeking) migrants), to aggressively pursue whatever federal restrictions on abortion the conservative legal establishment of his era seems constitutional, and to start or continue approximately the normal number of wars for a Republican president of the vintage you pine for – not fewer – and not to seek to make major changes to our role as international guarantor of security for the Western/liberal international order.
I will admit that under both parties the status of the international free trade regime is currently in question, and I can’t claim that I have confidence that DeSantis is committed to steering the party back toward minimizing barriers. But – that is only in keeping with a growing consensus that free trade is a vulnerable paradigm in a world in which China is a dominant industrial actor. The elite policy circles of both parties recognize this problem. It’s not so much that the Republican Party has changed views on trade due to Donald Trump as that the effects of integrating into the global trade regime are coming into focus and the whole policy earldom is taking a step back to (re?)assess.
I think you can count on Ron DeSantis to try to deliver a very normal Republican presidency. To the extent it departs from what you would like a Republican presidency to consist of, I think it’s because you have memories of past Republican presidencies that depart from the reality of what they were.Report
I think you can count on Ron DeSantis to try to deliver a very normal Republican presidency.
Upon this, we agree.Report
I’m not sure you can square “being fairly accommodating of undocumented or exigent migrants” with this proposal: https://www.flgov.com/2023/02/23/governor-ron-desantis-announces-legislation-to-counteract-bidens-border-crisis/Report
I’m not 100% sure of much. But I’m fairly comfortable saying I can.
First of all – the proposal comes six months after the stunting. Doesn’t seem like he felt too pressed to promptly follow up his media episode with any really ground-breaking policy agenda to seriously stem the flow of migrants seeking entry without individual pre-approval.
And the proposal…
…doesn’t strike me as clearly rising even to but certainly not beyond the normal panoply of enforcement measures usually proposed by traditional pro-immigration (reform) GOP members of Congress during episodes of ostensible negotiation with Democrats toward a comprehensive immigration reform deal that would result in legislative prescription (enforcement of which entirely depends on Executive disposition) of a subset of such measures in exchange for legal status for some number of immigrants already in the country.
Such negotiations are what that language is meant to point to, since few of those provisions have practical meaning if enacted merely as Florida state laws rather than federal policy.Report
I think you’re too optimistic about trade policy. The advantage of not being the workers’ party is that Republicans don’t get taken in by the unions and their stupid protectionist instincts. The disadvantage is that they get taken in by the businessmen and their stupid protectionist instincts. The benefits of free trade aren’t intuitively obvious. The biggest money and the think tanks recognize its benefit, but the biggest money has gone Democratic, and we’re not really in a think tank era these days.
I think Trump opened the door to some bad thinking, and we’re probably going to be stuck with it for a while, but I don’t see the Democrats as any better on trade.Report
I have to glumly agree with you. There’s some faint scintillas of hope in some kind of friend shoring scheme taking hold under a shadow of a menacing China but the concentrated benefits and diffuse costs for protectionism make free trade a perennially difficult policy.Report
I’m wondering if both of you aren’t accounting for the issue that ‘Free Trade’ with China presupposes a trading partner also engaging in ‘Free Trade’. The biggest change in sentiment is realizing that despite the magic faerie dust of ‘Free Trade’ the US/China trade paradigm hasn’t been ‘Free Trade’ since, well, ever. The premises that Trade would become Free and would also import Socio-Politico Freedoms INTO China have not borne the fruit that theory suggested.
That’s a HUGE Libertarian blindspot that permeates Neo-Libs and Free-Trade Cons. Both sides have awakened to this, but the rhetoric/politics of what to do haven’t caught up to reality – so we’re sitting in a ‘Free Trade’ limbo where it’s been dead for quite some time, but only now are we realizing we’ve been duped and neither team can figure out what to do or how to capitalize on it.Report
I don’t join the libertarians in calling for free trade with China for pretty much the exact reasons you state here Marchmaine but that doesn’t explain all the other spheres where free trade has been rolled back. Canada, Europe, non-Chinese Asia. If one wants to weaken China (which generally one should); if one wants to strengthen America’s reputation in the far east (as one should) and if one wants to rather cheaply combat inflation (which one should) then more free trade with friendly non-Chinese nations should be a major tool in one’s toolkit. And it isn’t. Biden hasn’t moved particularly strongly to unravel Trumps awful protectionism towards non-Chinese nations.Report
I wasn’t trying to be optimistic (from your point of view) on trade re: DeSantis. The point of the paragraph devoted to that was indeed to give an exception in the area of international trade to my general assessment that a DeSantis presidency would generally
mean an attempt to get back to traditional Republican philosophies – but to explain that by an assessment that the political winds are now blowing in the opposite direction from free trade more broadly than just the emanations from Donald Trump’s orifices (and administration). Donald Trump almost certainly took the protectionist turn further in actual policy than almost any other president would have done in those years, but in contrast to almost all other areas where Trump changed the direction of Republican thinking while he was in office, I offer no guarantee that Ron DeSantis would steer back away from the new trade barriers Donald Trump erected which Joe Biden has largely left in place.
