I did not attend this week’s inaugural National Conservative Conference in Washington, D.C., where a number of leading center-right intellectuals gathered to map out a nationalist agenda for the Right, much of it challenging pre-Trump Republican orthodoxy on everything from trade to foreign policy.
Despite the appearance of billionaire Peter Thiel, the conference did not appear to embrace libertarians.
“This new movement excludes, de facto, some in the old GOP coalition,” writes Spectator USA’s Curt Mills. “The big loser seems to be libertarians,” Mills added, citing the event’s seeming endorsement of President Trump’s tariff policies.
The American Conservative’s Jim Antle focused on the neoconservative presence at the conference, namely war-eager national security adviser John Bolton and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Clifford May, both of whom spoke. Antle observed, “If nationalists are going to criticize libertarians alongside neoconservatives, they must lay out their own vision of prudence and restraint.”
This is a fair point. To date, besides President Trump, the only faction on the Right and within the contemporary GOP that has consistently pushed for a more restrained foreign policy are libertarian Republicans, with Sen. Rand Paul leading that small group.
Since the primary agreement between today’s Trumpian nationalists and libertarians is the issue of foreign policy, let’s talk about foreign policy, because it’s hard to envision a Right calling for less war without libertarians.
It is true that many conventional Republicans today at least pay lip service to Trump’s noninterventionist “America First” foreign policy, but is it because these Republicans are true believers in restraint, or simply because the president is popular back home and they feel compelled to go along with whatever he says? How many of these Republicans behaved the same way under President George W. Bush, showing unquestioning fealty to the GOP president their base loved, though Bush represented the antithesis of the foreign policy today’s nationalists seek?
Worse, how many Republicans still hold firm to the neocon-tinged foreign policy positions of the George W. Bush administration, even under Trump? If you count some recent major votes, these reflexively hawkish Republicans seem to be closer to a majority.
Today’s nationalists seem to believe Trump’s presidency has ushered in a new era for the Republican Party and the Right, of which there is no going back.
They might be right. They might also be wrong. How many of the Republicans currently jockeying to inherit Trump’s mantle actually share his vision?
Antle writes, “Consider that Tom Cotton and Nikki Haley are among the would-be successors to Trump. Cotton is at least aligned with Trump on immigration. It is not clear that Haley, like Bolton, even goes that far.”
We could throw Mike Pence into this mix, who former Vice President Dick Cheney recently asked why Trump was mucking up the GOP foreign policy he helped establish. Pence, a “standard-issue hawk,” is someone Cheney no doubt was comfortable discussing this with, rather than Trump himself. Sen. Lindsey Graham is another high-profile Republican who works hard today to be a key Trump loyalist.
All of these Republicans are hawks. All of them would be calling Trump an “isolationist” if he were Rand Paul and not Trump.
Which, again, brings us to the only serving member of the federal government who is a regular ally of this president and who also shares his aversion to war: Rand Paul, an outspoken libertarian.
Whatever today’s nationalists think of Paul or his father, former Republican congressman Ron Paul, the libertarian populist movement they represented within the GOP that shook up the 2008 and 2012 presidential primaries, it was the only genuine challenge to the Republican establishment since Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign and until the rise of Trump.
Among non-self-identified libertarian Republicans, there are outliers, like Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, who recently offered up a consistent, anti-war Trump doctrine. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who spoke at the conference and has been described as a more thoughtful advocate of Trump-style nationalism, has been vague on foreign policy, though he has a fan in John Bolton, whom the senator describes as “an expert in foreign policy.” Hawley says Bolton “understands the many threats posed to America by radical Islam, North Korea, and Iran — threats that too many in Washington have idly let metastasize for more than a decade.” Read into that what you will.
Recall that we have seen different “nationalist” fervors in recent years, inspired by presidents and fueled by partisans who love them.
Bush’s call to arms in the weeks and months after Sept. 11 could be described as one of the most nationalist moments this century, and neoconservatives at the time certainly framed it that way.
Years later, the mainstream media and the Left fell all over themselves to portray Barack Obama’s election as a moment of national unity.
Today’s nationalists are dealing with a Republican base that is solidly behind Trump, yet in other ways, the party-at-large is also fragmented. The nation is certainly more polarized than in recent memory, and the majority of Republican leaders currently eager to take Trump’s baton disagree with him significantly on many issues, but especially foreign policy.
Nationalists can question or mock the virtues of limited government, free markets, or Reagan-era trickle-down economics, but there is no refuting trickle-down politics: Whoever sits atop the GOP post-Trump will define it — whether it’s a President Nikki Haley, Tom Cotton, Mike Pence, or some other Republican more pleasing to the Washington establishment, particularly its foreign policy gatekeepers. Perhaps an army of earnest Trump Republicans might arise, including quality leaders. But three years into his presidency, that still doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
But the one current Trump ally the establishment would do everything to stop precisely because he agrees with the president’s “America First” foreign policy is Rand Paul, should he or some other libertarian Republican decide to make a White House run.
No one can be certain what will happen in 2020, 2024, or beyond, but serious Republican nationalists in the future might find themselves voting for the libertarian.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
Correction: A previous version of this piece incorrectly listed Sen. Josh Hawley as a Republican from Kansas. He is from Missouri.
