Less than two months before voting starts in Iowa, Donald Trump remains the most popular candidate among Republicans. Most observers said it wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen. A few days after The Donald’s announcement, we wrote a column surveying the GOP field. We didn’t even include Trump. Boy were we wrong.
And so, as observers and historians of conservatism, we ask: Why is this man still here? Mediocre performances in several debates, an endless string of absurd remarks, continued failure (it increasingly looks like a refusal) to articulate a policy agenda and clear evidence that he has no history of political commitment to anything — none of it has eroded Trump’s lead.
The question this raises is not why Republican voters like him. His sincere and apparently fearless outrage at how wrong things have gone in America, plus his campaign’s independence from the donor class, have earned Trump his popularity in the party. But his voters seem unwilling or unable to separate personal admiration for the man, or enjoyment of him as a new voice, from fitness for the presidency.
They also don’t seem to have considered whether he can beat Hillary Clinton — since, with such an unconventional candidate, a favorable answer to that question would require at least a smoother and longer performance in the primaries.
An attitude close to political nihilism is at work in the willingness of a large bloc of Republicans to take him over all other candidates and to nominate him. This should be distressing to anyone who either identifies with the conservative tradition, or at least respects its legacy of intellectual fortitude.
A large share of the GOP base today seems more interested in expressing contempt for the entire world of conventional politics than in the foreseeably disastrous consequences of doing so by nominating an utterly unpredictable buffoon rather than a more serious critic of that world — of whom the Republican field has a few.
Their assumption is either, quite falsely, that the Trump candidacy poses no threat to the policy values the GOP has claimed to represent, and therefore has no downside for those drawn to it, or that any such threat matters less than the sheer gratification of overturning the political board, as if it they don’t care who picks up the pieces.
This strange kind of candidacy (and, if it happens, unconventional nomination) might be marginally defensible in a year when the out-party has little chance anyway and can plausibly be re-inspired by a wild roll of the dice. But neither is true in 2016. The Republicans have a reasonable, if probably less than even, chance to retake the presidency. And Trump is not the type of unusual candidate who can unify his party.
The fact that his campaign has nonetheless continued to prosper suggests a newly widespread attitude among conservatives that is radically at odds with their political tradition. In short, a watershed moment may be upon us. But it is nothing like the ideological reckoning of 1964 or the Reagan Revolution of 1980. If 1964 was a true example of what libertarian economists laud as “creative destruction,” a Trump 2016 nomination would be destruction; nothing creative about it.
It is true that many Trump supporters identify as centrists or as not necessarily conservative populists. But without his popularity on the right, he would stand much lower in the polls. Nor do we mean that it’s un-conservative to speak rudely, to act grossly egotistical, or to want such a candidate — although it may be.
One cannot imagine William F. Buckley or Russell Kirk or Richard Weaver or Milton Friedman tolerating Donald Trump’s disgraceful conduct and rhetoric. Indeed, conservatism in our time, whether gentle or harsh, has always claimed an intellectual coherence, a moral seriousness, espoused by thinkers like these, who epitomized a consistency of aim that is irreconcilable with Trump’s vapid, scattershot, “trust me — I’ll be great” messaging.
He isn’t ideological in either the good or the bad sense of the word, just boisterous and alienated to a degree rarely seen in national politics. He is a rebel with no defined cause, only a demand for change. This looks “conservative” mainly because the out-party is on the Right and the incumbent president on the Left. Trump’s mere lack of caution or discipline in attacking the Democrats doesn’t even begin to demonstrate that he will reliably represent their ideological opposites.
Why, then, have so many conservatives lined up with Trump, while others are open to the idea? Clearly, part of the reason is that they feel (although we think they exaggerate the extent to which) the conventional politicians on the right have long failed to advance their goals — and have also refused in most cases to boldly state them, employing the innocuous buzzwords of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and the party’s congressional “leadership.”
But other candidates such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina share these frustrations and are making that clear. A conservative need not support any of them, yet, to hold off from backing Trump. What requires explanation is not the deep skepticism on the right toward everyone in public office, or the openness to nominating a person who has never held office. It is the seeming lack of skepticism toward Trump despite his obvious vulnerability to multiple questions about his own political trustworthiness.
This is a grave hour for the modern conservative movement. Trump’s sound and fury — signifying exactly what Macbeth said it does — may be the death rattle of a project that took generations to build.
David B. Frisk is a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute and author of If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement. Jonathan Riehl is a former political speechwriter and is completing a history of the legal conservative movement. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