For all that, nevertheless you may be correct that I am even still too sanguine on the point.Report
There’s plenty to agree with on this post but David probably doesn’t dwell enough on why Trump was able to so handily defenestrate the old GOP’s style.
My own, biased, analysis harkens back to OT’s early days when Erik Kain used to write round these parts. One of the bits of advice to the libertarians that Erik offered that always stuck with me was that they’d have more luck if they focused on the getting rid of government-imposed chains instead of government-imposed crutches. To expand a little, he posited that libertarians could potentially gain credit as an ideology if they could put their banner on policy changes involving removing restrictions from people instead of being, as they were and are to this day, the ideology that was seen as wanting to cut government aid to people and use the money for tax cuts instead.
Erik is mostly gone now and so are the libertarians. It is curious for me to see this new political landscape. I came of political age in the late 90’s so for me libertarianism has always been a strong or even overwhelmingly dominant language on the right. The GOP and conservatives outsourced their thinking and internet arguing almost entirely to libertarians as the aughts wore on and social conservativism and neo conservativism stalled and failed. Now, the post Trump GOP has never sounded less libertarian which, in hindsight, is merely an unveiling of the truth that was underlying the right all along. There was never a huge voter constituency that were genuinely libertarian. There were a lot of embarrassed populists, republicans and the like who used libertarian language online because all other right-wing language had become de trope but they never believed in any of it. That just leaves the well-funded libertarian institutions as sock puppets on the arms of the wealthy- there to obtain tax cuts and little else. But free trade, civil liberties, small government, all those other libertarian ideals are just done with right now, or else lost to the left. It is so eerily strange for me- it feels like the whole right-wing landscape has utterly transformed- I tell myself that it’s much the same as it always has been- just shorn of the libertarian camouflage that used to blanket everything but it’s a hard sell on an emotional level. I can’t imagine what it feels like for genuine libertarians- not to have your ideas discredited exactly but to be riding high only to discover that 99.999% of the people you thought were with you never believed in your ideas in the first place. My libertarian friends in meat space range from fervent denial (the left is still worse!) to tin foil hattery to mere ennui (people are awful, I never believed any of the right had our back anyhow*).
And where does the right go from here? There isn’t exactly a successor ideology stepping up to bat. More like the ground has split open and the right-wing ID is simply running amok while the right-wing elites descend to ever more naked instances of grifting. How the heck does the right get from here to something substantive? I honestly don’t know.
*Said while shoveling Bush W signs into a bonfire.Report
It goes to authoritarianism, because that’s what happens everywhere an we are not special that way. There has always, everywhere, been a demand for authoritarian, autocratic government; people who find attraction to a strong man, a dictator, a king. “It takes an Emperor to run an Empire,” is a thought that goes back to pre-history. Trump-worship is as naked a form of this strain of political culture as almost anyone alive can remember, but it is not new here any more than it was in Europe or Asia.
if we are special, it’s because once upon a time, our elites vehemently rejected this direction of aspiration and tried something very different. And wrote those ideals into our foundational documents. And then we prospered and grew strong, concluding that our Founders had been right.
But even in the Grand Old Federal Era there were monarchists and those who aspired to dictatorial powers. Napoleon had many admirers here once; Putin has many admirers now.
That’s not to paint our conservative friends here with that brush. (The OP demonstrates the discomfort that holdout small-L libertarian style conservatives have with the new Trumpy GOP.) But the basic direction of right wing politics at the moment is towards consolidation and unification of power in the executive.Report
I hope you are wrong because the US is a two party country. I am a yellow dog democrat and hold much affection in my heart for the Donkey’s, as hoary and scholeric as they can be, but even I will readily admit that they can’t run the country by themselves forever. They also can’t hold power forever and if the GOP descends to an utter trainwreck and then gets into power by default, ugh, it could make the Trump show look like a cake walk.Report
Democracy is active, hard, and requires constant vigilance. Authoritarianism is not the jack-booted Totalitarianism that Hollywood portrays it to be most of the time for most of the citizens.Report
Agreed and authoritarianism is the default state of human civilization, as much we wish it weren’t.
