Something has gone terribly wrong inside the conservative movement. We read it online, we hear it in conversations with young conservatives, and we see it in the way our movement’s leaders now speak and act. What began as a promising populist revival has metastasized into something corrosive: a grievance-driven, conspiracy-infused hostility that is hollowing the foundation of principled conservatism from the inside out.
Populism, properly understood, was never the problem. In its healthier form, it emerged as a passionate response to the failures of bipartisan elites who forgot about middle America and preoccupied themselves with global abstractions while ignoring their fellow citizens. The populist wave that carried President Donald Trump to victory in 2016 delivered a necessary wake-up call to Washington.