In the entire sweep of human history true liberal democracy for all has barely existed for more than a few decades, and only in a few places.
We all were born and raised in that brief window of time so it’s easy to assume it is the norm, but it’s actually freakishly rare.Report
So much has happened since the old days – and since the last time I wrote anything for this site that I’d have to write a book to describe it.
Back around the time this site was kicked off, I don’t think anyone read Jamie Kirchick’s article on the Ron Paul Newsletters and thought it would have predicted the future.
The “establishment” libertarians, if they weren’t completely useless back in that day, are pretty much irrelevant now. It was no surprise to see libertarians jump on the alt-right bandwagon given the proclivities of the paleolibertarians to march in lockstep with the paleoconservatives and anything else anti-government coming out of the fever swamps.
If we were surprised by Trump, it’s because we may not have been as focused on what was going on behind the scenes in the conservative movement, which was an establishment that was well to the left of a very conservative base.
It’s why I think something like Michael Anton’s Flight 93 Election article is not a fringe position on the Right. It’s also why we’ve seen a major shift on the right towards a populist form of nationalism.
That’s it for now – hope you’re all doing well.Report
Dave! My dude, I hope you’re thriving.Report
Alive and well. Causing tons of trouble on Twitter – albeit anonymously (well…semi – I think one of two people here know my Twitter handle). Always fun comparing the online anti-communists to Robert Welch!Report
Yeah, Reason has evolved from irrelevant and insightful to “aging hipsters”.
Victory has defeated them.
As for what Trump 2016 brought, he brought the first real whiff of populism in decades.
Miles beyond a folksy “aw shucks” manner, this guy had the right enemies EVERYWHERE. Ain’t nothing more authentic than that.
We now know that his populism was hollow and the system itself seems to be immune from a real populist getting within a mile of where Trump got.
But if that immunity were to weaken…Report
Ethno-Nationalism is the derogatory term for populism.Report
It is but it’s hard to disentangle the two when the populism is fueled by cultural grievances.Report
I don’t disentangle them at all.
Even in its idealized form populism is merely a term for drawing a line around some group of people and declaring them to be “The People”, as opposed to everyone else who are not.
Since this outgroup has historically meant the aristocrats or robber barons populism had sort of a romantic sheen especially for leftists.
But it is essentially anti-liberal, since it rejects the idea that all persons are to be treated equally.Report
Mostly anti-liberal but not always driven by race or culture as you describe it.
The populism of George Wallace? Well…Report
“Real” whiff? I guess that’s true on some level. I think the consequences of the last serious populist push – Buchanan in ’92 – contributed to Trump in 2016. The conservative vote got split and never reunited, especially after Perot came into the race.
I’d argue that Ron Paul’s presidential run had it but i don’t think it was as visible as it was with Buchanan seeing Paul had a lot of support from a younger crowd (though we whiff we got thanks to the articles about the newsletters was a hell of a whiff).
I think the style we’re seeing always existed on the right but lacked critical mass or leverage until recently. Donald Warren’s work on the Middle American Radicals showed that target population when he published his work in the 1970’s and the late Sam Francis took that and ran with it (Francis was the intellectual firepower behind Buchanan and is still one of the most influential paleoconservative intellectuals – for better and worse).Report
Looking at the electoral map the answer is semi class and culture based re-alignment. The Republican party started incorporating the dixiecrat and vaguely reconstructed segregationists elements in the 70s but only finished it at the turn of the century. They by themselves can be channeled and to some degree controlled at the national level. Now it’s also incorporating midwestern economic populists who used to be swing voting, culturally conservative Democrats right up through Obama’s second term. The critical mass of populist sentiment is now housed in a single party. I don’t think we’ve had that happen in the post WW2 era until now.Report
You’re right and it’s interesting because in 1964, the populist right, aka pretty much every kook, bigot, crank and hardcore conspiracy theorist, cast their lot with Goldwater.
Trump wasn’t the first outsider to have populist outrage surprise the GOP Establishment and win the nomination. Can’t say for certain that Goldwater was but his nomination fits the bill.Report
Goldwater actually stood strong against that conspiracy crowd.Report
Goldwater raised his objections about Welch but I don’t think he pushed that much harder, nor could he, at least not until his presidential campaign ended.
He definitely wasn’t one of them but like any politician, he wasn’t going to openly piss off his base.Report
Hipsters…well…pretty much – and their culture war stuff is cringe, but most culture war stuff is – unless I’m writing it then it kicks ass!Report
A lot better having heard from you buddy! Still lifting and I see from Facebook you are too.Report
I’m trying. 100 lb dumbbell rows aren’t too kind on the shoulders.Report
I just solve that problem by not lifting as much but I’m lazy like that.Report
Commie!Report
Joint murdering fascist!Report
I smoke them slowly to ensure a long, painful death!Report
Isn’t calling me names a violation of the commenting policy? Who enforces that around here these days?Report
….I’ll allow it.Report
Damn. This place got soft!!!!! 😀Report
In fairness you started it!Report
Yes, that’s why it’s fair to me to finish it.
Now where’s my old ban hammer. I assume it’s in the same place because it’s too heavy for anyone else to lift!!!Report
I always considered libertarianism meaningful as a critique rather than a philosophy, so I can’t say I ever thought of it as dying. The philosophy disappears after the birth of one’s first child, and as my friends have gone through that I just sort of naturally saw that side disappear in my circle. I do think that it lives on as an impulse towards smaller government within the Republican Party. As a practical matter, it never managed to enact entitlement reform, which is maybe 90% of our current problem, and you can only sustain a movement for so long without a significant win.
The one big exception is gun rights. That was a natural home for philosophical libertarians, particularly those who’ve given up on fixing things, and it had its own natural constituency. They’ve combined to create an effective movement. The gains they’ve made are striking. And I can’t dismiss Trump’s deregulation work.Report
You and I actually share that opinion of libertarianism. I think it’s an incredibly relevant vector or a highly useful razor but inadequate in of itself as a governing ideology.
I describe libertarianism as “dying” only as a political movement here in the US with many people pledging fealty to it, espousing its language or describing it as their politics. You recall Ryan on the cover of Time etc.. at once time Libertarianism was the face of the GOP even if, beneath the mask, they only cared about tax cuts. Now days they only vaguely even pretend anymore.
But libertarianism as a philosophy or line of thought remains as coherent and internally sound as it ever was. it’s not like, say communism, in that it’s foundationally discredited- one just can’t persuade enough folks to actually want to live in a libertopia.Report
I have a certain amount of respect for libertarianism and sympathized a lot with them before the W presidency solidified me as a blue (and even then they were at times the best critics). When it comes to the kind of reasoned arguments for civil liberties I still think their classical liberal vision is far more compelling and workable than leftist thought on social justice or Marxist inspired group based rights. Back in the day Radley Balko did better work than I think virtually anyone before or since on issues with modern policing and its no coincidence he originated in the libertarian ecosystem.
The problem of course is that there are all of 5 people really animated by that and they’re all (to paraphrase Jaybird) aging hipsters working at Reason magazine. They don’t have an audience with anyone powerful or influential, not on those topics anyway.
The core flaw of course with libertarianism is that followed to its natural conclusions, particularly with respect to economics, is that it results in a profoundly un-libertarian, and indeed illiberal might makes right society. As long as a country is democratic it will not be libertarian and indeed it can’t be. No philosophy can really be deemed successful when it inevitably creates the consitions of its own destruction.Report
Oh yes, now my very first election to vote in (I was 19) in the US was Bush W vs Gore, so you can imagine how that shaped my, already liberal leaning, political view of the GOP. I’ve always found libertarians coherent, clever and entirely useless for actual real life problems. The libertarian solution for same sex marriage, for example, was to get government out of the marriage business. Yeah…
Yes, libertarianism’s problem as a free standing governing ideology is it’s a political solution looking for a population of people that will never accept it. Complaining about the people just won’t work- it’s like inventing a can opening that’ll only open iron cans. It’s not a feasible tool for the product it purports to be used for.
And, as a practical matter, the only reason we hear so much about libertarianism in general is because wealthy people love throwing money at it because they can use it to slash regulations and taxes and that signal boosts its voice on the internet. Those plutocrats don’t care a wit about libertarianism beyond that instrumental purpose.Report